The publishing house in town
We sat at the table in the back of the shop,
surrounded by books and silence.
The city was asleep
and the bookshop seemed a boat
on an ocean of quiet.
(Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind)
Lucca Artigiana presents… Mpf Publisher
The publishing house in town
Lucca, 1966. The scent of ink and printed paper: a small “artisan” publishing house opens its doors in town. Its founder is a woman with a great love of books and culture, who decides to take the path of publishing coming from a more technical profession, from the world of typography and printing. These are years in which the wind of change is beginning to blow, especially for women, and a gust of genuine emancipation reaches this courageous Lucca woman too, who experiences the situation with the utmost naturalness, driven by the enthusiasm of “manufacturing” books. It is a historical period in which everyone more or less speaks almost exclusively of great themes, and yet Maria Pacini Fazzi decides (with an intuition ahead of its time) to start her business by focusing on the promotion of the area familiar to her: it will be the city itself that provides the starting point for the first works of strong editorial commitment, centred on the history and art of Lucca. As the years went by, the publishing house’s field of enquiry broadened to the whole region and then to the national level; today, led by Francesca Fazzi (daughter of Maria Pacini Fazzi), the publishing house includes in its catalogue (more than 2,000 titles) sections and series of bibliography, literature, art, history and much more, and yet that initial focus on the Lucca area has always remained absolutely present and vital. The prime testimony to this is the monumental study “Ville e Committenti dello Stato di Lucca” by art historian Isa Belli Barsali, a book that gave considerable prominence to the area in terms of both knowledge and prestige; further proof lies in the countless texts that support a certain kind of tourism, experienced in the name of cultural heritage, the environment and health, texts that represent the present and the future of the Lucca publishing house.
In 2016 Maria Pacini Fazzi Editore celebrates its first 50 years of activity, and does so by remaining faithful to its origins and ideals, publishing a series dedicated to women: directed by a woman, written by women and intended first and foremost for women, “Italiane” was devoted to biographies of female figures who helped make Italy great (such as Nilde Iotti, Tina Anselmi or Maria Eletta Martini), at both global and local level.
Fifty-four years after its opening, this small and welcoming publishing house, which is itself already a very rich mémoire, makes its presence felt more and more, in town and beyond, keeping intact that passion which has characterised it since the very first day…
