Bibliografia e identità. Giuseppe fumagalli e le origini della stampa in Italia

The figure of Giuseppe Fumagalli (1863-1939) is somewhat forgotten today. While the memory of his long and itinerant career as a librarian has been preserved, his bibliographical magisterium has remainded more in the shadows, handed down by very relevant works that can still be consulted today not without profit. These writings - and in particular the Lexicon typographicum Italiae. Dictionnaire géographique d'Italie pour servir à l'histoire de l'imprimerie dans ce Pays (Florence, Olschki, 1905) - make it possible today to define Fumagalli's personality, but also to define his vision, in which bibliography, the history of books and printing, identity and an explicit nationalism are interwined. The construction of a "typographic canon", rather than a bibliographical and literary one, is the aim of Fumagalli's work, in wehich a close link between bibliography and cultural identity can be detected.