Before her, children’s books were full of sugar-coated content and moralistic stereotypes. The turning point came when Rosellina Archinto decided that “beautiful books could be given to girls and boys, and she was right for sixty years”, as her Babalibri, which she founded and then entrusted to her daughter Francesca, recalls today. The publisher died tonight at the age of 93, in Santa Margherita Ligure, a stone’s throw from that sea to which she always returned, to let herself be “invaded by a present friend, rather than by a past impossible to revive”.
From Genoa to Milan, passing through New York
Born in Genoa on 29 June 1933 to a middle class family, Milanese by adoption, after graduating in Economics at the Cattolica she married Alberico Archinto Rocca Saporiti in 1958 with whom she would have five children. After a stay in New York and an attendance at Columbia University, in 1960 he returned to Italy with the intention of making use of his American experiences to attempt new perspectives on the way of understanding literature.
Emme Edizioni and the revolution of the illustrated book
In 1966 he began his long editorial adventure by creating Emme Edizioni, dedicated to children, which revolutionized the gray panorama of children’s literature with illustrated books of extraordinary quality and original stories, spreading the greatest foreign illustrators such as Maurice Sendak, Leo Lionni, Tomi Ungerer, Eric Carle, Guillermo Mordillo in Italy and launching Italian illustrators including Enzo and Iela Mari, Bruno Munari, Emanuele Luzzati and Flavio Costantini into the world.
Progenitor is the formidable Small blue and small yellow by Leo Lionni (1967), in which a yellow lump and a blue lump love to play together, but when they hug they turn green and their parents no longer recognize them. A hug that dissolves prejudices and demonstrates how important it is to mix, learn, change in contact with each other.
The Archinto publishing house and the magazine Light
After having cleared children’s literature, still considered a minority in Italy, winning prizes at the Bologna Fair but also in Japan, Germany and France, the pioneer Rosellina Archinto, determined to make her way in a decidedly male environment, founded Archinto Editore in 1986, specializing in the attention to epistolaries, biographies, love and travel letters of artists, musicians, men of science, writers from all over the world, but above all in the desire to look beyond the appearances. A gallery of authors without borders feeds the Archinto catalog for forty years: from Rilke to Mann, from Gide to Wittgenstein, from Malerba to Quasimodo, from Apollinaire to Baudelaire. It also publishes literary critical essays by authors known throughout the world, from Bonnefoy to Briganti, from Manguel to Capote.
From 1988 to 1997 Rosellina fueled the literary discussion by publishing Lighta monthly magazine of comparisons, reviews and book news, which boasts collaborations from Contini to Eco, from Ceronetti to Raboni, with the contribution of a wide range of foreign authors (from Beckett to Celan, from Duchamp to Gombrowicz).
Babalibri and the return to independence
In 1999, co-edited with L’école des loisirsa large French publishing house specializing in children’s literature, created Babalibri, then handed over to the care of her daughter Francesca, presenting to the public titles that stand out for their iconographic richness, the immediacy of the texts and the ability to accompany girls and boys in their emotional, cognitive and social growth. Among the masters of the catalogue, Leo Lionni, Mario Ramos, Iela Mari, Arnold Lobel, Philippe Corentin and Susie Morgenstern.
In 2003 the Archinto brand became part of the Rizzoli – Rcs Libri group, adding poets and writers such as Sereni, Ungaretti, Saba, Montale, Remarque, Ortese, Sade, Capote, Fitzgerald, Ginsberg, Saroyan, Manguel and new series to the catalogue. A partnership that lasted until July 2015, when Rosellina Archinto reacquired its brand and catalogue, making the publishing house independent again.
Assignments and recognitions
In his commitment to culture and society, Archinto is also president of the Culture Commission of the Municipality of Milan (1990-1993), vice-president of the Board of Directors of the Carlo Felice Theater Foundation in Genoa (2003-2006), and also honorary president of the Association of Friends of the Ligurian Museums and Palazzo Ducale in Genoa, president of Milano Musica. His intense activity also includes the role of board member of the Accademia del Teatro alla Scala, of Comunità Nuova of Don Gino Rigoldi and on the Board of Directors of the Friends of Lalla Romano Association. For years he has been part of the juries of the Strega, Bagutta and Andersen – Baia delle Favole Awards. In 2010 she was awarded the Ambrogino d’oro and in 2015 she received the honor of Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur.
Babalibri’s greeting
For almost forty years, Leopoldo Pirelli’s companion, surrounded by her large family of five children and ten grandchildren, «Rosellina Archinto closed a life lived with extraordinary intensity and unshakeable trust in the written word, in the culture of reading. She published the books she believed in, the authors and the titles that fired her, moved by an infallible instinct, by a proud independence”, Babalibri greets her.