La vita felice
Reading as a recipe for well-being: this is the intuition of Gerardo Mastrullo, a Milanese publisher specializing in the rediscovery of little-known authors and texts capable of enlightening us in our daily lives.
More than thirty years of “Vita Felice” for the publishing house of Gerardo Mastrullo, tireless protagonist of the small publishers in Milan. A background as a librarian and bookseller, Mastrullo did not start from the desire to become a publisher, but rather from a brand made by an engraver friend and from acquaintance with Alda Merini. It was precisely with the writings of the poetess from the Navigli that the activity got underway in 1992 and has now become the archetype and leader of a certain small elegant publishing house that feeds on care for books and trouvailles, thanks to a particular attention to graphic quality, the accuracy of the translations, the value of the prefaces and editorships. From Robert Louis Stevenson to Arthur Schopenhauer to Vasco Pratolini, and then poetry, revival of fourteenth-century chronicles, Greek and Latin classics even among the lesser known. The vocation is above all the rediscovery of the forgotten, of the removed, of the finished on the sly such as Ambrogio Bazzero, Guido da Verona, Ada Negri, Umberto Notari, published in various brands such as BookTime, Otto/Novecento and Il Ponte. As Seneca wrote in De vita beata: “A happy life is therefore that which accords with its nature, and which can be achieved only if the spirit is healthy and in perpetual possession of this health”.