The Edizioni Valdonega is a trademark of Stamperia Valdonega®. The Edizioni Valdonega publishing house has been focusing on topics such as the history of printing, publishing and design since the late eighties. Original material with a high cultural contribution is key to the Edizioni Valdonega publications and great attention to detail and search for unique material is always non-negotiable.

The high quality of the production is a reflection of the great care and skill of the craftsmen at Stamperia Valdonega.

The publishing House EDIZIONI VALDONEGA was born inside of the STAMPERIA VALDONEGA in order to make a contribution and to promote publications of Verona's cultural background. This was initially its publishing program.

During the first 30 years of its activity, it was rather occasional. Indeed, until 1976 only 15 titles were published, all concerning the history of the city.

From the end of the seventies, the publishing activity has been developed more and more. An important series, which Stamperia Valdonega had previously started for one of its own customers, was taken over so that it could be completed. It is Niccolò Machiavelli - Tutte le Opere (The complete works), 11 volumes, 500 numbered copies, one of the best editions published in the second half of the century. Its value depends on the contents (the are some sections containing unpublished texts) and on the graphic aspect (several woodblock illustrations by Italo Zetti and Anna Bramanti, Magnani untrimmed watermarked paper and real leather binding by Giovanni De Stefanis).

Besides this series, the EDIZIONI VALDONEGA published the Bibliografia Machiavelliana (Machiavelli's bibliography), a reference book for historians, students, booksellers and antiquarians, providing a wealth of bibliographic information on the editions of Machiavelli's works that appeared between 1506 and the early 1900's.

In 1977 the founder of the STAMPERIA VALDONEGA passed away and, to acknowledge his activity, his son Martino published The Officina Bodoni - An account of the Work of a Hand Press 1923-1977 (there is also a German and an Italian edition), with an introduction by Hans Schmoller and descriptions by Giovanni Mardersteig of the hand press-printed works between 1923 and 1977. This book is the first of a series concerning typography and publishing, printed by EDIZIONI VALDONEGA in the last years.

The passion for book quality; the contacts with experts working in the same field, both Italian and foreign, along with the availability of proper machines and qualified skilled workers, induced the publishing house to focus more interest on Books about books.

In co-edition with the Adelphi publishing house, an interesting book was published in Italian trranslation L'Autore e il suo editore (The author and his publisher) by Sigfried Unseld, director of the publishing houses Surkamp and Insel; the history and the vicissitudes of authors such as Walzer, Rilke, Brecht and Hesse.

In 1989 on the occasion of an exhibition, Giovanni Mardersteig - Stampatore, editore, umanista, (G.M. printer, publisher and humanist) was published and immediately translated into German for there was a similar exhibition which opened in Mainz, Germany in July 1990.

The same year, a previously unpublished study by Stanley Morison came out: Early Italian Writing Books: Renaissance to Baroque, an important contribution to the history of calligraphy edited by Nicolas Barker.

After many years of research and hard work, the facsimile of the single existing work printed by G.B. Bodoni as a gift to Napoleon and Maria Luigia, the Cimelio tipografico-pittorico di G.B. Bodoni was published. This edition is fascinating for a number of reasons: the typeface (the last printed while he was alive) and for its delicate and colorful engravings. It represents one of the best production pieces from the publishing house. There is an Italian and an English edition.

In 1991 the Edizioni Valdonega published the first Italian monograph about Herman Zapf, calligrapher, printing and digital type designer, well-known all over the world. Besides the biographical texts, the volume contains more than one hundred pages with calligraphic examples, sketches and samples by Zapf.
In the meantime the interest in arts was not overlooked: in 1983 the great volume Lo splendore della Verona affrescata (The frescos adorning the buildings in Verona) appeared, with the wonderful plates by P. Nanin and text by Nino Cenni and G. Schweikhart. This work was considered the best homage the Publishing House paid to its own town.

In 1988, four hundred years after Paolo Veronese's death, a rich catalogue was published with the co-operation of the Museo di Castelvecchio of Verona: Veronese e Verona. It has been reprinted several times because of the great success of the exhibition and of the studies in the catalogue.

In 1989, thanks to a generous private grant, the three tomes work by the bishop Giberti, La riforma pretridentina della diocesi di Verona, were published. A fundamental text for the Catholic pastoral history before the Council of Trent.
In the same year, 1989, the first edition of the Biennial of Premio Feliciano and related symposium "La qualità nella produzione del libro" was organized, with international speakers - experts such as H. Zapf, E. Musumeci, L. Casagrande, A. Vigevani, C. Morrow. Edizioni Valdonega published the Proceedings both in Italian and in English. The contents are especially interesting for people who are involved in book quality, such as bibliophiles, technicians, designers and authors.

In 1992, after the second edition of the Premio Feliciano, the Proceedings 1991 was published, the speakers were Martino Mardersteig, René Kerfante, Pietro Chasseur, Virginio Bettini, Nicolas Barker, Giuseppe Fedrigoni.

In 1994, after the third edition of the Premio Feliciano and of the Symposium the Proceedings 1993 came out, with texts by Giuseppe Fontana, Max Caflish, Cynthia Hollandsworth, Sandro Ambrosi, Nicolas Barker. The same year a festschrift for Anthony Hobson appeared.

In 1996, after the fourth edition of the Premio Feliciano, the Proceedings 1995, with the text of Mario Tommasini, Anthony Hobson, Sabastiano Castiglioni, Aldo Colonetti, Martin Antonetti and Franco Tatò, was published.

Between 1996 and 2003 some festschrift books in Italian like Operosa Parva in honour of Gianni Antonini and Sull'Ottocento with texts by Luigi Baldacci saw the light.

Starting in 2002 the publishing house has been working on a wonderful facsimile of an incunable of a hand-painted Herbarium, the first printed in the Veneto region. The facsimile will be published together with a commentary on which several students and experts are working. The complete work is expected to appear in autumn 2006.

The publishing house is also working on another project about Italian calligraphy. Further details about this will soon be made available.

The publishing house wants to distinguish itself by its elegant and classic capability which respects the best typographic tradition based on concepts often ignored, such as originality and value of the texts, accuracy to their original versions, readability, design proportions and selection of materials.