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From the origins to the first edition of the Engineer's Manual

Often around the figure of the founder of a dynasty there is an aura of legend that the years contribute to thicken. And in fact, the youth of Ulrico Hoepli, born in 1847 in Tuttwil, a small town in Switzerland, is quite legendary. At the age of 15, the very young Ulrico begins a book apprenticeship that takes him to Zurich, Mainz, Trieste, Breslau and finally to Cairo where he reorganizes a library fund of the kedive of Egypt.
He arrives in Milan on the day of Sant'Ambrogio (7 December) in 1870. Here he finds the bookshop of Theodor Laengner, located in the Galleria De Cristoforis, in the heart of the city. Already in 1871, alongside his book activity, he published a French grammar by GS Martin, the first title of the Ulrico Hoepli Book Publishing House. After a start with some uncertainty, already in 1875 Hoepli laid the foundations of his publishing success by publishing the Handbook of the dyer by R. Lepetit, a title that opens the famous series of manuals. An important meeting for the young Hoepli is that with Giuseppe Colombo, the most illustrious theoretician of Lombard industrialization, whose Manual of the Engineer, a long-seller of the publishing house (now in its eighty-fourth edition), published in 1877. Colombo encourages the propensity for technical and scientific publishing which will become, within a few years, the main feature of the Hoeplian catalog. Milan, then the nascent capital of modern Italy, proved to be a suitable place to establish an editorial activity due to its connective tissue of entrepreneurial initiatives, scientific laboratories, intellectual ferments. Ulrico Hoepli becomes one of its most prominent citizens, providing, through the widespread dissemination of his manuals throughout the Kingdom of Italy, a unique and irreplaceable educational tool.

The years of growth: the catalog exceeds 2000 titles

It is not easy to know precisely how many manuals have been published overall, but the figure exceeds 2000 titles, the topics touch on numerous aspects of human knowledge with a decisive inclination towards technique, arts and crafts. There is no shortage of curious topics such as parapsychology, graphology (author Cesare Lombroso), palmistry and tattoo, proof of Hoepli's openness to fields also alien to the 'positivist' spirit of the time.
Many manuals become real best-sellers: fishing in the Hoeplian catalog we can cite the principles of drawing and the styles of ornament (1882) by Camillo Boito, now in its seventh edition in 1925, Apicoltura (1880) by Giovanni Canestrini which reaches its fourteenth edition in 1940, Practical guide of the mechanical turner (1893) by Salvatore Dinaro, now in its 10th edition in 1918. But there are really many manuals that know new editions and updates.
Other strands are also added gradually to enrich Hoepl's vast production: children's books, such as the illustrated fairy tales by Andersen and the Grimm brothers (now in a renewed edition), Italian literature with a series of classics and many Dante initiatives that hinge on the Divine Comedy in the commentary by GA Scartazzini, the reference books and numerous dictionaries, the history of art with the monumental History of Italian Art (1901-1941) by Adolfo Venturi and the monographs of his son Lionello and by Pietro Toesca, travel books (to remember at least the reportages by Barzini, the adventures at the Polo del Duca degli Abruzzi, Il Monte Cervino by Guido Rey), women's magazines and children's magazines. The bookshop, to which the antiques sector has been added since 1881, becomes the point of reference for high society, intellectuals and the world of professions. In the period preceding the Great War, the most prestigious initiatives include: the edition illustrated by Gaetano Previati of I Promessi sposi (1897-1899) and the reproduction of the Codex Atlanticus by Leonardo da Vinci (1894-1904).
In those years, the Publishing House and the Bookstore employed about thirty people, rather few if you consider that in some years the 100 titles between novelties and new editions were abundantly exceeded.

From the First World War to the last years of the founder

With the First World War, publishing production slowed down also due to decreased foreign trade.
When Ulrico Hoepli celebrates half a century of publishing life in 1921, the publishing house is among the main ones in Italy and irreplaceable in the diffusion of technical-scientific culture in a country that has rapidly modernized, at least in the North. In the last years of his life, the now elderly patriarch prepares the succession by entrusting the publishing house to his nephews Carlo Hoepli (1879-1972) and Erardo Aeschlimann (1897-1972), the first will follow the editorial part, the second the antiquarian bookshop, one of the major in Europe of the time. Also of importance, in 1930, was the donation to the city of Milan of the Planetarium which is located in the Giardini di Porta Venezia.
The editorial part continues to be characterized by the technical-scientific production which is flanked by prestigious works such as the Three Centuries of Milanese Life (1927) by Bertarelli and Monti or the reproduction of the Virgilian Code of the Ambrosiana that belonged to Petrarch.
Ulrico Hoepli died in January 1935, at the age of 88, remaining at the work table until the end.

From the sixties to the fifth Hoepli generation

The company maintains family characteristics and from the 60s the son of Ulrico (1906 - 2003) Ulrico Carlo (1935) started working in the publishing house.

In the 1970s, school publishing developed and in the 1980s new sectors such as information technology and economics, testifying to the close contact that the publishing house has, since its origin, with changes in society and of the world of work.

In the 80s and 90s the Ulrico Hoepli International Bookshop grew up to 6 floors, becoming one of the most important and well-stocked bookstores in Europe, a reference point for the city of Milan, with over 175,000 titles present.

Today the bookshop and the publishing house are carried on by the fifth generation of Hoepli who continues the founder's commitment in the book and publishing field, with a catalog oriented towards technique, manuals, school and university publishing and dictionaries and languages .
Online sales have also been active since 2001, offering all readers the opportunity to use the Hoepli bookshop in Milan 24 / 24h!