Vamba

Luigi Bertelli (19 March 1860 - 27 November 1920), best known as Vamba, was an Italian writer, illustrator and journalist.

Born in Florence, having completed his studies Bertelli became a railway employer, working first in Rimini and later in Foggia. He later started collaborating with the Roman newspaper Capitan Fracassa and in 1884 he was officially employed as a journalist and caricaturist. He soon adopted the pseudonym "Vamba", named after the clown of Walter Scott's Ivanhoe. After collaborating with several newspapers, in 1890 he founded and directed L'O di Giotto, a newspaper close to the radical political positions of Felice Cavallotti, and in 1901 he co-founded the regional newspaper Il Bruscolo. Best known as a children's author, in 1893 Vamba wrote his first pedagogical novel, Ciondolino, and in 1906 he founded and directed until 1911 the nonconformist children magazine Il giornalino della Domenica. Here, he released in sequential installments his best known novel, Il Giornalino di Gian Burrasca, the pedagogical and humorous story of a lively 9 year old. In the summer of 1920 he fell ill, dying on 27 November 1920.

A funerary monument made by the sculptor Libero Andreotti was inaugurated in Florence on 14 January 1923.