About the Folio Society

I've been interested in the Folio Society since back in the day when I subscribed to the now long dead Punch magazine and it carried adverts for the society, which was then a book club.

Book clubs seem to have gone out of fashion now but they were certainly a thing when I was growing up and I was a member of The Softback Preview (TSP) for a while in the eighties. TSP sold paperback editions of hardback reference works, and hence were cheaper than the originals, and I still have quite a few of those lurking in my collection.

The Folio Society was, and indeed still is, very much the opposite: they sell hardbacks, and not ordinary hardbacks either. Rather than coming with a flyleaf they come in a cardboard slip case. They're what are called "fine press" editions and they are of fiction and non-fiction books, poetry, and children's titles. They feature specially designed bindings and include artist-commissioned illustrations (most often in fiction titles) or researched artworks and photographs (in non-fiction titles).

Although they looked lovely in the adverts they weren't cheap and back in the eighties the business model, as with a lot of book clubs, was that you committed to buy a book a book off them at regular intervals and I couldn't afford that so I never signed up.

It turns out that things have moved on however and from the original membership commitment where you had to buy four books per year in 2011 they allowed anyone to purchase from the Folio Society list without committing to membership. In 2016 the company ended its membership-based structure and Folio editions are just available to purchase online.

The consequences of all this are interesting. Go to their web site today and you will find a catalogue of books whose prices start at around £50 but if you go onto eBay you will find a host of Folio editions for sale, often at very low prices. They are also, in my experience, usually in very good condition. Given the dates of publication most of these seem to go back to the book club days and often they look unread and sometimes they are still in their original plastic covers so have clearly never even been opened.

As a result I've now started buying Folio Society books, so let me talk about a few, why I like them, and how I choose them.

I'm not doing this chronologically but a book I bought late last year was "The Folio Book of Days" which I talked about in the first post in this blog. This is one of their own creations rather than being a re-print of a previously published book and it's a gorgeous thing to look at.

As you can see the slip case is fully printed (this varies by the way, many slip cases are plain colours) and the spine is printed in gold. The front cover also includes what I think is an astrolabe and the moon, both also in gold.

Inside there's the colophon and I just had to quote part of that here as I think it's just adorable and says everything about the pride they take in their creations:

SET IN EHRHARDT AT THE FOLIO SOCIETY.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT BATH PRESS
COLOURBOOKS, GLASGOW, ON FINEBLADE
SMOOTH PAPER. BOUND AT THE BATH
PRESS, BATH, IN BUCKRAM BLOCKED
WITH A DESIGN BY DAVID ECCLES.

Original works like this are one sort of book which I'm now buying but another is Folio Society editions of works which I already own and love.

What started me off down this road is that I've long been a fan of the Mapp and Lucia series of books by EF Benson (and, for a while, I was a member of the Tilling Society and one year I went to their annual gathering in Rye). I have all six books in paperback and also a selection of later works featuring the same characters by other authors ... but then I came across all six volumes from the Folio Society in one slip case and I just had to have them.

It's a lovely edition with the printed slip case as you can see and each volume includes illustrations by Natacha Ledwidge which were commissioned by the Society for their edition. Brian Masters also provides an introduction to the series before the start of "Queen Lucia".

I then had a similar experience with "I Capture the Castle" by Dodie Smith. I bought a cheap paperback copy of this book from eBay on a whim after it was recommended by Chantal Joffe on an episode of A Good Read on BBC R4 but I enjoyed it so much that I bought a pristine edition published by Folio as a reward to myself for my year of reading because I wanted to own a better copy.

Since then I often find myself browsing via eBay. In addition to the books already mentioned I currently own (listed in order purchased - thus is the advantage of having a database):

• "1066 And All That" by WG Sellar & RJ Yeatman - I have a very elderly copy of this in paperback from when I was doing O level History and our teacher, Mrs Lashley, used to complete any section of the Tudors and Stuarts by then reading us out the corresponding part from this book. It's a lot funnier if the real history is fresh in your mind.

"Mapping the World" by Peter Whitfield - this a lovely book which, for a map nerd like me, is a pleasure to read. It's also another example of how Folio work. The book is based on a book originally published in 1998 by The British Library. Folio bought the rights and Whitfield added some new material for this edition published in 2000, which also comes with a gorgeous slip case.

• "Pick of Punch" and "More Pick of Punch" edited by Miles Kingston - some time I'll probably do a post about Pick of Punch annuals as I collect those the old fashioned way by browsing in bookshops, but these two were Folio's own collections. The first picks articles from back in the days when I was reading Punch magazine, and it's a good read. The second goes back to the beginnings of the magazine and, in truth, I've found it a struggle so far and haven't finished it.
• "Colour" by Victoria Finlay - I bought this as she seemed to have some interesting things to say about colour which, as a web designer, I thought would be interesting but I confess I've not started it yet.
• "The Folio Book of Humorous Anecdotes" - also still in my tsundoku.
• "Crime Stories from the 'Strand'", "Adventure Stories from the 'Strand'", and "Short Stories from the 'Strand'" - three more collections edited by Folio, with an introduction to each volume and illustrations at the start of each story by David Eccles. I originally bought these because of the Sherlock Holmes connection. I've enjoyed the first and am close to finishing the second, which includes a Conan-Doyle story but of Brigadier Gerard, not Holmes, so that was something new. Also a story by Richmal Crompton, when she was taking some time off from her Just William books.
• "Alice in Wonderland", "Through the Looking Glass", "Complete Nonsense", and "Utter Nonsense" - all by Lewis Carroll. The first two you will no doubt of heard of and for me they bring back memories of reading Martin Gardner's "The Annotated Alice" as a nerdy young mathematician (and I do recommend by the way if you're similarly inclined). The second two I only bought as the four came as a bundle but apparently one of them includes ‘The Hunting of the Snark’, so I will delve into those when I've got the time.

Which brings me neatly on to my big problem as a book lover which I am currently buying faster than I'm reading, which is a worry, but Folio Books are, like Persephone Books, such a pleasure to own, let alone to read.