About Folio Society Books

The Folio Society was founded in 1947, with the intention of producing “editions of the world's great literature in a format worthy of the contents, at a price within the reach of everyman.”

We think they have succeeded. For more than half a century they have produced books of a consistently high standard that are a pleasure to handle and to read. Many collectors set out to own every book published since 1947; others have more modest aims, such as collecting the Folio Shakespeare (the sonnets are particularly popular) or every title by a favourite author.

The quality of the books is generally excellent. Some of the earliest were issued with conventional dust jackets, but from around the mid-1950s they usually came in slipcases, so even some of the oldest Folio Society books can still be found in excellent condition. Some bindings are particularly attractive — the occasional silk covers, on volumes like Colette's Chéri, are much sought after.

The illustrations have been distinctive too, if not always unqualified successes. Among the more distinguished artists are Salvador Dalí, Edward Ardizzone and Mervyn Peake. When the author and bookman Joseph Connolly wrote about the Folio Society for The Daily Telegraph, he rang us to talk about the books first, and was kind enough to give us a mention.

Collecting Folio Society Books

Folio Society collectors have a few things in common. One is that they look after their books: it is unusual to come across a tatty collection. Individual volumes can be worn, but it is usually the slipcase that takes the wear, and the books themselves are often in superb condition even after fifty years.

Some collectors never read their books, preferring a cheap paperback for reading and keeping their Folio copies pristine. Others do read them, though usually with care. It is generally obvious whether a book has been read: a read copy opens easily, while an unread one has a little tension in the spine the first time it is opened. One collector we know buys around a dozen at a time, then sells them back to us once he has read them. Unlike many modern books, Folio Society books can be read many times over, because they have high-quality sewn bindings — and they lie nicely open on a table for reference.

Collecting Areas

With around 1,500 titles published since 1947, plus numerous reprints and variations, collecting every Folio Society book is a daunting task — though we know of one or two collectors who have done it.

Less ambitious collectors might aim for the first 100 Folio books, most of which can be found at a reasonable cost. Others collect the presentation volume from each year, or uniform sets by particular authors. A highlight of the Folio Society's output is the Anthony Trollope series of the 1990s, which ran to forty-eight volumes and is one of their most popular sets. There have also been three matching sets of the sixteen Dickens novels, matching Conrad and Hardy novels, and numerous boxed sets of Jane Austen and the Brontës.

For non-fiction there is Gibbon's eight-volume Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Hodgkin's eight-volume Barbarian Invasions of the Roman Empire, and many other matching sets that can be built up over the years.

Other collectors follow particular illustrators. Virtually every Folio Society book is illustrated, many by the finest illustrators of their day. In the 1990s a series of fairy stories featured Arthur Rackham, W. Heath Robinson and Edmund Dulac. The Society has also commissioned outstanding work from contemporary artists, such as Charles Keeping for the Dickens novels and Francis Mosley for the Conrad series, and other major artists appear across many titles — Mervyn Peake, Val Biro, Quentin Blake, and even Salvador Dalí, who illustrated Shakespeare's As You Like It (1953).

Some Folio Society books stand out for one reason or another. As You Like It is one, with the 1953 version in its illustrated dust jacket particularly sought after. The 1977 Lord of the Rings set is very popular, as is Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy. Brave New World, in its silver cover, is a triumph of design, though not to everyone's taste. The Society has been imaginative with its bindings over the years, including the quirky Pather Panchali of 1971, bound in an open-weave cloth it described at the time as Japanese grass-paper.

Bibliographies

Over the years the Folio Society has produced several bibliographies, beginning with the slim Folio 21 in 1968, which celebrated twenty-one years of the Society, and culminating in Folio 60 in 2007: a comprehensive history of everything the Society has published, covering the many reprints and variations. It gives full bibliographic details — number of pages, binder, paper, illustrator, number of illustrations and more — and is a terrific source of information for any keen collector.

It is a major achievement. Although the Folio Society has been meticulous in recording each volume's year of publication and whether it is a reprint, the questions of “edition” and “impression” are hugely complicated. Many volumes were published both singly and in sets, and different impressions were sometimes grouped together to make up another set when too many had been printed. Folio 60 covers all of this in great detail.

You can look up every Folio Society book — by Folio number, title, author or year, with the full bibliographic entry for each — in our Folio Society bibliography.