At right: Persephone’s Mariana, Bloomsbury Group’s Let’s Kill Uncle
, NYRB’s A High Wind in Jamaica
.
When I shop for books, I’m normally more interested in bargains than beauty (give me a yellowed $1 paperback over a pristine $25 hardcover any day). However, some books are special. Certain books are so beautifully designed, and the content within so unusual, that they are precious objects, functional artwork, like Van Cleef & Arpels earrings or gold filigree fountain pens.
Here, then, is a series honoring those books and their publishers. I will divide the series into three parts:
Links added as posts go up.
FORGOTTEN CLASSICS
- Persephone Books
- The Bloomsbury Group
- The New York Review of Books Classics & Children’s Collection
- Penguin’s Great Food series
- Sourcebooks reissues of Georgette Heyer’s work
- Virago Modern Classics (website link)
- Melville House’s Neversink Library (website link)
BOOKS IN TRANSLATION
- Europa Editions
- Vertical Press
- The New York Review of Books Classics
POPULAR CLASSICS
- Coralie Bickford Smith’s work
- Penguin’s Great Ideas series
- Folio Collection
- Annotated Classics
- Jillian Tamaki’s work
What have I forgotten?