Which books would you like to see as Folio volumes? (4)

Perhaps FS should consider a set for Philip Roth. After all he won two British awards (in 2001 and 2005, the W. H. Smith Literary Award). Including Portnoy's Complaint with two other of his works (perhaps the ones getting the British Awards, The Human Stain and The Plot Against America) might mitigate the shock...

I'd like to see some H. Rider Haggard. I just looked though and it seems that they have published him previously.

How about some Sir Walter Scott? He was the most popular author in England in the early 1800s.
As far as I am aware, the FS has not published any of his works since 1985 when they did one novel (Bride of'Lammermoor).

> 3
Don't forget about the beautiful edition of Waverley was published in the last couple of years. I bought it despite having three other editions because the design/illustrations were outstanding. I also have the Bride of Lammermoor. But given how popular and prolific Sir Walter Scott was, your point is well taken that he is rather underrepresented in the Folio catalogue.

>3 wcarter:,4

And also don't forget Rob Roy, pulished by FS in 2001. But I do tend to agree that Scott is under-represented given how much attention FS has given to other nineteenth century literature. Whilst he may not be as popular these days, during the pre-Victorian Romantice period he was the most regarded literary figure of the day, and much more popular than Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, Byron et al.

Not all Scott's work has stood the test of time, but he remains a favourite of mine. I would be delighted to see FS editions of Heart of Midlothian, Ivanhoe, Redgauntlet and Lady of the Lake in particular.

EDIT: typos

...and on a similar theme, if we move forward from the Romantics to the Victorians, I think Thackeray warrants more attention.

Other Victorians have been excellently represented, with the complete novels of George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Trollope, Dickens and Hardy. Robert Louis Stevenson has been well covered too. Even Wilkie Collins has a four book box set (although I wish they would publish Armadale and No Name as single volume editions as I already have the other two in FS single volume editions).

Of Thackeray's novels, we have only had Vanity Fair and Henry Esmond, with the latter not published since 1950 (I don't have Folio 60 to hand but in the dim and distant past I seem to recollect The Ring and the Rose may also have been published, but again not for many many years). I have mentioned Barry Lyndon on my wish list here before. I would also like to see Pendennis and The Virginians as FS editions, and Esmond re-issued. But above all, Barry Lyndon (please please FS).

Whilst little remembered these days, Marryat's Mr Midshipman Easy and William Harrison Ainsworth's Rookwood (or Windsor Castle or Old St Paul's) would help round out FS's Victoriana. These were important books of the time, even if little known now.

> 6

Couldn't agree more. All of Thackeray's stuff outside of Vanity Fair always gets ignored by publishers, and the result is that nobody has read any of them!

Idylls of the King by Tennyson, preferably with the art work of Gustave Dore.

NO FURTHER NEW BOOKS FOR THE NEXT THREE YEARS PLEASE SO I CAN SEE OVER MY READING PILE.

> 10
cronshaw, I'm afraid you must still be an amateur if your TBR pile is only three years high. Mine is more like thirty! :-)

>11 UK_History_Fan: - I can probably top that, but it would be too depressing to calculate

>10 cronshaw:,11,12 The solution is to take your minds off it by buying some new books:-)

> 13 - Well said, I'll have to do that forthwith. In fact, I have a Folio book I bought from Abe Books on the way!

>11 UK_History_Fan: Oops, I've just realised my optimistic three year horizon means a reading rate of four books a week, gasp. So I'd better quit LT, cut down to one meal a day, order groceries on line, forget physical exercise, dump my friends (my Folios will substitute - 'Yes, that slipcase fits you divinely' etc.) and ignore all seductive mail from FS :(

May we all have long lives ahead of us still, with good eyesight and mental acumen!

>17 UK_History_Fan: - Well, at least my eyesight hasn't departed me!

I'm really hoping FS continues their Turgenev "series". He's my favourite Russian author. I know they've published quite a lot of Turgenev in the distant past but I'd love to see his more obscure ones, maybe Rudin or Home of the Gentry, get the lovely First Love / On the Eve treatment.

In view of the recent publication of Remarque, Junger and Manning, I would particularly like to see Folio bring out an edition of In Parenthesis by David Jones. I can only imagine they would do a wonderful job with this unique Great War text. It's a book that deserves wider recognition that an FS edition could provide.

Fully illustrated editions of Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them and/or Quidditch Through the Ages.

I tweeted FS to suggest In Parenthesis and see if it was a possible future publication, and was delighted to receive a reply saying the book is "under strong consideration" for 2014 membership year. Wonderful news! I really hope this comes about now.

>23 ian_curtin:

Thanks, given that I'm currently reading the FS edition of the Manning, I couldn't agree more with your recommendation of Jones's In Parenthesis. And how about Ford Maddox Ford's World War One tetrology, Parade's End?

>24 podaniel:
Fine suggestion. I have the Penguin edition of Parade's End, as yet unread alas. My only caveat would be that Jones's book is more in need of "rescuing" from relative (and undeserved) obscurity, whereas Ford's opus has received huge attention recently.

>25 ian_curtin:

I agree--I'd just like to see Parade's End in the queue too (maybe for 2015?).

>23 ian_curtin: etc

Well, since 2014 is going to be the centenary of WW1, I think we can expect quite a lot of books related to that catastrophic event. I am curious to see which non-fiction ones will be resurrected. Any suggestions?

>27 groeng: - Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory?

Murakami, Oe, Ogawa, Kawabata, Mishima, to pick from a selection of a 'genre' I like.

> 30

FS publishing Mishima would be a "TAKE MY MONEY NOW" situation indeed. Getting some visuals of a Sea of Fertility box set...can you imagine?

Agreed. The lack of Dostoevsky from FS is rather disappointing... Notes, the Brothers, Crime and Punishment and the Idiot really need the FS treatment.

Continuing the recent sci fi releases, I would like to see Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Another book I would love to see but doubt will ever be considered is Junky by Burroughs

>32 pattern-skies: FS have published The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment and The Idiot. The following thread includes a list of titles by Russian authors published by FS.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/142814

As I said in that thread, I do agree that some of these have not been printed for decades so should be considered for reprint (as happened with Anna Karenina this membership year).

>33 Conte_Mosca: My FS copy of The Brothers Karamazov was published in 2008.

I hope to see ‘The Earth’ by Emile Zola, to replace my tattered Penguin paperback copy. Although that is probably too much to hope for as they have already published the more popular ‘Nana’ and ‘Germinal’

>34 GoFurther: Well spotted, I will update the list. I had forgotten FS had reprinted in a binding to match the 1997 Russian author publications (War and Peace, Crime and Punishment and Soctor Zhivago)

Edited: I too have more Zola on my wishlist. Les Trois Villes especially, but also Therese Racquin, L'Assommoir and La Bete Humaine. Zola's brand of naturalism is not that popular these days, but I can live in hope...

Dick Davis' translation of the Shahnameh with illustrations from Shah Tahmasp's edition,

Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko

I would still like the Green Knowe books, and as someone else said a while ago a set of all the Pratchetts would bed amazing. But actually, having finally seen the 'Under Milk Wood' that I've been wanting for ages, my first request would be for a new version of this with more magical illustrations that would better suit a poem I absolutely love.

-34

A set of 5 Zola books would be a snazzy thing for them to offer.

It's difficult to understand why they have not published any Samuel Butler, who seems the type of author they often publish. The Way of All Flesh and Erewhon are two of my favorites!

Since Folio Society regularly publishes works of historical importance, I would love to see a Folio regular or limited edition of the medieval classic Piers Plowman as well as a fine multi-volume treatment with appropriate woodcuts of Foxe's Book of Martyrs.

>40 UK_History_Fan: I second this.

I have the Grabhorn-Hoyem Pearl, but I'd still love a copy of Piers Plowman as well.

And FS, please don't abridge Foxe's Book of Martyrs!!!

> 41
Amen to that! No abridgements!

I would love to see some Gene Wolfe and his Book of the New Sun novels.

> 41, 42

Never mind the abridgements - should Piers Plowman be Text A, B, or C (or even Z)?!!

>44 boldface:

Simple. FS can - and should! - print an edition with all the versions!

It might not appeal to everyone but I, for one, would be over the moon.

>44 boldface: B text for me! I too would like to see Piers Plowman. I love early English poetry (Middle English through to early modern English).

>45 scholasticus: I suspect that is highly unlikely to happen. FS tends not to do Variorum editions - thankfully! I know such editions will appeal to some but it also seriously compresses the market to mainly the highly committed scholar. Much as I would love to see an edition of Piers Plowman, I don't want to pay twice as much for a larger edition with multiple variant texts. Piers Plowman is likely to appeal to a relatively small group anyway - if they do publish it, it would have to appeal to the widest group possible (with price a considerable factor for the "curious" rather than the "committed").

EDIT: rephrased for clarity

I must admit that I would have no interest in Piers Plowman.

But I do wonder why Folio has never published Alan Paton's Cry, the Beloved Country.

As an archaeology and travel enthusiast, I would welcome a FS edition of nineteenth-century explorer John Lloyd Stephens book ‘Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan’ I can just picture a stunning FS edition, complete with illustrations by Fredrick Catherwood.

I received my Christmas card from FS yesterday, which was very nice. Included with the card was a pack of 10 postcards, each with an illustration from a recent FS publication. Of most interest was an illustration I didn't recognise. On checking the back I see it has a 2013 copyright, and is an illustration for A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. So now we know at least one of the publications coming our way next year.

If anyone is interested, the illustrator is David Hughes.

I think The Kalevala would be a good addition to the Myths & Legends series.
Seems hard to find in any edition.

I second Stephens and Catherwood, but would really also like to see a full-scale folio reproduction of the Daniells' Oriental Scenery. They included parts in their octavo 'Voyage Around the World'. If FS can do Japan, why not India and the Americas, too?

I would love to see Folio put out a copy of "The Great Escape" by Paul Brickhill.

Also "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy, and Dante's "Divine Comedy" (in a Limited Edition!).

I would also love to see the Religion/Philosophy section expand with some more religious texts and classic theological and philosophical works. Personally, I would love to see a copy of Jurgen Moltmann's "Theology of Hope"; it impacted Christendom greatly during the 20th century (easily one of the most influential Christian theological works of the modern era). A famous Jewish text would be appreciated too (maybe Maimonides "Guide for the Perplexed" or his "Commentary on the Mishna"). The I Ching would also be great to see.

My nominations for a couple of SAfrican authors would be
Alan Paton , Cry the Beloved Country
Percy Fitzpatrick , Jock of the Bushveld
Olive Schriener , Story of an African Farm
an early Nadine Gordimer The Lying Days
Sol Plaatjes Mhudi or Native Life in South Africa
Eskia Mpahele Down Second Avenue
And Ivan Vladislavic ... Any one of his early works.. Though I love Portrait with Keys
Of course there are others but where to start

I have just been reading The World of Henry Lawson (Australiana) and his short stories still have a mythic appeal re the early outback . Would go well with My Brilliant Career (Miles Franklin) .

FS has done Commando by Denys Reitz (-a great Boer war book and first and best in Reitz' autobiographical trilogy) .

Sir Walter Raleigh's "History of the World." A one-volume abridgment with lavish illustrations.

Call me crazy, but I'd love a Folio set of Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. Even though it's a graphic novel,its breadth and depth would really lend itself to the FS treatment, especially the bindings, I think.

>55 scholasticus: Have you checked out Vertigo's Absolute Sandman series?

>56 kdweber: I own it. :) Amazing set, but I daresay it would pale compared to a FS edition.

> 58

Not crazy at all. I've been campaigning for a long time for FS treatment of pictoliterature. Neil Gaiman's Sandman series would be an excellent place to start. So you have my support.

>57 scholasticus:, 58

Crazy or not, I suspect there is more chance of FS publishing my 2013 Microsoft Outlook schedule than of them ever publishing the Sandman graphic novels.

In the unlikely event they ever do explore the graphic novel, I suspect they are less likely to go with titles from the fantasy/sci-fi/superhero genre. More likely (but in my view still very highly unlikely) would be titles such as Joe Sacco's Palestine or Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis.

Don't get me wrong. I am not personally sniffy about graphic novels. I own many of the classics myself, including some of the Sandman titles (and indeed most of Gaiman's wider non-graphic novel "oeuvre"). I just don't think this is, or ever will be, FS territory. And where there is a market for good quality hardcover versions of graphic novels, I also suspect that this need is already being met, as in the Absolute Sandman volumes. I am not sure what FS would add. Surely not leather or buckram bindings, and clearly not newly commissioned illustrations.

As has happened with my predictions before, I now fully expect to be proved wrong, with FS announcing tomorrow a luxury limited edition of Alan Moore's Lost Girls, bound in Nigerian Goatskin in a double elephant folio, with an exclusive introduction by Germaine Greer and never-before-published uncensored illustrations!

EDIT: Edited to add that FS do ever decide to tip their toes in these particular waters, my choice of starting point would be The Complete Maus (i.e. volumes 1 and 2) by Art Spiegelman.

> 59

Your points are well taken, Michael, but alas, there's a quixotic strain in me that makes me hope for a day when FS will mend its ways.

> 60 Don't take any notice of a word I say though Antonio. I also confidently predicted that FS would never publish Beatrix Potter. Indeed I was so confident that was a rubicon that would never be crossed (where would it end? Spot the Dog? Peepo? Each Peach Pear Plum?) that I swore I would eat my 1878 edition of Leigh Hunt's Autobiography if it ever happened, a promise I have to confess I have not yet fulfilled...

I am somewhat puzzled by the terms ‘pictoliterature’ and ‘graphic novels’ are you by any chance referring to comic books?

> 62 Spiderman is a comic book. It is not an appropriate term for titles referenced such as Maus, Palestine or Persepolis which are (to steal from Wiki) narratives conveyed through sequential art (but not necessarily traditional comics format).

But Sandman? Yes, that to me is unarguably a comic book. I say unarguably, because that is what the publisher, Vertigo Comics, calls it. On their own website they refer to it as "the most praised comic series in the history of the medium".

That said, the term Graphic Novel is not strictly defined and is often used to reference more traditional comic books collected together in a single volume covering a single story arc. Or in other words, comics may become graphic novels but a graphic novel is not necessarily a comic book.

> 62

You bring up a subject fraught with pitfalls. There is little agreement as to the exact definitions and meanings since every term, without clarification, has numerous exceptions. Most people who follow the subject of graphic sequential narration will put forward one or more examples to disprove a given definition. That said, what is common to all is the avowed purpose of the author/artist to depict the development of a story through images. The images have to be taken in the widest possible way since the method and style of the art (as distinguished from the written word) vary a great deal. Common to nearly all stories told in this manner is a combination of written word and accompanying picture. But the written word is not essential, there are wordless or silent narratives also.

Historians of the medium have favourite beginnings for the medium. Starting with drawings on a cave wall, to the latest sleek paper pages of superhero goings on, through the hieroglyphics on Egyptian obelisks and the Bayeaux tapestry, the need to tell a story by using pictures has been identified as one feature of the human mind. The historical record becomes muddled when some claim that there is no real presence of the medium until the middle 19th century with the development of fast printing methods, press cartoons, caricatures and the introduction of structured layouts and "balloons," i.e. the text inserted within an outline pointing to the speaker.

For anyone who follows the succinct remarks given above, grossly inadequate as they are, the development of the medium is fascinating and has gone through several upheavals. When 'comics' were presented as a lurid subclass of communication, a form of cultural product intended for children and printed on cheap paper, perhaps the inevitable result was that 'comics' came to be considered as a threat to society and an encouragement for juvenile delinquency (dixit Dr. Wertham in the fifties, last century). 'Comics' had become big business and millions of copies were distributed. The campaign against them (with burning of comic books in school yards) nearly did away with the form.

Many changes have gradually taken place since then all over the world, mostly for the better and for a greater understanding of the medium. Let's just point out that comics studies have entered the academic world and that institutions of higher learning are paying increasing attention to historical development, critical analyses, trends and authors/artists.

So, what are these people dealing with? Comics, graphic novels, pictoliterature? Well, all of them because they are all part of the same method of using a graphic depiction together with (or sometimes in absence of) the written word. It could be said that 'graphic novels' deal with weightier, more serious subjects, that they are intended for adults and that the conventions of the story bear closer relationship to what otherwise would be called literature. 'Pictoliterature' combines both ideas.

In short, no general term has been found yet to properly define the medium. The best way, perhaps, to gain insights is to peruse the current works with an open mind so that a wonderful experience is opened to the reader.

>64 drasvola: Very nicely put. I doff my hat to you sir :-)

I can remember when I first saw the term "graphic novel", back in the early 80s. Back then, it meant the following:
- Published by Marvel or DC, or one of the new independents. A term only used by US comic publishers, in any case, and essentially a marketing term.
- A stand alone story of approximately 60 pages.
- Either a one-off or involving existing characters (who were almost always superheroes).
- Printed to a bigger page size than the monthly "newsstand" comic book (but about the same page size as a UK weekly comic).
- Better quality (glossy) paper. Reproduction of art notionally better than the newsstand monthly comics.
- However if colour added to black and white art at the press stage, the result could be unpleasantly garish compared to the oil-based colours of newsstand comics.
- Stories not subject to the industry self-censorship of the Comics Code Authority.

Non-superhero, confessional or autobiographical comics were around, but were pretty much restricted to "the Underground scene" - a rather unfashionable '60s hippyish thing, and under the radar (although the association of fanzines and self-publishing with Punk gave a second generation of such cartoonists - that's generally how they'd be described at the time - a push in the late '70s-'80s). But, I mustn't be too disparaging - it's a side effect of thinking back 30+ years to the teenager I was - because Maus started life in an Underground comic.

The industry changed because the demographic of their customers changed. Newsstand sales became less important and sales through dedicated comic shops increased. This encouraged the comic companies to target this older demographic with monthly titles that - like the graphic novels (and the black and white newsstand magazines they'd published in the '70s) - did not seek the approval of the Comics Code Authority.

Batman: the Dark Knight was originally published in 4 issues (I think they were supposed to be monthly - I do remember that the deadlines slipped and I got very impatient). Watchman was published in 12 issues over the course of a year. Both were collected and reprinted in one-volume editions and have been in print for 16-17 years now. They paved the way for the "graphic novels" now on comic shop and book shop shelves. A good half of those in my local Waterstone's simply collect a run of the old monthly superhero comics. There is, after all, over half a century of material to exploit in this way.

Meanwhile, while some independents were content to ape the superhero comics of DC and Marvel (the debate back in the '80s was about who owned the work - the creator or the publisher - not what sort of work ought it to be) others were publishing the stories that before had been restricted to "the Underground". Love and Rockets, to give one example.

I'm not sure why the "comics revolution" fizzled out in the '80s. Maybe the identification comics=superheroes was too strong (among comic creators and readers). Maybe the mainstream publishers weren't ready. Maybe they represented a technical challenge to traditional printing firms. Maybe - in the UK at least - the media people who had been promoting comics realised, in 1987, that what they really wanted to do was go to an illegal Rave instead!

20+ years on, there is a greater acceptance that comics mean more than superheroes. There are more people working on their personal or at least realistic stories (not to disparage fantasy, or even superheroes, but the world of written literature would be much the poorer if it was limited to action and adventure). I would guess that new technologies have made it a lot easier to produce a comic - a man at the printing plant can check over a pdf rather than manually ink a plate from a guide produced by the "colorist".

So, the term "graphic novel" is now no more informative than "comic". It denotes a story told sequentially with words (probably) and pictures. It doesn't even guarantee a complete story, if its a collection of old monthly newsstand comics. It doesn't guarantee profundity or maturity in the handling of its subject (especially as many lauded creators, these days, are first time authors - but then that holds for mainstream literature too).

I've never seen the term pictoliterature before. Is it gaining currency in the academic world? I confess I can't see it surviving outside it.

Finally - would I want to see FS publishing comics? The test for me - after the obvious one of "is it worth reading" - would be "can FS reproduce the original better than anyone currently publishing comics? Then there are several considerations that come to mind:
- most comics are produced with mechanical reproduction in mind. Older comics may be a mess of blue-pencil guide marks, corrections applied over india ink, stuck-on speech bubbles, all of which do not reproduce in a traditional comic but would be something of a mess if reproduced with the fidelity given to a LE medieval manuscript.
- Even if the original art is a pristine and beautiful piece of artwork, that last comparison raises a cost/benefit ratio question. How much more would it cost to reproduce the art noticeably better than what's currently available (I assume FS would not commission brand-new "graphic novels/pictoliterature").
- Actually, the original may exist only on a computer these days, and the quality of the image would be restricted by the specifications of the program it was created on.

I think Maus would be a better starting point for a FS graphic novel.

>64 drasvola: A really good explanation of the development of the genre, I echo Conte_Mosca , well done.

So what would you call Tintin?
It's so much easier in French; these are bandes dessinées, or BDs, pronounced bédé (bayday).

Thanks for the kind words. I didn't go into names used in other countries, cultures or languages. There's, quickly to point a few, BD in French, manga in Japanese, quadrinhos in Portuguese and tebeos in Spanish. The name given, although there are major characteristics in them that differentiate, particularly in manga, doesn't change the fact that they all share the sequential "juxtaposition" (to quote McCloud) of images that carry forward the narration.

The comments put forward by housefulofpaper help to clarify important aspects in the development and history of the medium. Thanks. Many people do dislike the term 'graphic novel' because, strictly speaking from a literary point of view, the books are not novels. However, it seems to have stuck. Pictoliterature is too new and perhaps aseptic enough to avoid controversy. Time will tell.

As it happens many times on these threads, the main subject gets sidetracked so my apologies for that. To reorient the discussion a bit, I would suggest that FS might consider not the publication of a full work (Maus would be a great choice indeed) but a carefully selected anthology together with commentary and annotations. Is it my quixotic inclination telling me that it could become a success?

>70 drasvola: Yes, perhaps a selection would work well; I would heartily approve of a FS treatment of Maus if they ever went down that route, though.

>63 Conte_Mosca:
What puzzles me, and I have heard this before, is why you would state, “Spiderman is a comic book. It is not an appropriate term for titles referenced such as Maus, Palestine, or Persepolis…” This categorical assertion would perplex even Art Spiegelman himself. Even a casual acquaintance with Spiegelman would reveal that he views his art as comics or rather comix. Even Joe Sacco, the award-winning author of the comic book Palestine refers to his work as “comic strips” and his career as “cartoonist.” While I am admittedly not that familiar with Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, her friend Spiegelman calls her a “rock star cartoonist”, hence my guess would be that it might also apply in her case.

I believe it was Neil Gaiman, of Sandman fame, who stated, “Calling a comic a graphic novel is like calling a streetwalker a lady of the evening.”

I agree with housefullofpaper that the term graphic novel, here in North America at least, is a marketing tool. The East Coast critics, who had firmly installed themselves as gurus and final arbiters of goodness in writing (and God knows what else) were put in an uncomfortable position when Maus won the Pulitzer Prize. Instead of recognizing the validity of comix as an art form, such bastions of taste, as the Village Voice, New York Times Review of Books, etc. breathlessly announced a number of new terms for the genre. This had the added benefit of making it palatable to prospective mainstream purchasers, who had previously taken a dim view of the medium. That is my take on it anyway.
Would I want to see a FS edition of comix? Not really, although the thought of comix, tarted-up in faux silk is rather comic.
======================================
For Spiegelman aficionados in the Pacific Northwest, Vancouver Art Gallery has a Spiegelman Exhibit coming up!

https://www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/the_exhibitions/exhibit_co-mix.html

>72 GoFurther: This seems to be largely an exercise in semantics, and Antonio (drasvola) and housefulofpaper have expressed far more eloquently the difficulties in definition, which in any event are often arbitrary and irrelevent.

I guess my point was that you appeared to make reference to "comics" in your original post in a pejorative way, as if to suggest that calling them something else was just "putting lipstick on a pig". Of course you may not have meant that at all as it is so difficult sometimes to gauge intent in a short post, in which case I apologise. Indeed your subsequent post indicates a pretty deep knowledge here which in turn suggests your original post was more a challenge to the nomenclature rather than the medium itself.

In my response I was trying to draw a clear discussion between what some people, particularly those not familiar with the genre, consider the word "comic" to represent (i.e. tales of superheroes which few would argue have real literary merit, but which nevertheless can be highly entertaining and indeed have artistic merit), and "novels" such as Persepolis which undoubtedly do have literary merit. To (badly) stretch a point, I would not group Paradise Lost and The Gruffalo within the same category simply because they were written in verse.

You make some good points above with which I agree, and despite my attempt to draw a literary distinction between traditional comics and graphic "novels" such as Persepolis (Chambers definition of a novel being a fictitious prose narrative or tale presenting a picture of real life esp of the emotional crises in the life history of the people portrayed), I do agree with you that I am not convinced this is a market that FS should enter, or indeed can add any real value to, but others clearly think differently and I respect their opinions.

Of course I have now opened myself up to attack from those that want to take issue with my view that Superman has no literary merit...

...I shall now put my head back down below the parapet!

I know very little about this subject, but I've just ordered Ethel and Ernest by Raymond Briggs, which I assume is considered a graphic novel.

> 74

Your decision could have dire consequences, Jonathan...

Why give Maus the FS treatment when the illustration(?) already exists as inseparable from the text.

So we get a Maus with a nifty binding?

> 76 Yes, I'm just looking for a nice binding plus quality paper and printing. Preferably both volumes in one slipcase.

FS's Epics of the Middle Ages includes "The Cid" - I'm not familiar with the poem, so I'm not sure if it is the one you are thinking of. Also the Limited Editions Club and subsequently the Heritage Press published very nice versions of "The Chronicle of the Cid," though I have not read it and cannot say whether it contains the poem you are looking for!

>75 drasvola: Antonio, have you come across Dotter of Her Father's Eyes? If not it may be of interest to you especially, as it combines the "graphic novel" (well, graphic memoir really) and a narrative about James Joyce's daughter, Lucia. It is written by Mary Talbot who herself is the daughter of James S. Atherton, the well known Joycean scholar. The title of course is taken from a phrase in Finnegan's Wake.

It came to my attention last month when it won the Costa Biography Prize, and I have just ordered it.

In an interesting twist that takes this particular topic back full circle, the illustrations are by Mary's husband, Bryan, who has illustrated, amongst many other graphic novels, Neil Gaiman's Sandman!

A four page extract can be viewed here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/jan/03/dotter-of-her-fathers-eyes-extract

There is another interesting article in The Guardian here, where Mary and Brian Talbot share their views on the term Graphic Novel" (they don't like it), and also share their top ten "Graphic Memoirs" (which include the three I recommended earlier - Maus, Palestine and Persepolis).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/apr/18/bryan-mary-talbot-10-graphic-memoirs

> 81

You will like the book, Michael. I have read it and even reviewed it. The idea of connecting Atherton with Joyce's daughter was brilliant. I have Atherton's book on Finnegans Wake, purchased as part of my recent burst of interest in Joyce. By the way, may I recommend Bryan Talbot's Alice in Sunderland? Talbot calls that "an entertainment" to avoid the use of graphic novel.

"Graphic novel" appears to have stuck, unfortunately. I agree with the outstanding place that Maus, Palestine and Persepolis merit. Other works by Sacco and Satrapi are also excellent.

Thanks for the links and for considering books that could interest me.

>82 drasvola: We clearly have similar tastes. I already have Alice in Sunderland :-).

Alice in Sunderland was my first proper introduction to Bryan Talbot. It's quirkiness has always greatly appealed to me, mixing myth and local history (I too live in the North East of England, although born and bred in London originally). It is illogical and unstructured...yet inventive, ambitious, fascinating and visually stunning! A real Tour de Force (as long as , like me, you don't consider a coherent narrative as essential). A far cry from his early days illustrating Nemesis the Warlock for 2000AD magazine!

I would very much like to see W.H.Auden receive the Folio Poets treatment. (As well as Byron, but I've mentioned that before!)

> FS published Auden's Collected Shorter Poems in 2006 which is a nice volume. They are unlikely publish another collection so soon.

I would like to see a new set of the Ernest Hemingway novels.

I would like to see the rest of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy novels (or at least the third in the series - Life, the Universe, and Everything).

Marquez- The Autumn of the Patriarch, Love in the Time of Cholera
Eco- Foucault's Pendulum, Baudolino
Saramago- Baltasar and Blimunda, Blindness
Flannery O'Connor- anything
Raymond Carver anything

A selection of plays by Ionesco would be nice.

>85 Conte_Mosca: Thanks, I completely missed that, will have to hunt for it!

Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernieres
Shogun by James Clavell
Little Drummer Girl by John Le Carre
A Perfect Spy by John Le Carre
Russia House by John Le Carre
Any books by Agatha Christie
Lost Horizon by James Hilton

>91 ehrus: Everything written by Louis de Bernières.

> 89

Agree. I enjoy reading plays and the theatre of the absurd.

Louis de Bernières is great! I need to read Birds without Wings soon.

Zola's La Terre would be wonderful. Seems like Penguin might be putting out a new translation as the Douglas Parmee isn't avaliable.

McCarthy would be nice, but not The Road. Suttree or Blood Meridian. I don't know though. Perhaps they wouldn't fit too nicely into the FS catalog...

Joe Sacco gets a vote from me!

>94 DanMat: Birds without Wings: highly recommended!

Nice. And I just came back from a trip to Istanbul!

>32 pattern-skies:: I'd also love a Folio edition of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, but Martian Time-Slip would be even better. It's still my favourite Dick novel.

I'd love a folio edition of The Forever War, and would almost certainly sell one or more organs for a six-volume set of the canonical Dune novels…

Complete works of Dostoevsky, translated (perhaps even as a Limited Edition set)
Complete works (or at least the complete novels) of Poe (perhaps also as a Limited Edition set)
Land and Lordship, by Otto Brunner (to complement FS's publication of Marc Bloch's Feudal Society)

Pretty much any Alberto Manguel - A History of Reading would always be my preference but anything else will also work...

>98 ultrarightist:
Thumbs up for Brunner :)

I really enjoyed A History of Reading and so would love a FS edition.

Has the Folio Society ever published any Balzac? I can't remember seeing any in the catalogue, and yet it seems like such an unlikely author for them not to publish.

Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand.

>101 Gail.C.Bull:

Lost Illusions is available even now :) Someone that have their Folio 60 handy should be able to look up what else had been published.

I think I had seen Cousin Pons at one point and I am pretty sure Droll Stories was published in the 60s...

>103 AnnieMod: You are absolutely right. Droll Stories in 1961 and Cousins Pons in 1984. But the first Balzac publication by FS was Eugenie Grandet in 1953.

I won't keep going on about my top 3 wish list (ok I will, Dead Souls, Gargantua and Pantagruel, and Barry Lyndon), but I would also like to see:

Exemplary Novels - Cervantes
Simplicissimus - Grimmelhausen
The Liberation of Jerusalem - Tasso
Orlando Furioso - Ariosto

The four-volume King Arthur set by Howard Pyle. I missed out on the Easton Press edition and now can't find it for a price I'm willing to pay.

>101 Gail.C.Bull: LovelyPride
No need for a Folio 60. A complete list of all FS books ever published appears as a pdf file in the FSD wiki at:-
http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/Groups:Folio_Society_Devotees
All FSD members should familiarise themselves with the extensive useful information available in the wiki. The link is also shown at the top of the FSD home page under the title.
The various lists are guaranteed to enable even more book buying!

>105 Conte_Mosca:
Another vote for Simplicissimus here – it is a wonderful and at times very funny book, as I recall…

>108 GoFurther:
The LEC have a superb large format slipcased edition of Simplicicissimus that is available at a reasonable price on the second hand market.

It would be great to see Alberto Manguel- History of Reading or any other of his books like the Dictionary of Imaginary Places and The Library at Night

Or a reprint of A Journal of the Plague Year with new cover.

I would love to see James Ellroys LA Quartet or Underworld USA Trilogy as Folio editions.

Also, Blood Meridian.

I recentlysent the Society an email mentioning that I would love to see them publish the journals of Lucy Maud Montgomery.

> 112

Oxford University Press (Canada) has just published the first volume of the complete journals. The Selected Journals, published up to now, omitted some of her more intimate thoughts and 'angsts', without which, in my opinion, there can be no proper understanding of LMM. If FS were to publish anything, let's hope they wait for this new series to be completed.

113

I read the first four published journals a number of years ago and very much enjoyed them. I was not aware of a new publication so thanks for mentioning that. Yes I knew that the initial publication had left out her opinions of various individuals to avoid hurting feelings (if i understood it correctly)

Dictionary of Symbols by J.E. Cirlot

I have just discovered that Victor Klemperer, whose journals from the Nazi years were published by the FS (titled "I Will Bear Witness"), continued his recording of German life after the war. He lived in East Germany, and his journals covering the years 1945-1959 were published under the title "The Lesser Evil". This volume is out of print in the U.S., though it seems that it is still available in the U.K. from the Phoenix Press. A Folio edition, as a companion to the earlier publication, would be most welcome.

A set of Yukio Mishima's work (say, Acts of Worship, Confessions of a Mask, The Golden Pavillion, and The Sea of Fertility) would provide a stunning canvas for illustration, open Folio to some of the most significant 20th century Japanese literature, and handily follow up 'A History of Japan'.