What makes a book Folio worthy?

I think for me the definition has been changing. It is almost inevitable that one would feel their favorite classic would fall into this category, but then the book sits on the shelf unread and becomes more of a trophy for the first time you read it. War and Peace is one of these books for me. I love that book, but in all honesty I may never read it again.
It is clearly Folio worthy.

I also feel that some of my favorite books are NOT Folio worthy. I love Ross MacDonald but I would not buy the Archer series in Folio editions.

I have come to believe, after being a Folio member for a while; that it can be easier to justify history books as Folio worthy because they serve as a reference material.

I just cannot justify paying $50-$100+ for just any book I happen to like but may never read again.

History books that can serve as reference often get revised and reissued with updated and new content. Which makes investing in Folio edition of these not really a good idea if that is all you look for - in 10 years it may be obsolete - unless if it is a landmark study or a book that is used as a reference from the scholars of the period...

I do not think of Folio books in terms of worthiness. I consider them a fine editions of books which can survive without having their covers destroyed by touch or their pages yellowing or their spine cracking and splitting after 2 openings. As such, I love their new initiative to go into the Mystery/Crime and Science Fiction/Fantasy fields. I'd love to see a lot more of them.

My thinking is easy - do I want to have this book on my bookshelf? If yes - then I might as well have a good edition. If not, well - I won't buy it for $100 or for $.01. And rereading is rarely a concern - I may never reread a book because there are way too many unread books in the world -- but I like the idea of having the books that I like, that make me happy, that make me think or just make me who I am around me.

Some "history Books" I own that are not going obsolete are titles like Meditations, Once There was a War, Stasiland, Art of War etc.

Most of my Folios fall into the feel good to own them type you mentioned. Little monuments to beloved titles.

Folio have always marketed themselves as publishers of the finest examples of literature. I question that of late, given their insistence of publishing time untested science books and more modern novels.

I wouldn't really have an issue with them publishing that stuff bar the fact they say..Founded in London in 1947, The Folio Society publishes carefully crafted editions of the world’s finest literature.

Hmmm...

It never said "classics only". If an editor finds a book to be fine literature, it does not matter how old it is.

>5 AnnieMod:

Finest not just fine.

That's a big call, a superlative, which should be a call for just that.

>4 LesMiserables:
The world has changed in the last 70 years, and the FS has to move with the times.

>4 LesMiserables: Well, as long as they do publish some of the world's finest literature they can publish anything else in addition and that statement will still technically be true.

I am happy that they publish some genre literature but I believe they should stick to the best and/or most important books within each genre. I don't expect a crime novel published by FS to necessarily be among the world's finest literature but I do expect it to be among the finest crime novels. The times FS has published books which I not only am not interested in but have read elsewhere and found actually bad is more troubling to me as it makes me question their general judgement. I want to be able to trust that if I am interested in the genre or topic and FS publishes it, then it is a book well worth reading.

As FS books are quite expensive I (almost) only buy them if I expect to open them again after I've read them once. I therefore mostly buy favourite novels which I expect to re-read. Poetry and short stories are also good as I can re-read just a few pages for the pleasure of handling a beautiful book.

>8 alvaret:

Well stated and I agree entirely.

The FS will have to continue to broaden its scope to attract a new(er) audience but it needs to do this without dumbing-down and publishing garbage more suitable for Amazon.com. There is a happy middle ground somewhere and it is a bit of a high-wire balancing act for the FS to find it.

>7 wcarter: >8 alvaret: >9 dlphcoracl:

I'm only stating what FS say.

The Folio Society publishes carefully crafted editions of the world’s finest literature.

not

The Folio Society publishes carefully crafted editions of some of the world’s finest literature and some other stuff.

>10 LesMiserables: The statement "The Folio Society publishes carefully crafted editions of the world’s finest literature." is false if FS publishes no carefully crafted editions of the world's finest editions, otherwise it is true.

The statement "The Folio Society only publishes carefully crafted editions of the world’s finest literature." is false if FS publishes anything but the world's finest literature and/or if any of these editions is not carefully crafted.

Lewis Carroll has some obscure texts on the topic: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/28696/28696-h/28696-h.htm

>11 alvaret:

Yes, but the intent is to say that that is all they publish. (Logic aside)

>12 LesMiserables: Logic aside I only read it to mean that their core mission is to publish the world's finest literature. As long as that remains their main focus I believe their slogan to be fine even if they do publish some other stuff. However, I would certainly find it a misleading (but not false...) statement if they published one book from the world's finest literature and the rest of their publications were by Dan Brown...

>13 alvaret: I mostly agree; and, let's face it - I suspect that the occasional Dan Brown-equivalent brings in enough cash to publish a couple of specimens of the world's finest literature, which (with a few rare exceptions) hardly are blockbusters.

>4 LesMiserables: The world's finest literature doesn't mean the world's oldest literature. Many 'more modern novels' make for extremely fine literature, many well-educated modern readers find older 'classics' uninspiring in comparison. Moreover, 'finest' is necessarily subjective: one reader's finest will be another's unreadable. If an editor regards a book as a fine example of its genre and someone gains happiness from reading it in Folio, especially someone new to reading and new to Folio, then good on him or her, and good on Folio.

>15 cronshaw:

But a handful (or two) of decades at a minimum, usually sorts the wheat from the chaff.

>14 odderi: On the other hand, if they did publish Dan Brown I would be less likely to trust their judgement that a to me unknown book is worth buying from them. I think it is great if they publish popular books and find new readers but I believe they should stick to popular and (quite) high-quality and ignore the ones that are only popular, otherwise they might lose more than they gain. I read many books that I don't believe are up to FS standard (mostly books which I would never buy at the FS price) but the reason I don't think that FS should publish them, even the ones I liked, is that they have a brand for quality which they should be careful with. Of course there are also many popular genre books of a high-quality which I'd like them to publish and I do believe that they have mostly hit that balance.

Okay I'm banging an old drum now, but if they can't even manage a handful of Scott novels, a celebrated world famous literary front runner, then I guess they will publish anything.

>18 LesMiserables:

A very old drum.

Anyway thanks for the post. Classic example of a false dichotomy.

Folio-worthy? To me, given the FS' evident financial predicament, that has to be just about any book with a good prospect of selling sufficiently well in a finer than average hardback edition and at a higher than usual hardback price to turn a profit: excluding titles which would bring the brand into disrepute. A good rule of thumb there might be an educated guess at whether the readership of a particular title twenty or thirty years hence will be at least half what it is today, and we could probably all name a few recent sensations likely to fail by that yardstick.

The editorial team seems an alert bunch, responsive and responsible, and I imagine they're doing a pretty good job applying criteria not very far removed from the above. I'm a poor customer lately and likely to remain so. I've only placed one small order since the middle of last year, as my reading in recent months has been largely in and around the work of a couple of early 20th century writers the FS has never touched and probably never will. The classics as far as I'm concerned are well enough represented on my shelves, and I've rarely if ever opened a SF or crime/mystery title without asking myself after five or ten pages why in the name of anything that's holy I'm bothering to read it, so the changes in the Folio publishing programme lately aren't such as to return me to the fold. Still, they're probably highly sensible, and I expect I'll continue to buy an occasional LE if not much else.

>19 SimB:

You're very welcome. And thanks for your input into this discussion.

In my opinion, Folio does particularly well in the history and biography fields, and I hope they continue to publish worthwhile works in those areas. Quality printing, binding and illustrations will continue to attract a discerning reader.

>1 devilsisland: This is an interesting question, worthwhile debating, so thanks.
When I first joined the FS back in the 1990’s, I bought 19th century (and early 20th century) classics (Austen, Hardy, Trollope, Kipling and Sassoon). I am glad I bought these, but (in my opinion) the production was solid, rather than inspired, although I really like the Kipling.
When I rejoined in 2007, having bought a second hand copy of Excellent Women that reminded me about FS, I had been reading mainly contemporary literary fiction, but little else, for about 10 years.

What (in my opinion) has made me buy a lot of FS books since is that:
1. Their production values are much higher. This may be the technology, but there is far greater variety and imagination of the covers and illustrations (if not number of illustrations).
2. They have published more contemporary fiction, not just works from about 50 years ago (such as Durrell and Powell), but novels like The New York Trilogy, The Bloody Chamber and the Booker winners.
3. They have diversified into genre fiction. For example, the SF I have bought are all books I read 40 years ago in cheap paperbacks, and whilst I still cherish those paperbacks, I do not like breaking spines and I almost certainly would not have reread them if they had not been published by FS. However, I am unlikely to buy “new” SF titles in FS editions.
4. They have diversified into travel books – and here as well as rereads, the quality of book and illustrations means that I will try titles I have not previously read.
5. I have started reading history books again and, as well as reading new works in non-FS editions, have welcomed their policy of publishing “classic” recent history books, such as Religion and the Decline of Magic even if some of the scholarship might be out of date. Perhaps for a general reader there is not the need to be at the “cutting edge”.

There are a couple of FS books that I have bought that I do not consider worthy of the FS treatment. However, between the editorial staff and the limit to what I can buy, the vast majority of the books I have bought have been worthy (in my opinion). I look forward to more!

FS are following the money. So far, so good (I think). But each step brings them closer to a full-blown identity crisis. Lets hope they know when to stop.

For me a Folio Society book is worthy on a much more personal level. I love to reread books and I want a copy that has a very solid hardcover (thus my love for Buckram), nice type that is not to small but not the gigantic sizes for people with vision problems, thick paper where print from the next page doesn't bleed through. Illustrations are nice, a nice pause while reading, but secondary for me. However, if they are going to be in them, I want nice ones. I still prefer woodblocks over anything. And titles. Titles that interest me, titles I have never heard of. I have discovered many awesome books through FS that have expanded my horizons and some that have become favourites. The Country Child, The Great Railway Bazaar, the Great Plague, Never Let Me Go, Cider with Rosie, Our Village, The Diary of a Country Parson, The Diary of a Village Shopkeeper, Jane Austen's Letter, Cold Comfort Farm, I Capture the Castle, Enchanted April. All of these I discovered through FS and had not heard of before. Having all of Bronte, Hardy, Austen, Forster, Trollope, Eliot in FS editions, among others, just makes me so happy. They are still superior in quality than any other books I own. These books will last me a lifetime. That is what I want. Books to read to the day I die. They will fade and be well-loved, they will hold dear memories of Christmas's gone past and birthday presents from my husband. For me these and many other reason make them worthy.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about the question of what makes great literature, and here's what I think.

First, to be clear, I think it's fair to say I qualify as well-read. I've read something like 1000 books 60-70% of which are novels, so I'll speak to novels here (with a Shakespeare reference)...

If you go back more than about 100 years, you run into a serious problem in literature. Huge portions of the population were illiterate, meaning that fewer people had a chance to produce literature at all. Further, women were marginalized in the extreme. This is still an issue today, but not nearly so much as it was then.

The end result is that the farther back you go, the shallower the pool.

Take Shakespeare, for instance. He has many masterpieces, but both early and late Shakespeare are often awful (I like to say that the lesser known titles are lesser known for a reason) and yet they are all deemed "Folio worthy."

Or what about Beowulf? There's nothing to Beowulf. It's a fairly simple adventure story, but it's old, so we value it as literature (I do love the Heaney translation, I'm just making a point).

We can have a debate about "genre" fiction certainly, but can anyone here honestly tell me they believe the very best writers today to be genuinely inferior practitioners to those of 100+ years ago?

Certainly, there is the issue of separating the wheat from the chaff, which time tends to take care of, but there is also some romanticizing of the past (much in the way the older generation has insisted the younger generation is ruining the world since the dawn of civilization) in pretending that simply because we haven't forgotten about a book, that means it is truly great. If there are only three wilted flowers in a field, it's much easier to remember their specific details than it is to remember the healthy blossoms of a few flowers in field overflowing with them.

>26 Jason461: I agree that there is some romanticizing going on but I would argue that age actually does add a real value to a novel. For one thing it may have inspired subsequent literature and if so knowledge of the original will add context to the subsequent works. Perhaps more significantly, at least to me, classical books will provide me with the closest thing to time-travel that I am likely to encounter. I can read some of the same books that were read 200 years ago and although my context differs from theirs we still share an experience. Also the things that don't read well in a modern context, such as the common casual sexism or racism, which I usually accept as part of the deal when reading older literature, are relevant reminders on how the world has changed. Historical fiction may try to achieve the same thing but I prefer an eyewitness...

However, I agree that modern literature is not inferior to the classical literature, if we take into account that most of the non-modern literature is deservedly forgotten. If we compare the still-read classical literature with everything that is published today we obviously get a skewed result.

>27 alvaret:
However, I agree that modern literature is not inferior to the classical literature, if we take into account that most of the non-modern literature is deservedly forgotten. If we compare the still-read classical literature with everything that is published today we obviously get a skewed result.

I support the view that we cannot really hope to identify classics until they have passed through the hands of generations of readers and have remained vivid in capturing the imagination of the readers of each era.

Therefore we may identify a potential classic, but it may seem to be bordering on literary relativism or cultural arrogance to definitively endow a modern work with the label of classic.

>17 alvaret: You make a very good point which I have neglected; I, too find that the FS has turned me onto authors and works I otherwise would have no idea even existed - the semi-subconscious assumption being made by me that they wouldn't had bothered publishing it unless it was good.

While a Dan Brown novel (or - shudder - Fifty Confessions of a Shady Calendar Girl or whatever is the blockbuster softporn du jour) would be easy to steer clear of, I agree one would run the very real risk of diluting the FS reputation for making excellent selections.

I just got a chuckle from imagining the FS launching another line of books - the 'Integrity is nice, but will hardly keep you in business' series - Dan Brown, the aforementioned soft porn &c &c - with distinctive, pink (for instance!) covers to ensure unwary bibliophiles wouldn't happen upon one by mistake... :)

>29 odderi:
I almost lost it at "the 'integrity is nice, but will hardly keep you in business' series". This would have been bad given that I am currently seated at an lecture....
However thank you for making my day.

>27 alvaret:

I agree--case in point, I am currently reading the FS edition of Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress and am mired, not in the Slough of Despond but in the second part of the book which is a retread of Christian's pilgrimage except this time with his wife and children. The writing is stilted and pedantic but it was a huge bestseller in its time and much of subsequent literature flows from it (Vanity Fair, anyone?).

>31 podaniel:
The second part was written and published years after the first, for diehard fans, though there is some change in philosophy. Apparently Bunyan's target audience was illiterate, hence the stilted style using techniques designed to make the text memorable to someone having it read to him: heavily allegorized names, repetition, rhyme, etc. Knowing that doesn't make it more enjoyable to read. I'd sooner make another journey through KJVI, begats and all.