Questions for the Resident LEC and HP Experts--November, 2025

Usually this topic gets renewed at the start of a new year, but as the previous ones each have over 400 posts, I thought it would be helpful for some of the more recent members to post questions without interminable scrolling.

One topic which hasn't been broached previously (to my knowledge) is the odd choices that have been made in which books to publish. No one these days would question issuing Joyce's Ulysses (although many did at the time), and in a 1941 Monthly Letter, one Club member even commented "...Pride and Prejudice may be accepted as a classic in a hundred years, but I prefer to wait and see. There are too many time-tested works which I would rather have in your delightful editions." One would have thought the 130-odd years since the publication of P&P would have been test enough, but few today would deny it's a classic.

But what about Anthony Adverse? Or Ramona? or The Virginian? Have any members who own these books (and have read them!) feel they belong in the LEC canon?

>1 Django6924: This topic is an interesting one and has been discussed before, and the previous thread has many other LEC titles that today seem puzzling - some were even puzzling at the time of LEC publication. I am in the camp that is glad the LEC mixed in unusual choices with the tried-and-true classics. That eclectic mix is one of the LEC's charms. It's also helped broaden my reading horizon. It's interesting to see publishers of volume today, namely Suntup, going down the same road. Some of the Suntups, like the Cormac McCarthys, make perfect sense, while others are in the head-scratcher category. All in all, there are very few LECs that I feel were a waste of the bookmakers' skills. Monsieur Beaucaire comes to mind. The Golden Bough was an unpleasant read for a variety of reasons, which, coupled with its widely discredited speculations, makes me wonder why it ever appealed to the LEC, although the post-Macy/pre-Schiff LEC was often like that.

>2 A.Nobody:
Well, The Golden Bough was hardly absorbing reading--the subject matter was interesting, but the style was, to say the least, dull and pedantic, especially when compared with similar works such as Graves' The White Goddess (equally unreliable in its speculations). I think though that Frazer's influence on later writers--Yeats, Williams, and especially Eliot--were the reason for its inclusion.

>2 A.Nobody:
>3 Django6924:

Graves was directly influenced by Frazer and he supposedly also influenced Ulysses (the book Eliot claims "destroyed the whole of the 19th Century"). It's difficult for us to understand how shocking it was at the time, and how deeply it was felt by an educated class soaked in the Greek and Latin classics but still Christian (culturally at least). Seems like an obvious LEC choice to me. I wouldn't consider much of the LEC library to have any scientific validity at this point but I'd consider (almost) all of them to have cultural and literary merits.

There are blue and green spine label HP editions of The Pilot, both having sandglass 111:35. Any idea about this?

>5 rogerthat2:
Although one may suspect a Sandglass from a different issue was shifted, it is not unheard of for the same issue to have slight variations, especially in the later series, and even under Macy, HPs such as the first issue of Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination had multiple variations in the batik covering the boards. Although rare, I think that there were even variations in the issue copies of some of the Limited Editions Club books. I can't remember the particular instances of this, although I know my copy of For Whom the Bell Tolls has a different color spine than other copies I have seen online.

Another question. Is this foxing?? The Rivals. There is nothing on the edges of the text block, but about half of the pages have a few of these little dots and about 5 pages randomly throughout the book have heavy amounts of them like this:
https://imgur.com/a/dd36W3M
I guess it is foxing or similar but doesn't look like the typical foxing I've seen in other books.

>6 Django6924: Interesting. Definitely not a misplaced sandglass as I've seen multiple copies of each with the same sandglass on eBay, so they must have changed the design. I have the blue/gold one and the green/silver looks nicer in pictures.

>7 rogerthat2:
Definitely foxing, and since the book was printed on an "all rag, mould-made paper," it is probably due to traces of metal in the paper caused by the process itself. Or it might be the result of microbial contamination.

>8 Django6924: I figured it was probably something related to the paper. Thanks for sharing your wisdom!

>9 rogerthat2: I concur. A mild form of foxing. Just one of those things we have to deal with.

Dried out leather on book spines... Is it salvageable and how do you treat it? Example: https://imgur.com/a/MscgCXs

>11 rogerthat2: Well, those cracks are there to stay, but you can mitigate the damage and renew the leather with a good leather ointment. I use a mixture of neatsfoot oil and anhydrous lanolin which I cook up at home. A commercial version of the one I use can be had from TALAS and they have others available as well. I use a combination of that and their leather protector, especially with new or newly bound books.

Is it normal for Far Away and Long Ago to shed small hairs during handling?

>13 rogerthat2: Yes.

I've heard praise for the HP edition of Eugene Onegin. I have the second print of it (1962) and it's on nice laid paper (toned laid paper made by Strathmore Paper Company), but does not appear to be letterpress printed. Is the first printing better?

>15 rogerthat2:
Depends on which edition you have. My copy (Sandglass XII:28) I received as a member of the Heritage Club, was printed letterpress, Monotype Bodoni, and is so lovely I never felt the need to upgrade it to an LEC.

The laid paper is a good clue that something is printed letterpress; offset printing by its nature requires a smooth-surfaced paper, which is why you never see laid paper used today except by very expensive private presses.

>16 Django6924: Hmm, I have that same edition and did not think it to be letterpress printed. There is certainly no bite to the printing. Granted the laid paper makes if harder to feel.

When you cannot tell the difference between letterpress and offset printing, is there any point in letterpress?

>17 rogerthat2:
The Sandglass states it is set in Monotype, and I believe them. However, it is important to remember that starting in the 1950s, most letterpress printers preferred to use a "kiss" impression rather than a "bite," as deforming the page (often seen on the reverse of pages printed with a considerable "bite") was considered as an inferior printing technique.

>18 wcarter:
Great question! Perhaps the members here will weigh in with their opinions. I often straddle the fence on this question. I like the feel of letterpress with a tactile bite, but do not care for an impression so deep it deforms the page, and love the possibilities an artistic type designer can achieve with computer glyph manipulation for offset printing.

What's your preference?

Are there dumb buyers out there who mistakenly buy HP thinking they are getting LEC?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/306699737277

>19 Django6924: Oh, interesting. It is nice to have a sandglass!

Most of my NY HPs are lacking it so it is a guessing game, not that the sandglass always contains such information anyways.

>20 rogerthat2: Wow! Somebody got ripped off. Notice they don't show the title page???

>20 rogerthat2: >22 Glacierman:

Well, I was dumb enough, several years ago, to buy what was advertised as the "Limited Editions Club Pinocchio." for $70. I didn't even think about why there was no title page, and foolishly trusted on eBay's satisfaction-guaranteed policy. Well, it was the HP version, I applied for a refund, which the seller denied, then appealed to eBay who did nothing.

He went like one that hath been stunn'd,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man
He rose the morrow morn.

>23 Django6924: I have noticed that quite often, some sellers hype a book as LEC based entirely on that copyright notice. The shady ones don't post the title page; the ignorant ones usually do. I have from time to time contacted the seller (one that shows the t.p.) with a polite correction and explanation. That usually does the job. Better to educate them than yell at them. Often the seller doesn't specialize in books, so they really don't know WTH is going on. Note that I don't make a habit of this, just once in a while.

Yea I see tons of those deceptive listings, just surprised when buyers actually fall for it!

eBay is brutal, a ruthless bunch of crooks. I'm waiting to see the result of my credit card chargeback against them, because their shipping hub lost my $80 order but refuses to refund me because more than 30 days have passed.

>24 Glacierman:
I have only had to return an eBay item infrequently, and just that unfortunate Pinocchio dispute found the seller intractable and eBay no help.

>25 rogerthat2:
I can't agree with your assessment; I've sold hundreds of items on eBay and only had the single bad experience.

>26 Django6924: I've sold hundreds of items on eBay as well. When something does go wrong they do not care about you at all.

I am trying to understand HP Story of Manon.

The majority are brown/green marbled sides with ugly (pigskin?) spine. I guess these are 1935, or a later reissue.

The remainder are a nicer leather spine (err, on the copies that aren't in terrible condition) with blue marbled sides. But there are 3 variants:
Heritage Press / Nonesuch (1935?)
Heritage Press (1935?)
Heritage Club (1938?)

The first two have bue stringy marbled sides. 1500 copies among them were signed. The latter one has blue wavy marbled sides and is unsigned.

Is this an accurate picture? It is very complicated.

Is there a quality difference among these, or is it only the signature that's special about the special edition?

>28 rogerthat2: The majority are brown/green marbled sides with ugly (pigskin?) spine. I guess these are 1935, or a later reissue.

Brown pigskin, my copy looks like it was varnished, but don't quote me on that. The marbled design on the sides is printed on, being uniformly repetitive on front and back. This is the 1935 regular edition.

More information can be found here.

>28 rogerthat2:
I once had 2 copies, one with the printed "marbled" brown paper, and one with blue paper sides that appears to be real marbled paper and has Brissaud's signature on the frontispiece illustration.

As for difference in quality, in the copy which I kept (with the signature) the colors of the illustrations are much brighter and more saturated than the rather murky ones in the other copy. This may have been a printing anomaly in that other copy, as I have seen variations in illustration reproduction in some other HPs.

>30 Django6924: I note the same difference in illustration quality between my two copies as well.

DIY duct tape book binding:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/225573697736

I am curious what people do about the LECs bound in crappy leather.

Try to find a fine copy and preserve it?
Find a poor copy and rebind it?
Middle road and live with it?

>33 rogerthat2:

If it's a desirable and hard-to-find title, and acquired at a low price (my own examples being Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and Moby-Dick, live with it and be grateful;

If it's a desirable title and there are fairly plentiful fairly-priced copies available (my own example being De Rerum Naturum, find a fine copy;

If you have deep pockets, and like our late member leccoll, a passion for design, find a poor copy of a desirable title and rebind it. From my one experience rebinding, and it was a clothbound LEC set, not a leather-bound one, it is always cheaper, and in my opinion more desirable, to find a fine copy.

>33 rogerthat2: I’ve never rebound an LEC. Three times I’ve bought an LEC with a poor binding and in all three cases I ended up buying a better copy and dumping the poor one. I have bought a Heritage Press limited edition, Ink & Blood, which I had rebound in black goatskin with a gold title hot stamped down the spine to the mirror the original. It cost me $500 for the rebind and $150 for the crappy copy. I’m very pleased with the results and at the time I couldn’t come close to a copy in nice condition for under $1500. Another of those problem sheepskin bindings.

In the end, I’ve tried all three approaches you mention but in the vast majority of cases I opt for your first option.

Next question: What is this white discoloration on the book spines? A little bit of mildew? And how would you attempt to clean it?
https://imgur.com/MGrDVQb

>35 kdweber: PHOTOS, PLEASE! :)

>36 rogerthat2:

Mildew is black. Difficult to determine whether it is a substance or a loss of dye due to moisture or some chemical contamination. I feel pretty certain that an attempt to clean it will only make things worse.

>36 rogerthat2: This is the 1933 Don Quixote, right? Open the book, the insides are so wonderful, you'd forget about the spine:) Joke aside, I also think it cannot be cleaned. Btw, at least these spines have relatively well preserved colour, mine is quite brownish.

I am 400 pages into Dickens Little Dorrit. While I am always excited about a new to me Dickens novel, this one reads very slow. It is the same wonderful prose but seemingly not much has happened half way through. What do you think of it? I ranked the ones I read below.

1. David Copperfield
2. Great Expectations
3. Oliver Twist
4. The Pickwick Papers
5. Barnaby Rudge
6. A Tale of Two Cities

>40 BuzzBuzzard: I went on a Dickens marathon a few years ago and the one I most enjoyed overall was The Pickwick Papers with its light, ramshackle storyline. I must admit that the two I didn't get round to were Little Dorrit and Our Mutual Friend, however, so, er, I cannot actually answer your question.

>40 BuzzBuzzard:

I would rank Little Dorrit below A Tale of Two Cities and above Barnaby Rudge. I would also rank Hard Times above Barnaby Rudge and Bleak House above Oliver Twist, though I agree with the rest of your list.

When you can't find the HP/LEC what do you typically substitute with?

Been looking for Hemingway's novels & Ulysses but all I see are expensive LECs and no HP.

>43 Third_Era:
Not fine press, but good quality Hemingway books at https://hemingwaybookstores.com/shop/

>43 Third_Era:

I had, but sold, the Easton Press 19-volume set of Hemingway's works (the set with the non-uniform, rather intelligently-designed individual bindings), which while not exactly fine press, were much better than trade editions. The For Whom the Bell Tolls book was a reproduction of the Limited Editions Club edition, but the copy of The Old Man and the Sea was not a reproduction of the LEC original. While not cheap, the entire set cost less than the going price of the LEC The Old Man and the Sea, and I believe you can find individual volumes from the set on eBay.

>43 Third_Era: Folio Society published a box set of 5 Hemingway novels that can be found for around $200 on the secondary market or perhaps less if you are patient. I don't own this set, so cannot comment on the particulars (probably covered in the Folio Society Devotees group), but Folio Society is usually a leading consideration with the secondary market often providing excellent value.

Everyman’s Library is another solid option: clothbound, sewn bindings, acid-free paper, and usually a brief note about the typeface written in a triangular paragraph on the final page. They tend to feel cheaper and plainer than the Folio Society equivalents, generally lacking illustrations, but in some cases (Gibbon’s Decline and Fall comes to mind) they are the more scholarly of the two.

Westvaco is another publisher that represents great value that may have published some Hemingway you can check out. I own only one ('You Know me Al') and can confirm they are really nice little slip cased books.

Easton Press is sometimes dismissed, but I’ve inherited quite a few volumes that I enjoy and haven’t felt the need to replace; EP also published a 20-volume Hemingway set. I also like to pick up Franklin Library Great Books editions for works I might reference rather than read straight through, since I own the corresponding Syntopicon, which links the “Great Ideas” to specific passages in the Great Books set.

Copperhead Press has recently issued three Hemingway works, one of which is on sale now, and Century Press did The Sun Also Rises.

>46 cartographer144:
The Westvaco You Know Me Al is a real gem! A delight to look at, with its reproduction of vintage baseball cards, and a joy to read. Even if you aren't a baseball fan, you will love the use of vernacular, which was very influential.

>46 cartographer144: Westvaco is another publisher that represents great value that may have published some Hemingway

They did only one in Christmas 1998 to commemorate his upcoming centenary: the 1930 version of In Our Time (14 short stories + 16 vignettes). A nice book. Plain cloth binding, sturdy pictorial slipcase, ribbon bookmark, thick paper in two colors (one for stories and one for vignettes), and I really like the typographical design of the book.

Does anyone have any thoughts on the LEC vs Heritage editions of Main Streat?
The LEC is usually quite expensive, and I'm wondering how the materials and production quality are. The cloth binding is plain and usually looks shabby and not particularly sturdy in different listings. So apart from Grant Wood's signature - is it worth it? How is the paper?

The reason I'm asking is I saw a Heritage facsimile in person, and it's not bad - and costs peanuts. So I'm contemplating whether I should keep seeking the LEC, and whether it's possible to get one in Fine or NF condition.

>50 elladan0891:

I once owned the HP edition of Main Street I got new as a Heritage Club member, and it was from the Connecticut reincarnation of the Club. Sturdy, acid-free paper (not rag), Kittredge's superb typographic layout (not printed letterpress), and Wood's illustrations (IMO the best illustrated of all the Macy-era books) reproduced in monochrome, it is still superior to most books printed in the last twenty years--but...

I still have the Limited Editions Club edition and there really is no comparison. The off-white rag paper has that wonderful feel the the best rag papers all have, betraying its source as you rub you fingers over it. The letterpress is superb, as one would expect from the Lakeside Press; those who demand a deep "bite" impression may not be pleased, but the impression is just deep enough that every page offers the same density of dark black type on the buff-colored paper.

The illustrations, even marvelous in monochrome, are even better in the subtle colors which mimic the hand-tinted black and white photographs of the first half of the 20th century. Many LECs have beautiful illustrations, and many of those are nicely attuned to the written word. But in very few of them does the highest degree of artistic excellence seem to embody the writer's intentions and sensibility in every single illustration as do Grant Wood's illustrations for Main Street. The other examples I can think of in the canon are Marco Polo and The Circus of Dr. Lao. Wood's early death meant that this is the only illustrated LEC by one of the three great American Regionalist artists--Curry and Benton being the others-- and despite my personal attachment to Benton, Wood's achievement is pre-eminent.

The only quibble I have about the LEC version is the flexible binding. It's design is probably most appropos to the subject (the Easton Press-style leather and gilt editions are ridiculously inappropriate for Lewis' tale of small-town mores), but it doesn't wear well at all. As you say, it usually looks shabby in the versions typically found, and my copy, #1341, has the bookplate of "William Clark" on the front pastedown. I have owned several of Mr. Clark's LECs, and either he was extremely fastidious in his reading habits, or never read his books at all, as the interiors have been uniformly pristine. The slipcase must have degenerated over time and been discarded before I acquired the book, but it apparently had been in one for quite a while as only the spine shows sun fading. The lack of the slipcase means that the front and rear boards got somewhat grubby before I bought it, though the corners are still sharp, and that plus the bookplate means I got the book at a price below the most expensive copies I've seen advertised, though it still wasn't cheap.

I am happy to own it.

Hello everyone, I’m new to library thing and I would love some help from this community. I’ve decided to make. HP the subject of my English comp paper. And I’m looking for academic and popular sources on the history of the publication. Thanks in advance and God bless.

>52 mirroredeyes: The Heritage Press is so closely related to LEC that it may be more helpful to find LEC resources. Although I don't own it, I would recommend this book:
The History of the Limited Editions Club by Carol P. Grossman
Oak Knoll (the publisher) sells it for $125, but you can find copies between $40 and $60 on eBay (and can always resell any copy you buy on the internet once you are done).

I would say that this forum is one of the best resources, but for your English paper you probably need 'official' sources, no matter how accurate the information here might be. This forum has a large majority of the monthly letters that came with each book uploaded as pdfs, which would be difficult to aggregate useful data from, but were written by the LEC themselves, so they may be useful to you in some ways.

You can find them here: LEC Monthly Letters & Book List

Other than those two things, I can't think of much out there.

>52 mirroredeyes: You're more than welcome to refer to my blog: https://georgemacyimagery.wordpress.com/. You'll find some resources on the Heritage Press there, such as an exclusives list, some in-depth reviews of some Heritage exclusive titles, and several photos of many of the books published by the HP.

I've also published a book on the first series of the LEC, but that will be of less interest for a Heritage Press focused paper as the Heritage Press is only tangibly mentioned here and there (as it wouldn't arrive until six years later).

>52 mirroredeyes:

Grossman's book does have some interesting information on the forming of the Heritage Press, and Jerry's site (>54 WildcatJF:) is an excellent one. Two sources which would also be primary are the books by Michael Bussacco,

https://www.librarything.com/author/bussaccomichaelc

who was IMO the leading authority on the Heritage Press, and was a member of this group until his passing last October. His books may or may not be in print, but hopefully some libraries available to you may have copies. You may also find copies online.

There is a very good brief survey here:

https://www.bookthink.com/0075/75her1.htm

and be sure to click the link at the bottom of the page as it continues with a most useful publication history of the many series, where each series was published, as well as additional HP editions not part of the subscription series.

I'm glad to see you have chosen this subject. George Macy will always be, for most, identified with the Limited Editions Club, but to me I feel that George may have felt that in many ways the Heritage Press was his greatest achievement. It far overshadowed the LEC in terms of membership, and one has only to read many of the Monthly Letters George wrote to realize his messianic zeal in getting Americans to not only appreciate fine literature, but to appreciate the Art of the Book.

And George Macy firmly believed in American Democracy, and although he appreciated fine dining at the Waldorf-Astoria, where many of the Club's dinners were held, he was also a big baseball fan, and baseball, for many (including myself) is America at its best, a true meritocracy, where there are stars, but where, as an animated PSA from the 1950s stated, "a baseball team needs nine good men, one guy just ain't enough." (Those who watched Venezuela win the recent World Baseball Classic Championship know how true that adage still is.) I'm sure the Heritage Press' success pleased him greatly to think so many in the lower-income brackets were able to now appreciate fine literature and bookmaking.

Macy himself was a star, and was frequently called an autocrat in the running of his organization, but as you can find in his early Monthly Letters and in his comments on the various publications in Ten Years-and William Shakespeare, much of his micro-managing was due to his reluctance to disappoint his subscribers with products he deemed to fall short of excellence. The fact so many of the finest printers and illustrators stayed with him throughout the Club's existence proves that commitment by him was appreciated by those to whom quality mattered most; a prime example is Bruce Rogers, who designed the LEC's crown jewel, the Shakespeare set, and who, in his eighties, designed the initial volume of the 1950s series A Voyage to Lilliput by Dr. Lemuel Gulliver and A Voyage to Brodignag Made by Lemuel Gulliver, with a single slipcase housing both the smallest, and the largest books issued by the Limited Editions Club. At one of the famous Club dinners, Rogers acknowledged it as a frank "stunt"--and said few readers "will ever trouble to read the folio or the miniature book, when they probably have the convenient Heritage edition on their shelves." Such recommendation of the Heritage Press coming from the Dean of American book designers, should not be discounted.

I've rambled on too long, which I have a tendency to do, but one last source available, which I have always wanted to peruse myself, are the George Macy files at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas. Health permitting, if I someday have the finances available, I would love to spend a week going through these files. Here's a link:

https://research.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/findingAid.cfm?eadID=00746