LE Derived SEs

I have not been buying Folio Society books long enough to know if this is a new trend but it seems to me like quite a lot of recent LEs are quickly followed by an SE.

These typically include the same illustrations/introductions and, in many cases, a similar overall design language.

They also - getting subjective here - seem to me to often be a cut above what Folio sometimes release at the lower end of the SE spectrum. To the point where they’re often targets for me to pick up.

I’m thinking of recent example like Neuromancer, Canticle for Liebowitz, 1984, and the recently announced Gatsby, The Last Unicorn, etc.

Is there a list of such LE derived SEs anywhere? Or could it be useful to indicate them as such on the LT master list (appreciate that there is clearly a huge amount of effort that goes into maintaining this already!)

Beginning with the modern era of LE's from 2001 to the present, I think this list is 99% accurate:

The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (2008)
The History of England from the Accession of James II (2009)*
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (2012)
The Holy Land and Egypt and Nubia (2014)
Candide (2015)
Mort (2016)*
Twelfth Night (2016)
The Call of Cthulhu (2017)*
Moby-Dick (2017)
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (2017)
The Sound and the Fury (2017)
The Four Gospels (2018)
I Am Legend (2018)*
South Polar Times (2018)
Alice in Wonderland (2019)
Doctor Zhivago (2020)
Letters from Fairyland (2020)*
The Book of the New Sun (2021)
Dracula (2021)
The Haunting of Hill House (2022)*
Micrographia (2022)
The Selected Short Stories by PKD (2022) abridged
The Turn of the Screw (2022)*
The Divine Comedy (2023)
Frankenstein (2023)
Roadside Picnic (2023)*
We Have Always Lived in the Castle (2023)*
The Complete Plays of William Shakespeare (2024)
The Gormenghast Trilogy (2024)
The Shadow of the Wind (2024)
A Canticle for Leibowitz (2025)
A Christmas Carol (2025)
The Book Thief (2025)
The King of Elfland's Daughter (2025)
The Lottery and Other Dark Tales (2025)
Neuromancer (2025)
Nineteen Eighty-Four (2025)
Tales of Mystery and Imagination (2025)
The Great Gatsby (2026)
The Iliad (2026)
The Last Unicorn (2026)
Perdido Street Station (2026)
The Histories by Herodotus (2026)
The Odyssey (2026)
The Wanderer (2026)

* Simultaneous LE and SE release

Additions and corrections welcome!

EDIT: Added Twelfth Night, The Holy Land, Chaucer and asterisks for simultaneous releases based on community feedback below.

>2 HonorWulf:

I think you might include Twelfth Night in your list.

Rime of the Ancient Mariner
The Wind in the Willows

>2 HonorWulf:

And The Holy Land and Egypt and Nubia

Was not Mort a simultaneous LE/SE release?

>3 affle: Added, thanks!

>4 assemblyman: Rime is already there. I need to research Willows a bit more -- not sure if the SE preceded the LE or not.

>5 affle: Added, thanks!

>6 FitzJames: Yes, there's about a half dozen simultaneous releases, but the standard edition still benefited from the limited edition production.

>8 HonorWulf: It did.

>10 HonorWulf: I'd possibly suggest indicating simultaneous releases then, just to differentiate them. As we know, I don't possess Small Gods that Folio followed w. that September, but I thought it quite alike in production to Mort, and the former possessed no LE.

I thought Dune would be on the list, but I see it is actually a SE derived LE...

>11 cwl: I may be wrong, but here's what I was able to determine for Wind in the Willows:

There's the original 1995 release, which offered the same contents in a silk binding and a leather binding and pre-dates the modern Limited Edition era that began in 2001.

The second edition was published in 2005, which also included a signed tip-in version that was limited to 150 copies, but was not a unique Limited Edition and was identical to the standard edition except for the tip-in. This is the Standard Edition that is currently available on the Folio website.

In 2008, it got a proper Limited Edition, which was an upgrade based on the 2005 Standard Edition.

>12 FitzJames: OK, I added asterisks to the simultaneous releases -- let me know if I missed any!

>14 HonorWulf: That all sounds correct from what I remember at the time.

>15 HonorWulf: Cthulhu was also a simultaneous release.

>16 cwl: Perfect, thanks!

>17 wongie: Updated, thanks!

>2 HonorWulf: Wow - I was not expecting such a thorough reply to a question that popped into my head. Thank you!

When laid out like this there definitely does seem to be the beginnings of an emerging trend.

It makes sense from a business perspective. FS can charge an LE premium to those that will pay then change the binding/enclosure, paper stock and lose the signatures for an SE that can re-use front/back matter and illustrations.

Would be interested to hear perspectives of those who have bought these SEs to test the hypothesis that their derivation from LE stock translates into a more premium SE versus others.

>20 cyber_naut: For sure -- the major benefit is the extra art. The LE's have a larger budget to work with and tend to have two to three times the amount of art than a typical SE, so the SE's derived from the LE's end up with the higher volume of art as well.

>20 cyber_naut: The Gormenghast SE is hands down the nicest SE I have out of 30 odd SE's from this century (with the added benefit of preferring the visual design of the SE binding and slip case). The current William Blake is the other one I would put near the top of my list of owned SEs but that's a fine edition with solander box etc too.

I also have the Doctor Zhivago SE and although I've not read it, I've glanced through it. It's a very nice set and I like the extensively foiled cloth boards. It seems nicer to me than the average SE but doesn't come across as a significant standout like Gormenghast does. It seems to have more illustrations than average.

While I like the ornate chapter headers, the paper bound Turn of the Screw feels distinctly below average...

So I guess the LE to SE pipeline doesn't necessarily mean more premium SEs.

Edit: I would echo Honorwulf that it does mean at least a bit more art (sometimes a lot!) or other design flourishes at least.

It still surprises me that the wonderful LE of Flaubert's Madame Bovary with original art by Fanny Nushka a few years ago hasn't been reissued as an SE.

>23 CJDelDotto: It's a beautiful book. This is purely speculation, but perhaps the fee to print Knausgaard's introduction more widely would be prohibitive.

The Prophet (2019), simultaneous release?

Edit: sorry! Ignore that, the x300 copies are only fine editions.

>2 HonorWulf:
A very interesting list.
I have created a link to this list from the FSD wiki under the Online Resources heading.

The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer 2008

>26 wcarter: Cheers!

>27 assemblyman: Added, thanks! There's one or two other facsimiles I omitted until I've had time to review, but I found Warwick's review for this one. It's a beast!

EDIT: Review complete - no additions necessary! I think the list is now 99% accurate. Thank you, everyone, for the contributions!

Updated to include The Odyssey, The Wanderer and The Histories by Herodotus from The Summer Collection 2026.