“There is a growing appreciation for unique, artisanal products that reflect personal style,” says Pom Harrington, owner of Peter Harrington Rare Books. The figures mirror a burgeoning market for beautiful books with elevated design – the imprint itself as art form. This year, The Folio Society was shortlisted for independent publisher of the year at the British Book Awards. In 2022, revenues reached £15.2m, up 12.5 per cent. In 2021 – by which time Reynolds had succeeded in making The Folio Society an employee-ownership trust, giving its employees 100 per cent ownership – revenues were up by 17 per cent year-on-year, with export sales up 18.3 per cent. In part thanks to its direct-to-consumer model, The Folio Society thrived. In 2020 the company went into profit – an upward swing boosted by the pandemic, when sales of fiction in the UK grew by 16 per cent, despite the fact that bookshops were closed.
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Titles such as A Game of Thrones (£160), the Marvel series (from £95) and Malorie Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses (£47.95) rapidly accessed a younger, increasingly global customer base. Reynolds ended the membership structure, and Walker introduced new genres: sci-fi, fantasy, romance and YA. Map of The Known World, from the Folio Society’s edition of A Game of Thrones, £160 © Jonathan Burton 2019/The Folio Society The house has won prizes at the V&A Illustration Awards, as well as being recognised in the book trade for its bindings, production and indexing. Around 50 new titles are produced each year, including a handful of limited editions. Its earlier, out-of-print editions are also updated for new audiences: in 1968, Folio’s edition of Monkey, the Chinese fantasy folk tale by Wu Cheng’en, was illustrated by Duncan Grant the upcoming imprint features artwork by Chinese-American illustrator Mu Pan.
In 1948, Mervyn Peake illustrated Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde this year, Peake’s own fantasy trilogy, Gormenghast, was illustrated by Dave McKean – and both books are still strong sellers.
The Tale of Peter Rabbit includes a facsimile of Beatrix Potter’s own handwritten maquette (limited edition of 1,000), £325 © The Folio Societyįolio’s catalogue is eclectic, and that extends to its choice of illustrators and introducers – from Animal Farm (illustrated by Quentin Blake in 1984) to Tales from the 1,001 Nights (with Salvador Dalí’s ’60s watercolours), Nursery Rhymes (with etchings by Paula Rego) to De Profundis (introduced by Patti Smith). Books by The Folio Society take years to create because no detail is too small to be debated. Each has original artwork, fonts, bindings and introductions, and is encased in a bespoke slipcase or clamshell box. Today, inside the publishing house’s offices in an elegant 1930s warehouse in Bermondsey, floor-to-ceiling shelves contain a rainbow of fiction and non-fiction that the company has newly published as illustrated editions. Ede believed that commercial books could – and should – be produced to the highest standards. This year, The Folio Society has been celebrating 75 years since Charles Ede founded it in 1947.
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