Five British Publishers producing Beautifully Designed Classics
A recent article in The Independent, sees Jonathan Gibbs, prompted by the release of Faber’s Eighty Years of Book Cover Design mentioning five publishers who are currently reissuing classics in beautiful ways: Persephone Books, Hesperus Press, Pushkin Press, Capuchin Classics and White’s Books. Here’s a look at what they’re doing:
Persephone’s uniform grey jackets –
open up into beautifully coloured endpapers
chosen to complement era and/or setting. Capuchin Classics, tipping a hat to bygone Penguins, feature green bars and original drawings.
Hesperus Press
is quite wonderfully located on ‘Rickett‘ Street.
and every Pushkin Press book is, according to the publisher,
embued with some form of passion.
While these four are producing paperbacks, White’s Books is taking on the hardcover…art director, the famed David Pearson, has, according to Gibbs, commissioned illustrations from such people as textile designer Celia Birtwell and Stanley Donwood (known for work with Radiohead). The results stand out thanks to what Pearson calls "non-repeating narrative pattern."
Do I hear collectible?
March 13th, 2010 at 10:33 AM
One thing I appreciate about Pushkin Press books is the way they feel in your hands. They are perfectly suited to fit in the palm, to open easily to the page and the flaps serve as nice bookmarks. (I’m not sure if that’s the purpose of the flaps, and if this is good treatment of a book, but that’s how I go about it.) Their cover art is appealing, as in Zweig’s book, above, which I read in the span of an afternoon. The Houseman cover here is terrific, and is prompting me to be on a Hesperus Press mailing list. And White’s Books looks quite lovely. Just the thing to replace my very worn Shakespearean sonnet paperback, something I’ve had since college days, a long time ago.
March 13th, 2010 at 10:38 AM
Ah, here is what I read in a description of Persephone: “Persephone prints mainly neglected fiction and non-fiction by women, for women and about women. The titles are chosen to appeal to busy women who rarely have time to spend in ever-larger bookshops and who would like to have access to a list of books designed to be neither too literary nor too commercial.” I guess I will check out all of these publishers. So many books…Thanks for sharing.