![]() ![]() Have they been bought as a short cut to cultivation, for display only? But for inveterate spine scanners who convince themselves that books are an indicator of character, it is always reassuring to spot some Folio titles mixed in on a person’s shelves, to know he or she has succumbed to their tactile and visual pleasures – the beautifully engineered slipcases, the proper cloth or buckram bindings, the paper that remains unfaded, the well-chosen typefaces, the attention to proportion and space. Not always, you understand: the motives of someone who only has Folio books on view might be suspect. Those for whom reading is an important part of life may well hanker after something more in the way of the book beautiful than an airport bookstall or the stickered stacks of three-for-two can offer. It is not surprising that members of Folio and subscribers to Slightly Foxed are quite often one and the same. Like some hound of heaven, it is in unrelenting pursuit of quality, its books by the best authors old and new produced using the best methods old and new, and new illustrators too, striving to end up with the best that mind, hand and eye can do. The Folio Society was founded 65 years ago and has been gradually undergoing apotheosis into a National Treasure, to join Radio 4, the Proms, Alan Bennett and the London taxi. Some people are snooty about illustrating grown-up fiction, vapouring on about how their imaginations will generate all the ima It is like going to bed with an Elizabeth David cook book after dining off baked beans (four-volume boxed set, yours for £19.95 from Folio, as an introductory offer).Īnd then there are the pictures, and the designs on the bindings. There is anticipatory pleasure reading the litany of specifications in each year’s catalogue: ‘Quarter-bound cloth with Modigliani paper sides’, ‘Bound in blocked buckram’, ‘Set in Bembo, in Adobe Caslon, in Palatino’, even ‘in Elysium with Clairvaux display’. ![]()
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