A post-war London venture built on illustrated editions.

The Folio Society was founded in London in 1947 by Charles Ede. When the Financial Times visited the company for its seventy-fifth anniversary, in an article by Helen Bain dated 12 December 2022, it summed up the founding idea in one line: Ede believed that commercial books could, and should, be produced to the highest standards. The company’s list is made of new editions of books already published, each designed, illustrated and bound for the purpose; Walker told the paper that with every such book “there’s a story”.

Ede did not start alone. English Wikipedia names two co-founders: Christopher Sandford, of the Golden Cockerel Press, and Alan Bott, the founder of Pan Books. It says the Folio Society and the Golden Cockerel Press shared premises in Poland Street, in Soho, until 1955.

From the start the company sold its books through a club. English Wikipedia says the Folio Society began as a membership-based book club, and that as the list grew, members were asked to commit to buying a set number of books each year. The Financial Times described the same model in 2022: for much of its history the company was structured as a membership business whose members had to buy a minimum number of books a year to keep their status. Folio books were, for decades, something one joined rather than browsed in a shop.

Illustration was part of the idea early on. The Financial Times noted that in 1948 the writer and artist Mervyn Peake illustrated a Folio edition of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and that in 1968 the painter Duncan Grant illustrated Folio’s edition of Monkey, the Chinese folk tale attributed to Wu Cheng’en. The same article mentions an edition of Tales from the 1,001 Nights carrying watercolours by Salvador Dalí from the 1960s, and Animal Farm illustrated by Quentin Blake in 1984.

The company has moved several times within London. English Wikipedia says it moved to Eagle Street in Holborn in 1994 and to new offices in 2017. The Financial Times described those later offices in 2022 as a 1930s warehouse in Bermondsey, with floor-to-ceiling shelves of the company’s editions. The company itself describes its workspace as being in Shad Thames.

Owners, a closed club and an employee trust.

English Wikipedia says the company was incorporated in 1971 and bought that year by John Letts and Halfdan Lynner, and that under their ownership it published collected novels of Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, Thomas Hardy, Elizabeth Gaskell and Joseph Conrad. It says Robert Gavron, later Lord Gavron, was owner and chairman from 1982, and that Lady Gavron later took over as chair, a role she held until 2021.

A major change to how the books were sold came in the 2010s. English Wikipedia says that from 2011 anyone could buy from the Folio list without committing to membership, and dates the end of the membership structure to 1 September 2016. The Financial Times tells the same story from inside the company. It quoted Joanna Reynolds, chief executive, who joined in 2016, saying the business needed a large change and had been operating rather like an old-fashioned book club. The paper said Reynolds ended the membership structure, and that the publishing director, Tom Walker, brought in new genres: science fiction, fantasy, romance and fiction for young adults.

That widening shows in the list. The Financial Times named editions of A Game of Thrones and a Marvel series among the titles that reached a younger and more international readership. English Wikipedia adds partnerships with Marvel and DC, and names George R. R. Martin, Madeline Miller and Stephen King among the authors whose books appear in Folio editions.

Ownership then passed to the staff. The Financial Times reported in 2022 that by 2021 Reynolds had made the Folio Society an employee-ownership trust, giving its employees full ownership of the company. English Wikipedia gives the same year. The company now describes itself on its website as an employee-owned, independent publisher that has served readers since 1947. The Folio Society has been employee-owned since 2021.

The way the books are sold has also narrowed to one channel. The company says its editions are available exclusively from Folio through its own website, to readers around the world. Since 2016, no membership has been needed to buy one.

The anniversary year added a public element. The Financial Times reported that in 2022 Folio held a public vote to choose one book for a special edition marking seventy-five years, and that readers chose The Neverending Story, Michael Ende’s 1979 novel about a book within a book. The same year, the paper said, the company began an annual search for new illustration talent, with shortlisted artists given a portfolio review by Folio’s art directors.

Colophons, spines and series.

A book publisher meets its readers mostly at the edge of a shelf, so much of its identity has to fit on a spine. The usual tool is the colophon, a small device printed at the foot of the spine and on the title page, together with the imprint’s name. Some publishers took that device from art history. Verso Books says that when New Left Books was launched by the journal New Left Review in 1970, it took as its logo the Tatlin Tower, the monument Vladimir Tatlin designed but which was never built. The name came from the book itself: the company describes Verso, launched as a paperback imprint at the end of the 1970s, simply as “the left-hand page”.

Other houses carry their identity in a series, or in the physical form of each edition. Verso grouped books under series names such as Haymarket, edited by Mike Davis and Michael Sprinker, inside one imprint. The Folio Society, founded in London by Charles Ede in 1947, took a different route: the Financial Times reported in 2022 that each Folio edition has its own artwork, typefaces, binding and introduction and comes in a bespoke slipcase or clamshell box, and English Wikipedia names binding designers such as Jeff Clements, Neil Gower and Neil Packer. When reading a publisher’s identity, look at the device on the spine, the way a series is named and grouped, and how much of the brand sits in the cloth, foil and case rather than in a logo.

Every edition as its own designed object.

The Folio Society’s identity sits less in a single logo than in the physical form of each book. The Financial Times wrote in 2022 that every Folio edition has its own original artwork, typefaces, binding and introduction, and is housed in a bespoke slipcase or clamshell box.

The paper described one edition closely. Folio’s illustrated Wolf Hall, published in October 2022, was bound in blue-and-gold blocked cloth with gilded edges, with full-page illustrations by the artists Igor & Marina. Walker told the paper that Hilary Mantel had been closely involved in its production and in how she wanted it to be represented. A photograph caption in the same article pointed to foil-blocked lettering on Folio’s 2022 edition of The Waste Land.

Craft techniques are part of the brand story the company tells. Kate Grimwade, production director, told the Financial Times that Folio uses many craftspeople who work by hand, including letterpress printers, hand-marblers and binders who work in leather or vellum, alongside digital techniques such as cold foiling, which can put several kinds of gold on one page. The company names its suppliers: Ludlow Bookbinders in Shropshire, Smith Settle in Yorkshire, the letterpress printer Phil Abel in London and the printer L.E.G.O. in Italy.

Named designers are credited on the bindings. English Wikipedia lists David Eccles, Jeff Clements, Neil Gower, Neil Packer and John Westwood among Folio’s binding designers, and captions a 2008 limited edition of Les Misérables as designed by Clements. The Financial Times reported that Packer spent two years illustrating Folio’s three-volume edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy, and that he designed covers for a planned edition of Shakespeare’s plays marking the 400th anniversary of the First Folio, using Tudor blackwork embroidery made by a small silk mill in Suffolk.

Illustrators carry the rest of the identity. The paper quoted Walker saying Folio gives artists free rein, and named Dave McKean, who illustrated Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy in 2022, and Paula Rego, whose etchings illustrate a Folio book of nursery rhymes. The company says its editors, art directors, designers and production controllers choose the typeface, paper and cover materials for each title.

For a design guide, the Folio Society shows how a publisher can make the edition itself the brand: cloth, foil, slipcase and commissioned illustration, varied from book to book but always treated as one designed object. Compare Thames & Hudson, another London house built on illustrated books, or Penguin Books. For this guide we use gilt, cloth blue and slipcase navy with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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