Folio Society - Production Trends and Bindings

Production Trends and Bindings

The society issued its first three titles in 1947. In October of that year Tolstoy's Tales went on sale for sixteen shillings (this would have been about US$3.00 in 1947, or just over US$10.00 in 2011.) Tales was followed in November and December by George du Maurier's Trilby and a translation of Aucassin et Nicolette, establishing a pattern of monthly publication.

The company currently produces over 100 titles per year, including multi-volume sets. Most titles are produced digitally and printed using the offset method by printers in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and Spain. Between 1987 and 1991, The Folio Society produced a number of Folio Fine Editions, printed using the letterpress process (the method invented by Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-15th century). Starting in 2007, the company began using letterpress production for its series of limited editions of Shakespeare’s plays. The letterpress editions are hand-bound, a process which, according to 2008 Production director Joe Whitlock-Blundell, involves " ... about 12 people ... " and which is " ... slow, slow, slow ...”.

Until 1954, most Folio books were issued with printed dust jackets, but during the latter half of the 1950s coloured card slip cases were introduced, to protect the books and retain focus on the decorative bindings. Solander boxes are generally used to protect the limited editions.

Folio publications are printed in a range of formats (in 1951, for example, these included Royal Octavo, Medium Octavo, Crown Octavo and Demy Octavo) and custom sizes are also common. The most common material used for the bindings is buckram or a similar book-cloth, but there are many exceptions. Aluminium foil was used in the binding of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World in 1971 and vegetable parchment in the binding of Voltaire's The Calas Affair in 1994. More commonly, marbled papers (often produced by Ann Muir Marbling Ltd.) have been used for several volumes in recent years, either for endpapers or the board-papers of quarter bindings. Moiré silk (usually artificial) has also been used sporadically over the years as a binding material, and Leathers (vellum and goatskin) are sometimes used, chiefly for the more expensive editions.