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One Man’s Dream Becomes Reality

The Folio Society was set up in 1947 by Charles Ede, a young man who had returned from the Second World War with the dream of publishing beautiful books that would be affordable to everyone.

Ede had always loved art and before the war had considered working in the luxurious private press world - where men such as Eric Gill and William Morris had set new standards of design. But the war had changed him – he wanted beautiful books to be within the reach of everyone, and he could already see how fast publishing standards were declining.

He intended to set up a small private press, producing high-quality editions of books he loved in fresh designs, but at a price that was little more than that of an ordinary hardback. Other publishers tried – some gently, others outright – to tell him he was mad. Ordinary people, they insisted, didn’t want fine-quality books, and wealthy people wanted wall-to-wall leather classics, not original woodcuts illustrating Tolstoy.

The first years were ‘biblically lean’

Over time Charles Ede proved that people cared more for beauty and quality than pessimists believed, and that they were more adventurous as well. Sixty years later, the Society is still creating inspired designs for classic works in every subject area at remarkably affordable prices. We have published over 1,400 books, ranging from the first ever facsimile of the 17th-century artist Maria Sibylla Merian’s Surinam Album to commissioning an eyewitness history of Wellington’s campaigns in the Peninsular war and at Waterloo, and we have plans that will easily fill another 60 years of fine publishing!

Perhaps most importantly of all, those early books, produced in the face of post-war paper shortages and printing restrictions, reveal their quality today – the spines are unbroken, the paper still creamy and supple and the binding materials undamaged.