Gabrielle Zevin is a hardcore Folio fan. ‘Every time I buy a Folio book, I think about keeping it for myself,’ she says. ‘I bought a copy of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca for my friend Rebecca’s 40th birthday. I bought the boxed His Dark Materials trilogy for my partner. And I bought The Tales of Beatrix Potter for a baby shower, and Murder on the Orient Express for my oldest friend’s birthday last year.’

Gabrielle won’t need to worry about giving away the next Folio volume to grace her shelves because it will be her own, the title that became a global sensation almost immediately upon publication in the summer of 2022. ‘As relatively young as Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is,’ she says, ‘it feels like an incredible honour to be included among their number.’

Gabrielle herself has contributed the introduction. ‘I feel like the introductions you write for your own books are much more difficult. I’d prefer to talk about someone else’s work,’ she says. And with Tomorrow, she wondered whether it was too soon. ‘Do I even have enough distance to undertake such a thing? And there’s the risk of self-mythologising. I’ve read a few authors’ introductions where the vibe is: “Well, wasn’t I just so wonderful to have written this book?” I hope to avoid that kind of thing – though I can’t say I fully did.’

Instead, Gabrielle’s introduction for Folio is as much a meditation on the emotional and financial highs and lows of the creative life as it is a peek into her writing process or a musing upon its themes. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is her tenth published novel. So while the book appeared to be an overnight success, it is, as she writes in the introduction, ‘the story of my own creative life, its slings and arrows, and what it has meant to make art in the 20 years since my first novel was published.’ The result is a striking, almost soul-baring, essay – pithy, funny and pointed.

Gabrielle admits that she didn’t know what she wanted to say until she sat down to write, and didn’t discuss it with the Folio team first. ‘Obviously, the introduction came out of the idea that there are people who think that Tomorrow is my first novel, when it’s actually my tenth. And I don’t think Tomorrow could have been written by someone who hadn’t been at it for a while.

‘I think it’s important to separate commercial success from artistic success, though it’s difficult for young artists to do. As I write in the introduction, sometimes a book succeeds because of a particular cultural moment. Sometimes a book is only interesting because it is successful, but not because it is essentially interesting. I wanted to unpack some of these ideas in this introduction.’

‘For example, a scene in a novel can be about someone not actually saying something. When I’m imagining a scene in a book, much of my time is devoted to what is not visually apparent. Game characters and movie characters have the burden of constantly doing and accomplishing things, but I think novels get closer to what it is to be a conscious thinking human.’ Tomorrow's legions of admirers – and new ones drawn to Folio’s fine edition – will readily agree.