The 100 Greatest Folio Society Books Ever Published
The 100 Greatest Folio Society Books Ever Published list provides a wide-ranging selection of fiction and non-fiction works for the FS enthusiast. The Folio Society is a London-based publisher that produces illustrated hardback editions of classic books. Each Folio edition features specially designed bindings and includes artist-commissioned illustrations or researched artworks and photographs. Most editions come with their own slipcase.
1. Metamorphosis and Other Stories
By Franz Kafka
The Metamorphosis is a novella by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915. It has been cited as one of the seminal works of fiction of the 20th century and is studied in colleges and universities across the Western ... More »
2. The Greek Myths
For a full appreciation of literature or visual art, knowledge of the Greek myths is crucial. In this much-loved collection, poet and scholar Robert Graves retells the immortal stories of the Greek myths. Demeter mourning her daughter Persephone, Icarus flying too close to the sun, Theseus and the ... More »
3. On the Origin of Species
On the Origin of Species, published on 24 November 1859, is a work of scientific literature by Charles Darwin which is considered to be the foundation of evolutionary biology. Its full title ... More »
4. Easy & Not So Easy Pieces
The Feynman Lectures on Physics is a 1964 physics textbook by Richard P. Feynman, Robert B. Leighton and Matthew Sands, based upon the lectures given by Feynman to undergraduate students at the ... More »
5. The Hobbit
The Hobbit, or There and Back Again, better known by its abbreviated title The Hobbit, is a fantasy novel and children's book by English author J. R. R. Tolkien. It was published on 21 September 1937 to wide ... More »
6. Slaughterhouse-Five
Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death (1969) is a satirical novel by Kurt Vonnegut about World War II experiences and journeys through time of a soldier named Billy Pilgrim. Ranked the 18th greatest English language novel of the 20th century ... More »
7. Walden
Walden (first published as Walden; or, Life in the Woods) is an American book written by noted transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau. The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and manual for self-reliance. First published in ... More »
8. I, Claudius
I, Claudius (1934) is a novel by English writer Robert Graves, written in the form of an autobiography of the Roman Emperor Claudius. Accordingly, it includes history of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty and Roman Empire, from Julius Caesar's assassination ... More »
10. The Odyssey
By Homer
The second half of Homer's epic work sumptuously bookcrafted by The Folio Society. Acclaimed translation by Robert Fagles, introduction by Bernard Knox, and illustrations by Grahame Baker. 688 pgs. More »
11. Short Stories By Ernest Hemingway
INCLUDES: INDIAN CAMP, THE DOCTOR AND THE DOCTOR'S WIFE, THE END OF SOMETHING, THRE THREE-DAY BLOW, THE BATTLER, BIG TWO-HEARTED RIVER: PART I, BIG TWO-HEARTED RIVER: PART II, NOW I LAY ME, IN ANOTHER COUNTRY, A WAY YOU'LL NEVER BE, A VERY SHORT STORY, SOLDIER'S HOME, CROSS-COUNTRY SNOW, ... More »
12. A History of the English-Speaking Peoples
A History of the English-Speaking Peoples is a four-volume history of Britain and its former colonies and possessions throughout the world, written by Winston Churchill, covering the period from Caesar's ... More »
13. The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a book of history written by the English historian Edward Gibbon, which traces the trajectory of Western civilization (as well as the Islamic and Mongolian conquests) from the height of the Roman Empire to the ... More »
14. Homage to Catalonia
Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell's personal account of his experiences and observations in the Spanish Civil War. The first edition was published in 1938. The book was not published in the United States until February ... More »
15. The Outsider
By Albert Camus
The Stranger or The Outsider (L’Étranger) is a novel by Albert Camus published in 1942. Its theme and outlook are often cited as exemplars of existentialism, though Camus did not consider himself an existentialist; in fact, ... More »
16. To the Lighthouse
To the Lighthouse is a 1927 novel by Virginia Woolf. A landmark novel of high modernism, the text, which centres on the Ramsays and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and ... More »
17. The Double Helix
The Double Helix : A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA is an autobiographical account of the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA written by James D. Watson and published in ... More »
18. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II
Braudel's first book, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II was his most influential. More »
19. The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings is an epic high fantasy novel written by English philologist and University of Oxford professor J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's ... More »
20. Life: A Natural History Of The First Four Billion Years Of Life On Earth
Life: A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth is a non-fiction book written by British paleontologist Richard A. Fortey. It was originally published in hardcover in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers, under the title Life: An Unauthorised Biography. Richard Fortey used this ... More »
21. Dracula
By Bram Stoker
Dracula is an 1897 Gothic horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker. Famous for introducing the character of the vampire Count Dracula, the novel tells the story of Dracula's attempt to move from Transylvania to England, and the battle between Dracula and a small ... More »
22. The Best of Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker (August 22, 1893 – June 7, 1967) was an American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th century urban foibles. From a conflicted and unhappy childhood, Parker ... More »
23. Democracy in America
"DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA is at once the best book ever written about democracy and the best book ever written on America."--from the PREFACE. These pages contain the timeless traveler's observations and refelctions of the French aristocrat, Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859). Orginally published by de Tocqueville in three volumes, ... More »
24. Brave New World
Aldous Huxley's most celebrated work and a classic science fiction. American Academy of Arts (1959) and Letters Award of Merit winner. Set in the London of AD 2540 (632 A.F. in the book) the novel about life in a scientifically-controlled utopian future where cloning is the primary means ... More »
25. Things Fall Apart
Things Fall Apart is an English-language novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe published in 1958. It is seen as the archetypal modern African novel in English, and one of the first African novels written in English ... More »
26. The History of the Peloponnesian War
By Thucydides
A plague so devastating it destroyed belief in the gods; prisoners of war worked mercilessly to death in stone quarries; statesmen debating the motives for military action with chilling pragmatism; coup leaders concealing the breakdown of values beneath a sickly veneer of spin . . . The horrors, ... More »
27. The Republic
By Plato
The Republic (Greek: Πολιτεία, Politeia) is a Socratic dialogue, written by Plato around 380 BC, concerning the definition of justice and the order and character of the just city-state and the just man. The dramatic date ... More »
28. The Twelve Caesars
De vita Caesarum (Latin, literal translation: About the Life of the Caesars) commonly known as The Twelve Caesars, is a set of twelve biographies of Julius Caesar and the first 11 emperors of the Roman Empire ... More »
29. Relativity
In physics and especially relativity, General Relativity is a popular textbook on Einstein's theory of general relativity written by Robert Wald. It was published by the University of Chicago in 1984. The book, a tome of ... More »
30. Anna Karenina
By Leo Tolstoy | Used Price: 50% Off
"Toltstoy towered above his age as Dante and Michelangelo and Beethoven had done above theirs." --Kenneth Clark ANNA KARENINA and WAR AND PEACE, Tolstoy's masterpieces, could not stand farther apart in narrative scale. The latter is an epic novel of Napoleonic-threatened Europe, the former a deeply-moving, tragic love ... More »
31. The Brothers Karamazov
The Brothers Karamazov (Russian: БратьÑ Карамазовы, Brat'ya Karamazovy), pronounced [ˈbratʲjÉ™ kÉ™rÉÂˈmazÉ™vɨ]) is the final novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Dostoyevsky spent nearly two years writing The Brothers Karamazov, which was published as a serial ... More »
32. Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot (/ˈɡɒdoÊŠ/ GOD-oh) is an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait endlessly and in vain for the arrival of someone named Godot. Godot's absence, as well as ... More »
33. The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy
No other work has had more impact on man's conception of the past than Jacob Burckhardt's The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy. The notion that between the 14th and 16th centuries in Italy a new and unique civilisation was born called 'the Renaissance' seems so familiar, it ... More »
34. The March Of Folly: From Troy To Vietnam
A meditation on the historical recurrence of governments pursuing policies evidently contrary to their own interests. In addition to the two historical events referenced in the title, discusses the Popes of the late Renaissance inciting the Protestant rebellion and Great Britain provoking the Americans to revolt. More »
35. The Second World War
The Second World War is a history of the period from the end of the First World War to July 1945, written by Winston Churchill. It was largely responsible for ... More »
36. Plutarch Lives
By Plutarch
Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, commonly called Parallel Lives or Plutarch's Lives, is a series of biographies of famous men, arranged in tandem to illuminate their common moral virtues or failings, written in the late ... More »
37. Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character is an edited collection of reminiscences by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Richard Feynman. The book, released in 1985, covers a variety of ... More »
38. History of Western Philosophy
A History of Western Philosophy is a 1945 book by philosopher Bertrand Russell. A conspectus of Western philosophy from the pre-Socratic philosophers to the early 20th century, it was criticised for its ... More »
39. Darkness at Noon
Darkness at Noon (German: Sonnenfinsternis) is a novel by the Hungarian-born British novelist Arthur Koestler, first published in 1940. His best known work, it is the tale of Rubashov, an Old Bolshevik who is arrested, imprisoned, ... More »
40. A Century of Conflict: 1848 -1948
Alan John Percivale Taylor, FBA (25 March 1906 – 7 September 1990) was a British historian who specialised in 19th- and 20th-century European diplomacy. Both a journalist and a broadcaster, he became well known to ... More »
41. Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales
Hans Christian Andersen (Danish: [ˈhanË€s ˈkÊÂæsdjan ˈɑnÉÂsnÌ©]; often referred to in Scandinavia as H. C. Andersen; April 2, 1805 – August 4, 1875) was a Danish author and poet. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and ... More »
42. The Wings of the Dove
By Henry James
The Wings of the Dove is a 1902 novel by Henry James. This novel tells the story of Milly Theale, an American heiress stricken with a serious disease, and her effect on the people around her. Some of these people befriend Milly with honorable motives, while others are ... More »
43. A History of Africa
By J. D. Fage
John Donnelly Fage (3 June 1921 – 6 August 2002) was a British historian noted for his work on African history. Fage was born at Teddington, Middlesex, England. He went to Cambridge University (Magdalene College) for his ... More »
45. All Quiet on the Western Front
All Quiet on the Western Front (German: Im Westen nichts Neues) is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran of World War I. The book describes the German ... More »
46. The Trial
By Franz Kafka
The Trial (Kafka's original German title: Der Process, later as Der Prozess, Der Proceß and Der Prozeß) is a novel written by Franz Kafka in 1914 and 1915 but not published until 1925. One of Kafka's best-known works, ... More »
47. The Best of Saki
By Saki
Hector Hugh Munro (18 December 1870 – 13 November 1916), better known by the pen name Saki, and also frequently as H. H. Munro, was a British writer whose witty, mischievous and sometimes macabre stories satirised Edwardian society and culture. He is considered ... More »
48. Animal Farm
Animal Farm is an allegorical and dystopian novel by George Orwell, published in England on 17 August 1945. According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and then on into the ... More »
49. Oscar and Lucinda
By Peter Carey
Oscar and Lucinda is a novel by Australian author Peter Carey which won the 1988 Booker Prize, the 1989 Miles Franklin Award, and was shortlisted for The Best of the Booker. More »
50. Midnight's Children
As new in slipcase. Absolutely FINE/FINE, all corners sharp w/out bumps. Price sticker remnant to bottom edge of slipcase (no paper missing). More »
51. A History of the Arab Peoples
A History of the Arab Peoples is a book written by the British-born Lebanese historian Albert Hourani. The book presents the history of the Arabs from the advent of Islam (although some pre-Islamic ... More »
52. Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Seven Pillars of Wisdom is the autobiographical account of the experiences of British soldier T. E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia"), while serving as a liaison officer with rebel forces during the Arab Revolt against ... More »
53. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
By Dee Brown
"One does not sell [or soak with blood] the earth upon which the people walk." - Crazy Horse . . . The massacre by United States soldiers of encamped Sioux at Wounded Knee is the culminating event in a barbarous and shameful catalog of war, slaughter, planned genocide, ... More »
55. Treasure Island
Stevenson's classic adventure, one of the best-loved children's stories of all time, is now available in a deluxe edition published by The Folio Society. Bound in full buckram, with a stunning gilt-embossed pictorial design on the front board, a gilt-lettered spine, Smyth-sewn binding, and 16 full-page color ... More »
56. The Prince
The Prince (Italian: Il Principe, [il ˈprin.tʃi.pe]) is a political treatise by the Italian diplomat, historian and political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli. From correspondence a version appears to have been distributed in 1513, using a Latin title, De Principatibus ... More »
57. Goodbye to All That
The autobiography of famous writer Robert Graves, expanded by the author with a prologue and epilogue. The book has an illustrated cover. More »
58. A Dance to the Music of Time
For the painting, see A Dance to the Music of Time (painting). A Dance to the Music of Time is a twelve-volume cycle of novels by Anthony Powell, inspired ... More »
59. 101 Stories
By O. Henry
This edition of O. Henry's stories was published by The Folio Society Ltd., London. It is a blue and tan cloth-bound hardcover book in a blue slipcase. The book was printed on Caxton-wove paper at St. Edmundsburgh Press, bound in London in cloth, and printed and blocked by ... More »
60. Heart of Darkness
This is the Folio Society reprint of the Heart of Darkness and Two Other Stories by Joseph Conrad. This edition is cloth and comes in the original sleeve. More »
61. The Histories
By Herodotus
More than anything, Herodotus' great book is a treasure-trove of wonders. The omens and oracles, fantastic tales and fables, told to him on his travels through Greece, Africa and the Near East, and faithfully recorded, once earned him the soubriquet the Father of Lies. Stories of Hippias, the ... More »
62. If this is a Man
By Primo Levi
If This Is a Man (first published in 1947 in Italian as Se questo è un uomo; United States title: Survival in Auschwitz) is a work by the Italian Jewish writer Primo ... More »
63. Nostromo
Nostromo is a 1904 novel by Polish-born British novelist Joseph Conrad, set in the fictitious South American republic of "Costaguana". It was originally published serially in two volumes of T.P.'s Weekly. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Nostromo 47th on its list of the ... More »
64. Paradise Lost
By John Milton
Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton (1608-1674). It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse. A ... More »
65. The Blue Fairy Book
By Andrew Lang
Andrew Lang's Fairy Books — also known as Andrew Lang's "Coloured" Fairy Books or Andrew Lang's Fairy Books of Many Colors — are a series of twelve collections of fairy tales, published between 1889 ... More »
66. Gulliver's Travels
Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships, better known simply as Gulliver's Travels (1726, amended 1735), is a novel by Anglo-Irish ... More »
67. The Remains of the Day
K asuo Ishiguro won the 1989 Booker Prize with this celebrated novel that movingly evokes the changing landscape - physical, political and emotional - of Britain between the wars. In 1956, Stevens, the ageing butler of Darlington Hall, borrows his employer's car for a summer motoring trip, but his ... More »
68. The Icelandic Sagas
The Sagas of Icelanders (Icelandic: ÃÂslendingasögur)—many of which are also known as family sagas—are prose histories mostly describing events that took place in Iceland in the 10th and early 11th centuries, during the so-called Saga Age. ... More »
69. The Diary of a Young Girl
By Anne Frank
The Diary of a Young Girl (also known as The Diary of Anne Frank) is a book of the writings from the Dutch language diary kept by Anne Frank while ... More »
70. To Kill A Mocking Bird
By Harper Lee
To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel by Harper Lee published in 1960. It was immediately successful, winning the Pulitzer Prize, and has become a classic of modern American literature. The plot and characters ... More »
71. A History of Chinese Civilisation
Jacques Gernet (born December 22, 1921, Algiers, French Algeria) is an eminent French sinologist of the second half of the 20th century. His best-known work is The Chinese Civilization, a 900 page summary of Chinese history and civilization ... More »
72. Travels with my Aunt
Travels with My Aunt (1969) is a novel written by English author Graham Greene. The novel follows the travels of Henry Pulling, a retired bank manager, and his eccentric Aunt Augusta as they find their way across Europe, and eventually even further afield. Aunt Augusta pulls Henry away ... More »
73. A Room With A View, Where Angels Fear To Tread, Maurice, The Longest Journey, A Passage To India, Howard's End
Books in great condition. Still in sleeve. Clean, tight pages and covers. More »
74. The Prince and the Pauper
By Mark Twain
The story of two boys (or girls)--one rich, one poor--exchanging places has become so familiar that we forget that the original tale was conceived, and brilliantly executed, by Mark Twain. THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER is a comic novel, an adventure novel, an historic novel--and a compassionate moral ... More »
75. The Blind Watchmaker
Bound in cloth, blocked and printed with a computer-generated image of a golden DNA double helix unwinding. Set in Sabon with Optima display. 384 pages; 24 pages of colour plates. 10½" × 6¼" In this award-winning, lucid and entertainingly written book, Richard Dawkins uses the great scientific discoveries of ... More »
76. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is a non-fiction book by William L. Shirer chronicling the general history of Nazi Germany from 1932 to ... More »
77. The Chronicles of Narnia
By C. S. Lewis
The Chronicles of Narnia is a series of seven high fantasy novels by C. S. Lewis. It is considered a classic of children's literature and is the author's best-known work, having sold over 100 ... More »
78. The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie
By Muriel Spark
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a short book by novelist Muriel Spark, the best known of her works. It first saw publication in The New Yorker ... More »
79. Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (commonly shortened to Alice in Wonderland) is an 1865 novel. Written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice who ... More »
80. Civilisation: A Personal View
Kenneth Clarke's eloquent and deeply personal documentary series exploring the cultural heritage of the western world, from the collapse of the Roman Empire until the birth of modernism, was groundbreaking television when first broadcast by the BBC in 1969. With its use of exotic locations, and its ... More »
81. The Mill on the Floss
By George Eliot
The Mill on the Floss is a novel by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), first published in three volumes in 1860 by William Blackwood. The first American edition was by Thomas Y. ... More »
82. The Qur'an
The Quran (literally meaning "the recitation", also transliterated Koran) is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims believe to be the verbatim word of God. It is widely regarded as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language. More »
83. Lord of the Flies
Lord of the Flies is a novel by Nobel Prize-winning English author William Golding about a group of British boys stuck on an uninhabited island who try to govern themselves with disastrous results. Its ... More »
85. Amerika
By Franz Kafka
Amerika, also known as The Man Who Disappeared (German: Der Verschollene), is the incomplete first novel of author Franz Kafka, published posthumously in 1927. The novel originally began as a short story titled The Stoker. The novel incorporates ... More »
86. The Plums of P.G. Wodehouse
Plum Stones is a collection of short stories by P.G. Wodehouse. All of the stories contain a different Character (such as Plum Pie).It was published after his death (in 1993) by Galahad books. It contains stories previously never ... More »
87. Gormenghast
By Mervyn Peake
The Gormenghast series comprises three novels by Mervyn Peake, originally published between 1946 and 1959. The series features Castle Gormenghast, and Titus Groan, the title character of the first book. A fourth book, written by Peake's widow, was ... More »
89. Enigma: The Battle for the Code
The complete untold story of the cracking of the infamous Nazi code Most histories of the cracking of the elusive Enigma code focus on the work done by the codebreakers at Bletchley Park, Britain's famous World War II counterintelligence station. In this fascinating account, however, we are told, for ... More »
90. Fables of Aesop
By Aesop
Aesop's Fables or the Aesopica is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and story-teller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BCE. Of diverse origins, the stories associated with Aesop's name ... More »
91. The Voyage of HMS Beagle
Journal of Researches into the Natural History and Geology of the Countries Visited Round the World under Captain Fitz Roy, R.N. This Edition reprints the 1860 text with minor emendations. This handsome collector's editiion of 518 pages has 36 pages of colour and black and white plates. Introduction ... More »
92. Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes
New, unread Folio Society hardcover in matching slipcase. Pristine gift condition. Contents are tight, bright and clean, free of any internal markings or personalizations. Not ex-library, not a book club, not a remainder More »
93. Ethics
By Aristotle
Aristotle (Ancient Greek: ἈÏÂιστοτÎλης [aristotélÉ›ËÂs], AristotélÄ“s) (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, ... More »
94. The Complete Prose of Woody Allen: Without Feathers, Getting Even, Side Effects
By Woody Allen
Getting Even (1971) is Woody Allen's first collection of humor short stories and plays. Most pieces were first published in The New Yorker between 1966 and 1971. More »
95. The Descent of Man
The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex is a book on evolutionary theory by English naturalist Charles Darwin, first ... More »
96. The Arabian Nights
One Thousand and One Nights (Arabic: كتاب ألÙ ليلة وليلةâ€Å½ KitÄÂb alf laylah wa-laylah) is a collection of West and South Asian stories and folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic ... More »
98. Pride and Prejudice
By Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice is a novel by Jane Austen, first published in 1813. The story follows the main character Elizabeth Bennet as she deals with issues of manners, upbringing, morality, education, and marriage in the society ... More »
99. Ulysses
By James Joyce
Ulysses is a novel by the Irish writer James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach ... More »
100. Memoirs of a Revolutionist
Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin (1842-1921) was born in Moscow to a prominent family of minor nobility. He was one of the world's foremost anarchistic communists. Kropotkin advocated a communist society, free from central government and based on voluntary associations between workers. In addition to his Memoirs, he wrote ... More »
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