The New York Review of Books will launch a new trade paperback imprint in early September featuring reprints of notable literary titles.
The new imprint's first list will include 12 titles familiar to serious readers. Among them are Richard Hughes's A High Wind in Jamaica, Sylvia Townsend Warner's Lolly Willowes, Julio Cortázar's The Winners and Anton Chekhov's Peasants and Other Stories. Several dozen other novels and nonfiction titles have been lined up for rollout in the following months.
Edwin Frank, editor of the series, told PW, "Our goal is not to do standard classics, but to mine the past for those books that still have the capacity to challenge and are less well-known." Not all the books are out of print: some have been poorly distributed, and some are in the public domain.
Aimed largely at the college market, the books will be priced in the $13-$15 range, printed in runs of 5000-6000 copies and packaged in a uniform design by the firm of Red Can . Distribution will be by Midpoint Trade Books. The Review will also sell the books "through the paper," said Frank. "We are banking on authority of the Review."
The titles were chosen by Frank and publisher Rea Hederman and vetted by the editors of the NYRB, Jason Epstein and Robert Silver. Some of the book's introductions will be reprinted from earlier editions or newly commissioned, while others, such as Auden's for J.R. Ackerley's My Father and Myself, have been published in the NYRB.
