Books you're surprised Folio hasn't published

So, this is not a thread about which books you would like to see published by Folio. Rather, it's a thread about which books you consider automatic Folio material that haven't been published by the Society. That they are consistent with Folio's publishing, both then and now, and that would make financial sense.

These are the ones I think:

- The Cazalet Chronicles
- Under the Volcano
- Watership Down
- mysteries by Ngaio Marsh

Have you thought of any?

The rest of the Dune series. Part 1 clearly sells well. I don't have a clue why the series wasn't continued.

I'm surprised about a few authors that never got a Folio edition like Yukio Mishima, Jean Genet, and William S. Burroughs.

Has Folio ever published any Goldoni? Given the scope for illustrations I would have thought they would have been done in the fifties at least.

Not debating the merit, but being owned by a Socialist I'm shocked some books weren't printed. There are others that are rather common. But, when I really think about it, it really makes sense, since one is altered by their reading if they're actually reading...

The Federalist
The Theory of Moral Sentiments
Karl Marx
The Antiquities of the Jews
The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon
David Hume
John Locke
On Plymouth Plantation

Really, this is just pretty standard stuff that I would expect over time.

Flowers for Algernon
An Algernon Blackwood anthology
The Hyperion cantos
Lord Dunsany

>5 CobbsGhost: I would love a publication of The Theory of Moral Sentiments. They did publish a three-volume Wealth of Nations, which I have, but I seem to recall it not being a great seller.

The Exploits and Adventures of Brigadier Gerard by Arthur Conan Doyle.

I think I've said before but I'd love a limited edition of the Communist Manifesto - the book production itself would be an act of Banksyesque satire.

It's surprising (and disappointing) to me that the only Italo Calvino we've gotten is a collection of fairy tales he edited. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler seems like it would be a shoo-in for Folio.

Seems like there should be more J.G. Ballard than just The Drowned World. Still hoping for Concrete Island and High-Rise.

>10 SolerSystem: My favorite Calvino novel, and one I agree they should published.

Love in the Time of Cholera should have been released along with A Journal of the Plague Year.

>11 Shadekeep: FS also published Empire of the Sun.

Any of the works of Christopher Dawson

>12 HamburgerHelper: Ah, that's right. Still, I'd really like the ones I mentioned.

>6 ultrarightist: I agree on Lord Dunsany and Algernon Blackwood.

There's been an uptick in interest in weird literature classics the last few years and a lot of it is public domain. Lovecraft did well enough for Folio to bring it back into print and their horror section desperately needs new titles, especially titles that are outside of the ghost/gothic variety.

The Dunsany would fit into their apparent desire to focus more on fantasy but might appeal to the crowd wanting older classics that don't necessarily have some overexposed movie/TV tie-in.

The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon
The Christian Year-John Keble
Watership Down
The English Patient
Memoirs of a Geisha
Out of Africa
The Joy Luck Club
Stardust-Neil Gaiman
Good Omens-Neil Gaiman
The Graveyard Book-Neil Gaiman
The Custom of the Country-Edith Wharton
Dandelion Wine-Ray Bradbury
Alice Through the Looking Glass (to match the recent Alice in Wonderland
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Piranesi
More Dune.... just to name a few.

>15 NoBueno: I would suggest The Worm Ouroboros from E. R. Eddison as a title to do. If that sells well then they could also tackle the Zimiamvia trilogy.

Easton did The Worm Ouroboros and I feel that FS could do it very well.

Also, I continue to hope that FS will do The Kalevala at some point.

Flashman!

But seriously, Iris Murdoch's The Black Prince, Ronald Knox's Enthusiasms, Martin Amis' Money, Robert Caro's Path to Power and Arthur C. Clarke's The Fountains of Paradise.

>18 podaniel: yeah, Flashman is a notorious absence. I should have included it in my initial list.

>16 Lady19thC:

I believe Out of Africa was published.

Edit: See prospectus, 1980. It's a charming edition of Folio yesteryear.

Seems to me that this thread is already in danger of descending into wishlist territory rather than 'surprised hasn't published'. Indeed, there's quite a few books above where I'd have been very, even extremely in one or two cases, surprised if FS had published them!

1. The Harry Potter series.
2. Shogun or just more James Clavell.
3. Ancient Empires/Civilizations: The Samurai.
4. More Terry Pratchett.

>21 Willoyd: Maybe ten years ago some of these suggestions would have seemed beyond the pale, but not anymore, given some of their more recent offerings.

The Adventures of Tintin & Swiss Family Robinson

>21 Willoyd: I'm seeing some of the responses and, yes, there is some overlap with what people. so, I'll provide some rationale of my original responses:

- The Cazalet Chronicles: Folio has published other family sagas and romance-fleuves, like the Forsyte and Dance to the music of Time. Plus, Elizabeth Jane Howard introduced the Von Arnims in 2002.

- Under the Volcano: a twentieth century fiction classic by an English author. This is squarely in Folio territory.

- Watership Down: a very beloved book that intersects between children's fiction, fantasy, conservation, etc.

- Ngaio Marsh: the only of the grande dames of crime that hasn't been published by Folio.

- Flashman: though a tongue-in-cheek offering, it's on the line of Folio publishing Aubrey/Maturin, Sharpe and Hornblower.

Ruskin - Modern Painters
Marx - Capital
Leopold - Sand County Alamac
Thompson - Making of the English Working Class
Popper - The Open Society and Its Enemies

I suppose I ought to put my money where my mouth is...here's a few of my suggestions. I'm not saying that I necessarily want them published, but am surprised that they've never been done. Nothing recent: one gets into the realms of copyright etc.

James Baldwin: Another Country, Giovanni's Room
Saul Bellow: The Adventures of Augie March
Willa Cather: O Pioneers, My Antonia (and even The Song of the Lark to make up the trilogy)
Kate Chopin: The Awakening
Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man
William Faulkner: Absalom, Absalom!
Doris Lessing: The Golden Notebook
Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Love In The Time of Cholera
Carson McCullers: The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter
John Muir: My First Summer in the Sierra (and others)
John Steinbeck: Cannery Row etc.
Johanna Spyri: Heidi
Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle Tom's Cabin
Robert Penn Warren: All The King's Men
Patrick White: Voss
Virginia Woolf: The Waves (amongst others)
Emile Zola: La Bete Humaine, L'Assommoir, Au Bonheur des Dames (especially when it was featured on TV)

I'm surprised we haven't seen more literature from elsewhere in the world - India, Africa etc - but given FS's fairly dismal track record on that front, perhaps I shouldn't be. Most is fairly recent though, so again there may be rights issues, which is why none are listed above.

Plenty of others, but many of them getting into the realms of rights etc, so I can't say that I'm surprised they've not been published.

I don't know why they didn't publish the first Josephine Tey Alan Grant novel: "The Man in the Queue/Killer in the Crowd" when they did all the others.

Also, last two Ripley novels. My OCD is killing me on this one.

And given their penchant for books also published by Suntup: The Hannibal Lecter series.

More art volumes/monographs by Erwin Panofsky.

>15 NoBueno: Agreed

I'm surprised that FS has never published anything by Thomas Pynchon.

Some classics:

Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray
Flowers in the Mirror by Ju-chen Li
Ivanhoe by Walter Scott
Octopus and McTeague by Frank Norris
Flatland by Edwin Abbott
Cousin Bette by Honore de Balzac
Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
To Have and To Hold by Mary Johnston
Tom Brown's School Days by Thomas Hughes

In terms of SF, surprised they haven't published Stanisław Lem yet.

My tuppence worth:

Thomas Pynchon - V, Against the Day, Gravity's Rainbow......
Italo Calvino - Invisible Cities, If on a winter's night a traveller, Baron in the Trees
Knut Hamsun - Hunger
Orhan Pamuk - My Name is Red/Snow
Don Dellillo - Underworld, White Noise
G K Chesterton - The Napoleon of Notting Hill, The Man who was Thursday
Per Petterson - Out Stealing Horses
Iain Banks - The Bridge, Wasp Factory, The Crow Road
David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas
Stanislaw Lem - Solaris
Alfred Bester - The Stars my Destination
Willliam Gibson - Neuromancer
Robert W Chambers - The King in Yellow
Simon Singh - Fermat's Last Theorem

>33 BaronInTheTrees:

Simon Singh - Fermat's Last Theorem has already been published by FS?

Definitely agree on William Gibson but also "The Difference Engine".

Jung, Eliade, Campbell

>34 RogerBlake: Indeed you are right, Fermat's Last Theorem has been published, I should have checked.

>31 CJDelDotto: I’d be first in line for just about anything Pynchon.

>35 Inceptic: The Hero with a Thousand Faces would be a great fit for Folio. Approachable and important at the same time.

I would love to see Jung treated well also, but that would be difficult. The body of his work is both more extensive and less approachable. His more popular writings are very poor summaries of his thought, and much of his most important work is both highly technical and largely out of date with regard to details but still important both in the context of history of ideas and in philosophy.

>37 arpd71: With Pynchon, I wonder if there are rights issues. Alternatively, perhaps Pynchon doesn't want illustrated editions of his novels.

>39 CJDelDotto: I think Folio once acquiesced to an author with a ‘no illustrations’ rule. Was it with Suskind?

Alone In Berlin/Every Man Dies Alone was commercially successful in the UK I think, and seems like obvious Folio fodder.

The Shipping News also seems like an obvious choice, assuming rights could be secured.

The Mysterious Island by Verne is a lot of fun and would sit well alongside some other Vernes they have published.

I agree Ballard's oeuvre seems under-exploited.

And Walter Scott! I'd love to see an edition of Kenilworth--the original Game of Thrones.

The discussion in the Summer collection thread reminds me of Bonfire of the Vanities.

>40 dyhtstriyk: I believe it was Perfume, indeed by Suskind.

>40 dyhtstriyk: Yes, "Perfume".

>39 CJDelDotto: Or just Pynchon being Pynchon!

>39 CJDelDotto:

Pynchon doesn't even want to see himself rendered into reality, let alone anyone illustrate his books.

I've heard that Pynchon is an alias assumed by Kilgore Trout.