So much goes into making a Folio book special, but there’s one feature above all that the reader will connect to – the paper. At the turn of every page, the texture and shading needs to be just right. Which is why we source ours from a small number of European mills which consistently produce the highest quality papers.

Beyond the look and feel of the paper, another factor comes into our selection – now more than ever, Folio books are all produced from Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified paper. FSC certification shows that the paper comes from environmentally and socially responsible sources and is traceable right back to its origins.

The majority of our text papers, the ‘Abbey’ range, are produced at a paper mill in western Sweden which has more eco credentials than I ever knew existed: FSC, PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification), Nordic Swan … the list goes on.

Paper-making requires a lot of water. This mill uses a local source and a system that requires much less water than the industry average. What’s more, less energy is used to heat the water and less water needs to be purified. And while huge machines churn all day and night to produce thousands of tonnes of paper a year on a vast scale, at the end of it is this surprising scene.

These sets of ponds are part of the mill’s water purifying system where the water is returned to the original river from which it is taken. The result is a home to fish, frogs and crustaceans, and the water is fit for human consumption.

When selecting FSC paper for our titles, the actual ingredients of these papers can be quite surprising. The flecked Favini paper used for Matthew Richardson’s striking binding design for The Outsider contains algae harvested annually from the Venice lagoon, which not only helps to prevent the lagoon from clogging up and damaging its fragile ecosystem, it also cuts down on the amount of pulp used to produce
the paper.

Some of the other remarkable ‘eco’ papers in this range contain waste matter from the processing of lemons, apples, oranges and grapes. Maybe it is time for a reissue of Cider with Rosie, or The Grapes of Wrath, perhaps, all bound up in a suitable vintage?

I have been extremely fortunate in the last few months to work with Margaret Atwood on the new Folio edition of her novel, The Handmaid’s Tale. And even more so to have the chance to interview her about the book, its illustrations and a few other issues I hope you’ll find interesting. So, here it is…

Firstly, my colleague Johanna gave you a copy of the new Folio edition of The Handmaid’s Tale – what did you think?

This is a truly stunning version. Everyone who has seen it is smitten with it.

Many authors struggle with the stasis of artistic representations of their characters as opposed to the fluid imaginative creations of readers’ responses. Handmaid’s Tale has been visualised many times – in film, opera and now by the Balbussos – do you find this an enjoyable part of your book’s legacy?

Well, it may be a bit soon to start talking about legacies – that word reminds me of the will-reading scenes in Agatha Christie murders – but it’s telling that so many people have given physical shapes to the characters in the book. It means that the narrative resonates with them. We’ve even seen people dressing up as Handmaids in protest demonstrations.

What can an author learn about their characters in their new incarnations and visualisations?

If the incarnations are good, they can open up parts of the text in ways you as the author may not have anticipated. Who could have imagined an operatic aria sung on the theme of the menstrual cycle?

Do you think there is a ‘should’ when it comes to illustrating fiction? Should it be simply decorative? Or atmospheric? Or delve deeper into the artist’s own interpretations?

Like a lot of people my age, I came in contact early with Arthur Rackham illustrations, Arabian Nights illustrations, older Grimms illustrations, Kate Greenaway books, pre-Raphaelite illustrations to such things as Tennyson’s Idylls of the King . . . And I’ve done some illustrating myself, and partnered with artists, most notably Charles Pachter, who did several handprinted books of my poetry. The Journals of Susannah Moodie is particularly amazing.

The Journals of Susannah Moodie

The illustrations have to have their own life. They are what happens when text encounters the artist’s imagination and something is ignited. Unless the artist feels an inner connection with the core of the work, the pictures will be merely decorative and somehow flat. When ‘inspiration’ happens – when the artist “breathes in” the work – then a new being will emerge.

In your new introduction to the Folio edition you wrote that ‘Those who lack power always see more than they say’. Is some (of your) fiction more predisposed to being illustrated?

Novels and stories can have a strong visual element, or not. Some texts are musical rather than visual. But really the illustrations and their strength depend on the artist – not the text.

When we worked together on The Handmaid’s Tale we found some textual discrepancies between various editions. Can you tell us a little about your process of revising manuscripts?

It’s so far back I can hardly remember, but in those days editions came out in different countries at different times, and thus went through two editorial processes. The US one was later. I think they found some typos, but also they put in some changes that – when we went over it again – didn’t make a lot of sense to me. Those might have been new typos.

 I think we caught everything this time!

I see you’re closely involved in the campaign to prevent library closures in Canada (an increasingly big issue in the UK also) – can you tell us more about that?

(Long story. Too long for here.) Libraries that make books and newspapers and internet access accessible to the general public are one of the foundations of a functioning participatory democracy.

What are your thoughts on the importance of the book as an object, versus etexts? Are they mutually compatible in the long run?

The neurology is different. We will obviously end up with both. Anything you want to keep should exist in physical form, because one big solar flare or other electromagnetic pulse, and boom – there goes your e-data. A change in technology can quickly make your data inaccessible, too . . . Look at floppy disks.

Finally, what books would you like to see Folio to publish in the future?

Of mine? Oryx and Crake, definitely. I think an illustrator could have a field day with it.

On 7 February Charles Dickens turns 200. This anniversary has already spawned a deluge of television and radio adaptations of his books, exhibitions, numerous articles in the media, reissues and rethinkings of his work as a whole, and stunning new biographies from Claire Tomalin and Robert Douglas-Fairhurst. Yet for all that we are reading about Dickens, how much are we still actually reading him, and why?

It isn’t that impossible now, in our celebrity-driven age, to imagine the level of national mourning at Dickens’s relatively early death in 1870, aged 58. The self-styled ‘Inimitable’ had put himself and his social concerns into almost every aspect of his writing: the bright boy removed from school and sent to a factory to support his father’s life in the debtors’ prison became a man constantly in dread of poverty who drove himself punishingly onwards and upwards. From the first, wildly popular novel in serialisation, Pickwick Papers, to the last, hauntingly unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Dickens’s love of theatre, of character, his relish at life itself shine out. Indeed, the fact that he embarked on long sell-out tours where he recreated his most famous characters onstage contributed to his worsening health, as did the mystery at the heart of Dickens’s existence – the generous family man, holding his household in thrall to his image, who nevertheless banished his long-suffering wife when he fell in love with a young actress.

I read recently that every Dickens novel has been adapted for the screen at least twice. But watching some of these superb realisations of the novels always sends me back to the books. We are currently living through a supposed new age of austerity and political unrest – exactly what Dickens was writing about in Bleak House following the so-called ‘Hungry Forties’; and, in an era when we are as consumed by money – or the lack of it – as ever, there can be no more powerful novel of a young man’s aspiration and obsession than Great Expectations, or the looming horror of bankruptcy prevalent in Little Dorrit. Dickens has his detractors. Multiple projects meant that his novels can seem rushed, overloaded with caricature and with weakly developed female roles. Yet his indefatigability and energy, his sense of plot and atmosphere remain intact. ‘Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show,’ is the opening line of Dickens’s most autobiographical novel, David Copperfield. It could be Dickens’s own personal credo.

Illustration by Ben Cain, from The War of the End of the World

When an illustrator interprets a text it is assumed that the end result should match the author’s description. So if the text says that someone’s hair is red you expect to see red hair – it is indeed a major feature of Ben Cain’s illustration from The War of the End of the World.

However, illustrations are not support mechanisms that simply confirm what has been written. The “illustrate what you read” approach works in certain cases, such as in children’s books, where it can be a useful teaching and learning aid. Mature readers do not require such affirmation, and this allows the illustrator to take artistic license . . . within reason.

Of course, there are are instances where it is important that the images do not stray from the text. When dealing with fact-based books, it is important to get such details as accurate as possible: maps, charts, graphs, documents historical/period costume, mathematical and scientific equations.

To achieve accuracy, the illustrator will send in a ‘rough’ (a sketch) to show how they have interpreted the text. For maps, say, prior research would have been done and an extensive brief sent to the cartographer. What is produced is then thoroughly checked by the editor, the author and, occasionally, experts in the field. With more interpretive illustrations, sketches are done and texts re-read to compare against the image prior to approval and proceeding to final artwork.

Fiction is naturally more open to interpretation. We recently published the Ripley trilogy by Patricia Highsmith with illustrations by Tom Burns, who works in collage. His wonderful images are a juxtaposition of realistic images placed within imaginative settings and moods. Tom needed to be accurate with maps, period costume and language yet remain true to his style.

The illustration below originally showed a telegram written in French. Close to final artwork it was noted that, while Highsmith never specified the language, the telegram should in fact be in Italian. This was corrected and changed, then re-checked. Finally a decision was made to take out the date so as not to show a time and day but rather left for the reader and text to affirm.

Illustrations by Tom Burns, from The Talented Mr Ripley

The artists are helped through the commissioning process by working closely with the Art Director and editors to ensure accuracy. But in the end the illustrator’s job is to enhance the atmosphere which writers like Highsmith so deftly capture through words. 

© Bernard Edmaier

Picture researching The Earth.

Picture research by its very nature takes you on many extraordinary journeys and the research we undertook to illustrate The Earth, An Intimate History was no exception. This is a remarkable book that explores our planet geologically, historically and culturally. The pictures had to match the breadth of the subject matter.

You have to adjust your mind to the vastness of geological time as Richard Fortey’s narrative explains why continental plates shift and vast mountain ranges exist. He plunges us into the icy depths of dark oceans to grub around amongst the ancient debris, the secrets of the sea floor.

© Bernard Edmaier

And he invites us to climb high, as the Victorian smart set once did, to peer into an active volcano…

To do visual justice to this text a wide array of images had to be found. I was amazed when I first saw the work of Bernard Edmaier, who is not only a fantastic photographer but a geologist too – top that! His powerful images were just perfect for this project and they were used throughout the book and to best effect as full-page chapter frontispieces.

I was lucky to be able to work closely with the author, who, along with his wife Jackie were generous with both their time and their address book. This gave access to some of the more obscure scientific research sources.

Professor Deborah Kelley of the Oceanography Department of the University of Seattle duly provided her arresting underwater photograph of a carbonated pinnacle, forming a hydrothermal vent, which is poetically entitled Lost City.

Primary sources worldwide were trawled to find diverse and vital pictures such as the resplendent chieftain’s feather cape from Honolulu Academy of Arts. At Scripps Institution of Oceanography I found a truly amazing scanning electron micrograph of fossilised remains of radiolarian skeletons from the late Miocene age, which was taken at a mere 656 feet underwater and at a mind blowing x600 magnification.

© akg-images

Historical and cultural sources abound including Athanasius Kircher’s stunning seventeenth-century cross section of the earth as he understood it to be.

Included are some revealing portraits of the scientists who fought and argued and painstakingly pieced together the fragments of geological evidence to give us the foundations of our geological understanding today. From the files of the Swiss Federal Institute’s archive ETH – Bibliotek we plucked the most sublime portrait of Albert Heim. It shows him almost embedded in folding rock face, holding tight his tiny geological hammer in one hand.

Next time the earth moves for you it is thanks to him and his ilk that you know why.

Christmas is coming … again, along with all its traditions, for which we can largely thank the Victorians. It was not until a picture appeared of Victoria and Albert, surrounded by family, beside a decorated tree that we all wanted one, big or small, in a corner of our room. And likewise it was that great icon of Victorian literature, Dickens, who gave us so many wonderful Yuletide moments – most obviously, of course, A Christmas Carol. However, in these times of austerity, it is perhaps now, more than ever, that we need our favourite literary Christmas scenes to help get us in the proper festive mood. And so I have been asking my colleagues for theirs.

Johanna Geary, senior editor and aficionado of children’s literature, has chosen the wonderful How the Grinch Stole Christmas! by Dr Seuss. It is a great commentary on what Christmas is really all about – without the soppy stuff – and contains the inimitable line: ‘Then he got an idea! An awful idea! The grinch got a wonderful, awful idea!’

 Editor Alice Brett has chosen The Father Christmas Letters by J. R. R. Tolkien; a beautiful book published a couple of years after Tolkien’s death and containing letters which he’d written to his four children ‘from’ Father Christmas between 1920 and 1943. He updates them on happenings at the North Pole and the antics of his trusty polar-bear chums and elvish staff.

Illustration by Katherine Streeter, from 'Oscar and Lucinda'

Our Publisher, Catherine Taylor, has opted for Susan Cooper’s brooding, atmospheric The Dark is Rising, the second book in her acclaimed series. The novel describes how Will Stanton, seventh son of a seventh son, finds himself embroiled in a battle between the light and the dark which takes place in the dying days of the old year.

James Matthews, non-fiction editor, has chosen a scene from Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda in which a demonic Christmas pudding results in a wallop for Oscar: ‘His father said the pudding was the fruit of Satan. But Oscar had tasted the pudding. It did not taste like the fruit of Satan.’

Christmas would not be complete without a good mystery, and editor Mandy Kirkby has suggested the festive Sherlock Holmes short story ‘The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle’. A classic piece of detective work finally leads Holmes to uncover the missing jewel (the titular blue carbuncle) in the crop of a Christmas goose.

My own personal favourite is a scene in the marvellous Wind in the Willows where some field-mice with ‘red worsted comforters round their throats, their fore-paws thrust deep into their pockets, their feet jigging for warmth’ arrive to sing carols to Mole and Ratty before being ushered in to partake of a festive feast.

And finally Neil Titman, our Managing Editor, notes that there is still debate as to whether or not the timing of Christmas is in fact derived from the Roman Saturnalia, the December festival which involved extensive feasting and the temporary freedom of slaves. In his 18th Epistle the dramatist and Stoic philosopher Seneca describes the carousing of the masses with indignation, and advises his addressee, Lucilius, that ‘It shows much courage to remain dry and sober when the mob is drunk and vomiting.’ He even goes so far as to say, ‘Once December was a month; now it is a year.’ Sound familiar?

But these are clearly just glimpses of the scenes which make the editorial team smile, which amuse and remind us of the festive season. But the question we all wish to ask is: What are your favourite literary Christmas moments?

What is it about Christmas – traditionally the haven of goodwill, togetherness, charity and abundance – that makes us turn to the supernatural? Is it because the shortest day has passed, and in the Christian calendar the bitter penitence of Advent has turned to joyous celebration? T. S. Eliot touched obliquely on this complexity in his poem ‘The Journey of the Magi’, where a witness to the birth of Jesus Christ, in a symbolic foretelling of the Crucifixion to come, soberly likens the whole event to a kind of death.

Illustration by Abigail Rorer, from 'Dracula'

The Winter Solstice, or Yule, which falls this year on 22 December, is one of the oldest winter celebrations, and is a hinge of the year, between this and other worlds. So it is appropriate that as the days grow increasingly shorter, the season is ripe for horror tales. In a paradoxical way we ward off the darkness by scaring ourselves silly.

The Victorians were especially good at this setup, having practically invented the kind of Christmas we know today, complete with fir tree, log fire, plum pudding and party games. Charles Dickens, who, with A Christmas Carol, penned perhaps the most famous Christmas ghost story ever, liked nothing better than to organise huge convivial gatherings laced with spooky tales. Here at the Folio Society we’ve been exploring this theme for several years.

M. R. James, provost of King’s College, Cambridge, is now far better known for his ghost stories than for his academic work, a writer who put unease into everyday occurrences; Bram Stoker’s Dracula is highly melodramatic, violent and lustful as well as heart-poundingly, intricately plotted.

Illustration by Finn Campbell-Notman, from 'In a Glass Darkly'

His fellow Dubliner, Sheridan Le Fanu, preceded Stoker’s better-known vampire tale with his own, the languid ‘Carmilla’, written some twenty years before Dracula – a story which appears in In A Glass Darkly, this year’s terror offering from Folio.

The blandness of the Twilight brand aside, it seems we can’t get enough of vampire tales, and for Christmas 2012, Folio will be publishing the first ‘proper’ vampire story ever written, together with some masterpieces of Gothic short fiction. But my preferred spine-chiller for any Christmas past, present and future, best taken with a snifter of port and lemon, is Henry James’s psychological novella The Turn of the Screw, in which the ambiguous narrator, a young, isolated governess, is, according to interpretation, either subject to hallucinations or is herself possessed. A work that shows the late Victorians’ deep interest in psychical research and, to quote James himself, communicates his idea of a ghost story as ‘the strange and sinister embroidered on the very type of the normal and easy’. Its cool menace lingers disturbingly in the mind – whatever time of year you happen to read it.