Forthcoming and Recent Publications
Just released:
Arion Press is publishing a two-volume edition of Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes's comic masterpiece, the precursor of the modern novel, in the acclaimed new translation by Edith Grossman. This 576-page volume will be illustrated with more than eighty full-page prints by artists William T. Wiley, who has also designed the cover emblem. This is one of the most ambitious undertakings in the thirty-five-year history of the Press, comparable to our editions of Moby-Dick and Ulysses. Book I has been released in November 2009. Typesetting for Book II will begin soon, so the second volume will be released in early 2010.
The edition is limited to 400 numbered copies for sale, signed by the artist. Price: $2,000 per volume, for a total of $4,000 for the two-volume set.
Also published in Novembe 2009r, I Love My Love, a ballad by Scottish-born San Francisco poet Helen Adam, based on a traditional Celtic interpretation of the Medusa theme. The book will feature sixteen prints by artist Kiki Smith, derived from her own hair. This is an optional publication, outside of the regular subscription series.
Sample page from I Love My Love
The book is a 14” square accordion-fold format, of eighteen panels, with Japanese cloth over boards. The edition is limited to 75 numbered copies for sale, signed by the artist. Price: $5,000. Subscribers are entitled to a 20% discount. Read more.
Future projects include an edition of Sappho's poetry in Greek with English translations, with art by Julie Mehretu; South of Heaven by Jim Thompson, with illustrations by Raymond Pettibon; and Book II of Don Quixote.
Recent Publications:
Mrs. Bridge by Evan S. Connell is a quiet masterpiece of mid-twentieth-century fiction, and this edition celebrates its fiftieth anniversary. A novel of the American heart-land, it takes up familiar themes, set in a comfortable middle-class Midwestern family in the decades before World War II. At the same time, it is experimental in form, a work that unobtrusively advances the art of the novel. The book includes 68 photographs, half duo-tone and half color, by Laurie Simmons, a leading American artist who uses photography to explore the role of women in the domestic sphere.
The Nachman Stories by Leonard Michaels brings together for the first time in a single volume the stories featuring the Los Angeles mathematician Raphael Nachman as their hero. The edition is introduced with critical essays by Robert Pinsky and Diana Ketcham and a biographical essay by Robert Hass and Morton Paley, Michaels's colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley. The book contains nine photographic portraits of the author, taken over the course of his career as a writer, between 1962 and 1995. Read more.
The Structure of Rime brings together for the first time all of the prose-poems in this acclaimed series by San Francisco poet Robert Duncan. The book is augmented with three etchings by California artist Frank Lobdell, who knew the author, as well as two photographic portraits of Duncan. The edition includes two black-and-white Lobdell etchings on the front and back cover of the book and a signed and numbered Lobdell etching accompanying the book that is suitable for framing. Read more.
Tono-Bungay, H. G. Wells' great 1908 novel, is a satire uncannily predictive of today's financial disorders. In his introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of 2005, Edward Mendelson writes that this book "is Wells's masterpiece. It is a profoundly unsettling novel, epic in scope and encyclopedic in content." Despite its serious nature, Tono-Bungay is highly entertaining. The title is the brand-name of a patent-medicine concocted by Edward Ponderevo, the uncle of the narrator George Ponderevo. The story is clearly based on the history and phenomenal commercial success of Coca-Cola. Like Coke, Tono-Bungay is not entirely good for you.
The Arion Press edition features fourteen psychological portraits of the main characters by Stan Washburn. It also features fanciful advertisements, one of the book's most important themes. Wells had drawn his own sketches for ads for Tono-Bungay, which were reproduced in the first edition of the book. For the Arion edition, publisher Andrew Hoyem and Roy Folger expanded on these to create twenty advertisements for Tono-Bungay and other quack medicines. Published July, 2008. Read more.
Sampler, a selection of poetry by Emily Dickinson that is accompanied by more than 200 images by eminent American artist Kiki Smith (photo at right, shown at the Arion Press). The Arion edition of 200 poems by the great 19th century American poet Emily Dickinson has prints by Smith on every page. A separate print features a portrait of the poet. The title refers to a sampling from Emily Dickinson’s more than 1,700 poems, as well as to Kiki Smith’s inspiration in embroidered samplers.
In preparation for her work on Dickinson, Smith studied 18th and 19th century American samplers in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco. Her imagery is evocative both of American textiles and of the New England flowers that were important to Emily Dickinson in her avocation as a gardener and her art as a poet. Sampler is printed in two colors on hand-made paper specially commissioned for this project. Published December, 2007. Read more.
The Boobus and the Bunnyduck, a deluxe facsimile of a unique artist book by the artist known as Jess. In 1957, the poet Michael McClure's story for his young daughter was read by the artist Jess Collins, a family friend. Jess hand-lettered the story and illustrated it with 28 richly patterned crayon drawings. This full-scale facsimile has been published for the first time after fifty years as an accordion fold book, with a box, in an edition of 100.
Jess's lavish crayon illustrations would have been impossible to reproduce accurately prior to the recent development of high-resolution inkjet printers and computer color correction. Even the best color printing by offset lithography would have paled beside the original and would have been prohibitively expensive for trade publication. So it is that fifty years after its creation this wonderful, artful book can be offered to our collectors and those individuals and institutions collecting the work of Jess. Published December, 2007.
The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot. Arion Press has published the first illustrated edition of Eliot's classic, with an essay by eminent poetry critic and Harvard professor Helen Vendler. The illustrations are from R. B. Kitaj’s painting influenced by Eliot’s poem, entitled “If Not, Not.” The original is in the National Gallery in Edinburgh. This great painting, with its literary allusions, has also inspired a tapestry that hangs at the entrance to the British Library in London. Kitaj, like Eliot, is a Midwestern-born American who has spent most of his career in London. Published September, 2007. SOLD OUT.
Journey Round My Room, the late 18th century French classic by Xavier de Maistre, is accompanied with art by New York architect Ross Anderson. Written while the author was confined to his room for 42 days as punishment for dueling, the book presents the author's imaginary journey exploring the limits of his surroundings. Ross Anderson’s sixteen photographs depict small models of the room, its furnishings, and the author’s travelling coat. A small number of copies are accompanied by a unique architectural box. Published May, 2007.
Godot is a staging in pictures of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot by William T. Wiley, with notes by the artist, an introduction by David Littlejohn, and a synopsis of the play. In honor of the hundredth birthday of the playwright, artist William T. Wiley has imagined the world of Beckett’s characters in 52 prints in black, blue, and yellow. This artist book is accompanied by a copy of the play in the bilingual edition published by Grove Press. Published December, 2006.
A Day in the Bleachers by Arnold Hano, is an account of the first game of the 1954 World Series between the New York Giants and the Cleveland Indians. Hano recalls the excitement of witnessing the famed catch by Willie Mays, regarded as one of the finest players ever to have played the game. With illustrations by New Yorker artist Mark Ulriksen. Published September, 2006.
The Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin. 
Commonly known as The Autobiography, the Arion edition has been published in celebration of the three-hundredth anniversary of Franklin's birth. It is the first use of an historic American typeface, Binny & Ronaldson's Roman No. 1 (c. 1800), as recreated in digital form by Arion Press and named Aitken for Robert Aitken, the famous printer during the Revolution, and his daughter Jane Aitken, printer of the first American translation of the Bible (1808). Published June, 2006.
Arion Press designs Ansel Adams classic
Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail
In a special arrangement with Little, Brown and Company, Arion Press has produced a new deluxe edition of a landmark book in photography, the 1938 limited edition of Ansel Adams’ Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail. Newly designed by Andrew Hoyem, hand set and printed by letterpress, this large-scale folio edition, in a slipcase, is limited to 500 copies and priced at $1,200. Published fall 2006, a very limited number of copies are available through Arion Press. A trade edition is also available at $50.
Prints and Portfolios
Many recent books are available with separate editions of prints and portfolios.
Folio Bible
The Arion Press folio Bible has been printed and bound. Orders are being accepted for the edition, limited to 400 copies for sale, at prices ranging from $7,250 to $11,000, depending on the choice of binding style and whether the red initial letters at the beginning of each book of the Bible are illuminated.
This is the largest printing and publishing project ever undertaken by Arion Press. The Bible was designed by publisher Andrew Hoyem and set in type, printed, illuminated, and bound entirely in-house by a team of experienced craftspeople at the Press's historic facility in San Francisco.
The translation is the New Revised Standard Version, which is sponsored by the National Council of Churches, and presents current biblical scholarship in language that honors the King James Version yet is clearly understandable by contemporary readers. The folio format is intended for liturgical use in church services as well as for the collections of individuals and libraries. In the tradition of grand printed Bibles, it is a monument to the scriptures and to fine typography and bookmaking. Read more.
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THE ARION PRESS
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San Francisco, California 94129
Telephone: 415-668-2542
Fax: 415-668-2550
E-mail: arionpress@arionpress.com
In the Media
More than Words
"Andrew Hoyem believes that when books are concerned, style can enhance substance – that riveting tales and profound truths benefit from refined presentations. At Arion Press, his San Francisco publishing house, he employs the centuries old letterpress method of printing because it imparts a three-dimensional quality to the ink, and the cotton paper that he prefers feels more like a fine shirt than the product of wood pulp. The appeal of a freshly printed Arion Press book extends to its aroma, which mingles the scents of ink, goatskin, and rag paper."
– Jack Kelly, Robb Report, July 2006
Catching Up
"A Day in the Bleachers is Arnold Hano's account of the first game of the 1954 World Series between the New York Giants and the Cleveland Indians. Deep in the Polo Grounds' cavernous center field that day, the Giants' Willie Mays made a miraculous catch followed by an even more impressive throw to second. An instant legend, it's been known since as 'The Catch.' Now, in time for the 2006 World Series the book has been lovingly republished by Arion Press in a hand-hewn, signed limited edition of 400."
– Heidi Benson, "Catching Up:
Some Diamonds Really Are Forever", San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 17, 2006