New York Review Books

New York Review Books publishes NYRB Classics, NYRB Collections, NYRB Lit, NYRB Poets, and The New York Review Children’s Collection.

NYRB Classics
The NYRB Classics series is designedly and determinedly exploratory and eclectic, a mix of fiction and non-fiction from different eras and times and of various sorts. The series includes nineteenth century novels and experimental novels, reportage and belles lettres, tell-all memoirs and learned studies, established classics and cult favorites, literature high, low, unsuspected, and unheard of. NYRB Classics are, to a large degree, discoveries, the kind of books that people typically run into outside of the classroom and then remember for life.

Inevitably literature in translation constitutes a major part of the NYRB Classics series, simply because so much great literature has been left untranslated into English, or translated poorly, or deserves to be translated again, much as any outstanding book asks to be read again.

The series started in 1999 with the publication of Richard Hughes’s A High Wind in Jamaica and by the end of 2009, over 260 titles will be in print. NYRB Classics includes new translations of canonical figures such as Euripides, Dante, Balzac, and Chekhov; fiction by modern and contemporary masters such as Vasily Grossman, Mavis Gallant, Daphne du Maurier, Stefan Zweig, and Upamanyu Chatterjee; tales of crime and punishment by George Simenon and Kenneth Fearing; masterpieces of narrative history and literary criticism, poetry, travel writing, biography, cookbooks, and memoirs from such writers as Norman Mailer, Lionel Trilling, and Charles Simic; and unclassifiable classics on the order of J. R. Ackerley’s My Dog Tulip and Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy. Last fall we published series’ first graphic novel, Poem Strip by Dino Buzzati, translated into English for the first time. A few of our 2010 publishing highlights are Olivia Manning’s epic work Fortunes of War: The Balkan Trilogy; Jean Stafford’s coming of age novel The Mountain Lion; William Lindsay Gresham’s noir masterpiece, Nightmare Alley; and The Road, the first English language translation of selected writings by Vasily Grossman.

Published in handsome uniform trade paperback editions, almost all NYRB Classics feature an introduction by an outstanding writer, scholar, or critic of our day. Taken as a whole, NYRB Classics may be considered a series of books of unrivaled variety and quality for discerning and adventurous readers.

What the press has said about NYRB Classics…

“The series…. specializes in one-offs rather than oeuvres, in pleasures rather than obligations. The classics of NYRB Classics are not classics in the sense that they are canonical; they are classics in the sense that they have no reason for being revived other than that they are somehow still alive, and so constitute a canon all their own.”— Tom Junod, Esquire

“…I would like to have the feeling that I am discovering lost treasures, even though these treasures have been necessarily dug up by someone else…. And that, more than anything is what the NYRB series offers…”— Wendy Lesser, The Guardian

“NYRB Classics— one of the very few happy innovations in contemporary publishing. —Benjamin Schwarz, The Atlantic

“…amazingly fine in its choice of titles and in the design of the books.” —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

“Be grateful for second chances and head to the shore with any one of these slim paperbacks.”—Town and Country

“Congratulations to NYRB Classics … they have been putting out an extraordinarily good list lately, and I have been torn as to which one to choose.” —Nicholas Lezard, Guardian

“We all owe the people at NYRB Classics a great debt of thanks.” —John Garvey, Commonweal

“Sometimes the second time’s the charm in publishing… New York Review Books [is] finding unlikely success in the overcrowded book industry by turning out reprints of decades-old titles. Some are even getting noticed by Hollywood.” —The Wall Street Journal

“The real contribution that New York Review Books makes [is] it helps you to see that the world is more different than you thought. By teaching you what the American novel has been, they teach you what it can be and in turn what the American people have been and can be… When you are in the hands of a reprint series as good as this one, what’s old is made new again.” —D.T. Max, Los Angeles Times

“… picks up on…readerly passion with an eclectic lineup of backlist titles, all prefaced by authors who (for the moment) are better known than the writers they’re introducing… Looking for reading suggestions? Here’s a good place to start.” —Michael Upchurch, Seattle Times/Post Intelligencer

“I’ve looked through the NYRB Classics catalogue with close attention and increasing wonder. Whoever picks the titles for this spectacularly eclectic series of stylish-looking reprints of insufficiently remembered books of the past (many but by no means all of which are novels) deserves some sort of prize for good taste… Has there ever been so quirkily adventurous a paperback reissue line? Not in my memory.” —Terry Teachout, commentarymagazine.com

“Overall the collection is faultless. Once you have discovered the series it’s as if you’ve just gained an incredibly well-read friend who consistently lends you obscure yet highly enjoyable books…. Collecting them can become compulsive.” —Vogue

“For the past four decades, The New York Review of Books has tirelessly championed liberal causes. It comes, therefore, as a welcome surprise that the magazine’s new book-publishing imprint—New York Review Books Classics—is performing a nonpartisan service, excellently.” —The National Review

“The New York Review of Books Classics Series is one of the most exciting recent developments in publishing…. Simply reading through the list from beginning to end would provide a rare education.” —The Boston Phoenix

“New York Review Books… has found a thriving niche by reissuing forgotten classics.”—Nick Owchar Los Angeles Times

NYRB Collections
The New York Times has called The New York Review of Books “the country’s most successful intellectual journal.” According to the Times, “The secret of its success is this: its editors’ ability to get remarkable writers and thinkers, many of them specialists in their fields, to write lucidly for lay readers on an enormous range of complex, scholarly and newly emerging subjects, issues and ideas.” Now some of the finest writing in science, philosophy, history, politics, the arts, and literature from the Review’s contributors has been brought together in book format. Included in the NYRB Collections series are volumes by such distinguished writers as Freeman Dyson, Thomas Powers, Martin Filler, Joseph Kerman, Mark Danner, Gary Wills, and Joan Didion.

The New York Review Children’s Collection
The New York Review Children’s Collection began in 2003 in an attempt to reward readers who have long wished for the return of their favorite titles and to introduce those books to a new generation of readers. The line publishes picture books for preschoolers through to chapter books and novels for older children. Praised for their elegant design and sturdy bindings, these books set a new standard for the definition of a “classic.” Among the titles you will find Wee Gillis, a Caldecott Honor Book by the creators of The Story of Ferdinand; Esther Averill’s time-honored Jenny and the Cat Club series; The House of Arden by E. Nesbit, one of J.K. Rowling’s favorite writers; several titles by the award-winning team of Ingri and Edgar Parin d’Aulaire, including their Book of Norse Myths and Book of Animals; James Thurber’s The Thirteen Clocks and The Wonderful O, both with illustrations by Marc Simont. Not to be missed is the classic animal adventure story Bel Ria by Sheila Burnford, the author of The Incredible Journey; Lucretia Hale’s hilarious The Peterkin Papers; James Cloyd Bowman’s Newbery Honor Book, Pecos Bill; and holiday favorites by John Masefield, The Midnight Folk and The Box of Delights.

Praise for The New York Review Children’s Collection…

“…a handsome collection of reprints, published by The New York Review of Books, aimed at rescuing neglected children’s classics from ‘the dustbins of history.’” —USA Today

“…a mixture of classics and curiosities.” —The Horn Book Magazine

“New York Review Books deserves a medal for its burgeoning collection of reissues of out-of-print children’s books, books that need to see the light of day in the hands of a new generations of readers, books such as Wee Gillis, by Munro Leaf and Robert Lawson, a slew of books by Esther Averill and, of course, the incomparable Ms. Nesbit’s The House of Arden. The books are handsome productions, with cloth spines and attractive endpapers.” —The Globe and Mail

“Felicitations to the people in charge of picking and producing these. They will rest on kids’ shelves, I feel certain, for generations to come.” —Eric Alterman, “Altercations,” MSNBC.com

“Most people have a favorite book from their childhoods that has gone out of print. With that in mind, in 1999 the New York Review of Books began reissuing books that its employees and others remembered fondly.” —Publishers Weekly

“Recently, a number of children’s books have been reissued as part of The New York Review Children’s Collection. They are the sort of books I remember reading in slightly musty editions as a child, books in which children were always inexplicably sent away to boarding schools and were always going places for fortnights—whatever those were. And they were also always exploring dark hallways with torches, which I pictured as great flaming clubs, rather than just boring old flashlights. … The books, which appear in uniform binding, are visually appealing, and their red cloth spines make you want to line a whole shelf with them for some deserving young person (if such creatures still exist). …I’d recommend them for all children, but perhaps for your inner child most of all.” —Sara O’Leary, Vancouver Sun

“These books represent some of the finest children’s literature published during the last one hundred years. There are plenty of gems here for librarians to rediscover and pass onto a new generation of children.” —Philip Charles Crawford, Journal of the American Association of School Librarians

“How many of us, at the end of our working days, will be able to say with certainty that something we did made the world a better place? Edwin Frank is one of the lucky few… Frank is the editor who oversees the New York Review Children’s Collection… Whatever the numbers, the books’ reappearances make booksellers and buyers happy—reversing, in a tiny but symbolic way, the odious publishing trend toward keeping books in print for shorter and shorter periods of time… The children’s reissues are hardcovers with distinctive red cloth spines. The parents and grandparents who’ll be buying most of them, Frank says, tend to value quality and performance. And, like him, they also value things they’ve known and loved.” —Washington Post

NYRB Lit
NYRB Lit is a new ebook series devoted to publishing contemporary literary novels and books of narrative non-fiction that have been bypassed by traditional American publishers. The books come from all over the world and many have been published in their home countries to great acclaim. They are available in English to American readers here for the first time. NYRB Lit aims to use the digital platform to bring these books and their authors to the literate, passionate and adventurous audience they deserve.

NYRB Poets
The new NYRB Poets series will continue the eclectic, adventurous spirit of NYRB Classics with a focus on the most vital, various, and universal form of literature: poetry. Featuring the work of poets from around the world, classical and modern, ancient and contemporary, in elegant, pocket-size editions, it will introduce readers to the countless different shapes that poetry can assume, from simplest song to lyrical essay to visual image to scientific treatise, among much else. Poetry explores the boundaries of feeling, knowledge, and expression like no other art. the new NYRB Poets series will offer an unparalleled opportunity for readers to explore its limitless possibilities.