T.N. FOULIS, THE HISTORY AND BIBLIOGRAPHY OF AN EDINBURGH PUBLISHING HOUSE

New Castle, Delaware and London: Oak Knoll Press & Werner Shaw Ltd, 1998. cloth, dust jacket. Foulis, T.N.. small 8vo. cloth, dust jacket. 277 pages. First edition. Operating from Edinburgh and London, the firm, T. N. Foulis, published more than 400 titles during the period 1904-25. The vast majority of their books were produced to the most exacting of standards. In recent times, the hallmarks of a Foulis book in the form of colored buckram bindings, tipped-in color plates, the elegant Auriol typeface, and rose-watermarked paper have drawn collectors to these elegant volumes. Today, such features are virtually unheard of in a world of generally uniform book production. Once handled, any true bibliophile must find it difficult to put down a Foulis-produced book. From the handsome classics sturdily bound in buckram to the charming so-called envelope books developed in the first decade of the century, essentially as gift books, the Foulis output is quite unique, and they are now being increasingly sought after. Although it is still relatively easy to obtain a handsomely produced copy of the publisher's bestselling, Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character by Dean Ramsay, well-preserved copies of the charming and fragile envelope books, many of them illustrated by artists of the caliber of Jessie M. King, W. Russell Flint, Frank Brangwyn, and F. Cayley Robinson, are now very difficult to find. The authors, both longstanding collectors of Foulis productions, have faced many complexities in preparing this history and bibliography. The publisher, Thomas Noble Foulis, is something of an enigma, born and raised in Edinburgh and dying in obscurity in Essex after the failure of the firm to which he devoted himself. Foulis listed many books which were never published in advertisements and catalogues. Those which were published appeared in many puzzling variants of bindings and formats, sometimes in different series from those announced and in very small editions. Descendants of Thomas Foulis have no records today of their now illustrious forbear. No official records or letter books of the firm survive. All these circumstances have contributed to painstaking detective work by the authors, both collectors and witnesses to all copies of the books listed in the bibliography. Illustrated.