I've been a subscriber to Slightly Foxed since issue #1 and while it is a bit of a gulp to accept the UK subscription price (damn you falling dollar!), every time I receive a new quarterly issue I'm just so pleased that everything else just fades away.

The Spring 08 issue came with the news that they are now branching out into publishing with a new imprint: Slightly Foxed Editions. Their first title is Blue Remembered Hills, Rosemary Sutcliffe's memoir of growing up and becoming a writer. The design is stunning and even better, one of those handy pocket edition sizes, something I adore when publishers do and wish more of them would consider. (Only 2000 copies at the reasonable price of 10 pounds - or currently, just over $20 plus shipping.)

Pocket editions are discussed in the quarterly's first essay, "Light Reading" by Ronald Blythe. The author discusses receiving artist John Nash's books upon his death which included the famous "Everyman editions" published so everyone could read the best authors at a reasonable price and in a handy size for economy. Here's Blythe:

As Passchendaele approached John Nash returned his beloved Everyman edition of [George] Borrow to his sweetheart, along with the letters she had sent him, believing that he would not see her or them again.

So here they were, the very same volumes he'd carried with him. I read in their curly endpapers the great promise which good books make. 'Everyman I will go with thee, and be they guide, in thy most need to go by their side.' When last read, their owner thought that he would never see his native Buckinghamshire again, either. But a gypsy boy who had been called up from the same country comforted him. They both find life sweet once in the Chilterns."

I doubt I would read anything about John Nash at my local bookstore (the recent Masie Dobbs mystery excepting) and certainly nothing on George Borrow or the Everyman books. Slightly Foxed is a treasure that any reader should treat themselves to at once.