Favourite FL books

What are your favourite Franklin Library volumes? I don't have many FL volumes, but my favourite are The Counterfeiters (beautiful design), All the King's Men (with chess motif) and Angels and Insects.

Edit to add Chekhov stories. A gorgeous volume. Also, The Robberbride...too many to pick a few.

I only have 4 volumes - Gargantua and Pantagruel, Tales from the Arabian Nights, Henry James Tales and Thomas Mann Stories.

My favourite is Arabian Nights - such a stunning and intricate binding and I love the colour plates. I also like the Thomas Mann Stories - it’s a very elegant volume.

>2 Quicksilver66: Who illustrated the FL Arabia Nights?

There are many colored miniatures gathered from the Near East collections of four libraries and galleries and one private collection.

I would have to give this more serious thought than I have time for at the moment, but one in particular does come to mind for its beautiful binding, Gulliver's Travels in the 100 Greatest Books of All Time collection. The leather color is prone to sun-fading, but the gold gilt is simply stunning and yet not over-the-top garish. Thought I definitely agree with Quicksilver66 that Tales From The Arabian Nights may be the most visually stunning binding they produced, even if falling a little into the excess category.

I agree Arabian Night is very attractive one, not only the binding but also the illustration.
I do like a lot Age of Innocence cover, in my opinion very elegant, will look after Gulliver travels, thanks for pointing it out!

One of my favorites is Faust from Oxford University's greaest books, which FL published. It is bond in dark maroon full leather of the smooth kind found in Poe's stories in the 100 greatest. It also contains Parts 1 and 2.

The Signed First Edition of Picasso by Arianna Huffington is quite nice.

I'm a huge fan of Pearl Buck's 'The Good Earth'. I have collected many copies of this book and would love to share more about those, but being an FL group, I'll stay on topic. Of the leather copies I have, nothing feels as fine to the touch, or is as superbly crafted as FL's green full leather copy. In fact I have a couple of those to 'book-end' a row of my cherished books. The FL full leather brown copy is a close second, and my EP copy is going on the market soon--not even in the same ballpark, IMO. I drank the EP kool-aid for awhile, but I'm over it now.

I'll keep the EP leather volumes of favorite titles that I cannot find in leather elsewhere (like 'Hiroshima' or 'Old Yeller'), but selling off many of my EP collection. Case in point, I just unloaded a bunch of EP 'black label' Dickens volumes, and have put the money towards the much nicer (again, IMO) FL Oxford set of Dickens.

My third favorite, (the Dickens set counting as my second favorite), would be my FL Oxford copy of 'Anna Karenina'. I have a weakness toward the two-tone leather; what can I say?

In my years of collecting fine books, these are my personal favs. I know these books will outlast me, and I will enjoy the opportunity to steward them well in every waking moment possible.

>10 lovetheleather:
Welcome to the group, Lovetheleather. There are only 84 of us and the posts have become very infrequent. I would love to see us become more active, because as Easton Press and Folio Society continue to raise their prices rather dramatically, searching out the old Franklins makes more and more sense.

Most of my Franklin experience has been with the Great Books of the Western World series, most of which were sparsely illustrated if at all. But some of the fiction title are quite nice, especially Rabelais's 2-volume "Gargantua and Pantagruel," illustrated by Gustave Dore, and Virgil's "Eclogues and Georgics." Among the nonfiction titles, Francis Bacon's volume contains illustrations by Leonardo da Vinci. In the 100 Greatest series, I like Jean Racine's "Six Tragedies."

Thanks for the welcome! I just found this site last night so it is brand new to me. A lot of great reading, here, though I noticed it doesn't seem to get the frequency of posts as in the past. Regardless, you are the 3rd or 4th person that has mentioned the Dore illustrated Gargantua and Pantagruel from GBWW series. It must be something else! I'm a fan of Dore's work and I think my own GBWW volume of Dante from FL contains Dore's illustrations. I have, perhaps 6-10 volumes from this series and they are all quite handsome. I still beat myself up for selling the gorgeous 2-volume set of Aquinas' Summa Theologica I once had. Those embossed covers...mmm-mmmm!!! :) Reminds me of the Moby Dick covers from that series, which I hope to some day add to my collection.

> 12
You actually owned the Aquinas set and sold it, and not to me???? I have been trying to track down an affordable copy for years. Most are either substantially overpriced or are missing the Notes From The Editors or both.

>12 lovetheleather:
The 2-volume Moby Dick from the GBWW series is illustrated by Rockwell Kent, whom many aficionados believe to have produced the finest illustrations for the book.

jroger, I am in agreement with those afficionados, and was not aware of this fact. I think this title is quickly moving up in priority on my wish list!

OK, I'm listening. Tell me what are the best produced, most lovely Franklin Library publications. I have just four FL books on my shelves now.

I'm also interested in FL books that were not published by Easton Press or Limited Editions Club. Three of the four that I have are Wallace Stegner books, not available from the other publishers.

>16 sdawson:
Thanks for reviving this group, which always seems in danger of going dormant. It seems that young collectors have forgotten about the Franklin Library or never heard of it.

My experience is mostly with their Great Books of the Western World set. You probably know that Britannica published this 54-volume set in 1952, and it is still the best (in my opinion) anthology of great literature ever published anywhere, always with the caveat that it includes only "western" literature. The only other set that comes close is the Harvard Classics, published recently by Easton and now available on the Kindle.

While the concept was wonderful, the execution was not. The volumes incorporated very thin paper that bled through badly and a font that was so small as to be unreadable or at least an unpleasant reading experience. Franklin took this set and expanded it to 96 volumes during the 1979-1985 time period by using a thicker paper as well as nice leather bindings. My interest lay mostly in the nonfiction realm where other editions were often not available. Franklin expanded Plato's complete works from the original one volume to a very readable three, Aristotle from two to four, Montaigne from one to three, Boswell's "Life of Johnson" from one to three, Freud from one to three, Gibbon from two to six, Plutarch from two to four, Darwin from one to two. They didn't do this with all the nonfiction works, especially in the physical and mathematical sciences, but it was still a magnificent contribution. Some of the volumes were illustrated with classic illustrations or photographs, but many were not. Most were in black and white. In many cases newer and better translations were used that were not available in 1952.

Among the works of fiction represented in the set, the 2-volume "Moby Dick" was illustrated by Rockwell Kent and the 2-volume "Gargantua and Pantagruel" by Gustave Dore. There is also a 2-volume "Tom Jones" and a 3-volume "War and Peace," both of which were nicely but sparsely illustrated. "Tristram Shandy" and "Brothers Karamazov" are single-volume but nicely illustrated.

I don't know what kind of leather Franklin used, but it looks and feels as fresh as when it was new. It seems thicker than that used by either Easton or Folio today. The only sign of age is that some of the moire fabric endpapers are beginning to fade around the edges. Most of the volumes in this set are fairly inexpensive today, but some of them have become scarce and are beginning to command higher prices.

Franklin also published for several years a First Edition series and later a Signed First Edition series, both in leather. Most of these volumes today are very cheap. Skochkin (from the Easton forum on LT) also collects a series co-published by Oxford and Franklin, which he says is the best work they ever did, so you might want to ask him about it. Encourage him to join this forum.

You do have to be careful when purchasing some of Franklin's offerings, especially the later ones, because they also published non-leather and quarter-leather sets. I have a set of mystery classics that is wonderful except that they are all clothbound. But Franklin also published the same series in leather, so the seller needs to be specific.

>17 jroger1:

Thanks for the post, you've mentioned a few starters I can look for. In my poorer teens and twenties, I collected the small Modern Library editions of many classics. My bookcases have exploded, and I have made the decision to return these to my local used book store for some other person to find. Gargantua and Pantagruel is one of those books, so perhaps replacing that with a Franklin edition is the way to go.

Off topic, I have a fondness for the ML books, the variety was great, the dust jackets attractive, and they have held up structurally over the decades, in many cases better than fine press books. I will keep a few of them (including the 6 volume Shakespeare, and some of the 'macabre' texts), but will sadly part with most.

So, Moby Dick may be another book to look for. As I love adventure books and Wyeth, I'll seek out those as well. I really enjoy well illustrated books, so any more suggestions along those lines are helpful. I do enjoy mystery as well, which is a genre ignored by many other publishers, so any further info on the leather bound mystery books by Franklin is welcome.

-Shawn

>18 sdawson:
Here is a link to the most complete list of Franklins I have found:
http://www.leather-bound-books.net/franklin-library/

So glad to find this group. I was a subscriber to the 100 American classics commemorating the bicentennial, their 100 best loved books, short stories, and Franklin mystery. I also picked up some GBWW and books from the Oxford library. I did not complete all these subscriptions since Franklin tended to republish the same books across series. I think I quit after getting my third Edgar Allen Poe! If you want to build a library most of the great classics can be picked up for $15-20. The savvy collectors should snatch the Oxford editions (such as Anna Kanenina or Tom Jones)....finest binding and workmanship in any series short of a DLE on EP. And select GBWW sets. The most ornate are as follows:
1) any Oxford University classic
2) Chekhov short stories
3) leaves of grass in the American series
4) 3 volume War and Peace in GBWW (keep searching.l..I got it for $150 as did my friend)

One warning....beware Franklin published some bargain quarter leather classics and I think fake leather reissues. Always double check with seller who usually cannot tell difference between leather and fake leather. The latter are worth about $10 each.

>18 sdawson: >20 HugoDumas:
One (foolproof maybe?) way to tell the leather editions from fake leather editions is to ask the dealer if there is a ribbon bookmark. All the leather editions had one, but the fakes did not. I do have a quarter-leather Boccaccio, though, that has one. It's a very nice edition illustrated with woodcuts, but it doesn't say what series, if any, it is from. I think I've seen it advertised in full leather for more money.

In my opinion this is the most ornate Book published by either Franklin or EP not including DLEs. Chekhov short stories. You can pick up a copy for $29 on eBay.
http://s1378.photobucket.com/user/skochkin/library/Chekhov?sort=3&page=1

>22 HugoDumas: 1977 peasant and other stories .
is this book？