Bibliothèque de la Pléiade
The Bibliothèque de la Pléiade is a French series of books which was created in the 1930s by Jacques Schiffrin, an independent young editor. (After moving to New York to escape from Nazism, Schiffrin was a founder of Pantheon Books.) Schiffrin wanted to provide the public with reference editions of the complete works of classic authors in a pocket format. André Gide took an interest in Schiffrin's project and brought it into Gallimard, under which it is still published.
The Pléiade has a strong emphasis on works that were originally written in French, though the collection also includes classics of world literature, such as bilingual editions of the works of William Shakespeare, or French edition of Jane Austen's work. To date, more than 500 books have been published in the series, with 11 books generally published every year.
All the books offer a similar high quality appearance, leather bound, gold lettering on the spine and bible paper and have a practical small format which make them look like a small Bible; however, there are generally numerous pages. The longest volume in the Pléiade is Sartre's Œuvres Romanesques, at 2304 pages. Each time period corresponds to a color of leather: 20th century is tobacco, 19th emerald green, 18th blue, 17th venetian red, 16th corinthian brown, the Middle Ages purple, Antiquity green, spiritual texts gray, and anthologies red. The books are sold in a transparent rhodoïd dust jacket, and inserted in a white printed cardboard slipcase, although multiple volumes are often sold in a single slipcase.
The books are critical editions, with annotations, comments, manuscript and editorial variants and accompanying documents. The preparation of these critical editions can take many years for a team of specialists. For foreign authors, new reference French translations are systematically created.
The "entry into the Pléiade" is considered a major sign of recognition for an author in France, and it is extremely rare that a living author is published in the Pléiade (examples are Nathalie Sarraute, Julien Green, Julien Gracq, Milan Kundera[1][2]...) In 2008, the works of Claude Lévi-Strauss were published in the collection.
The Bibliothèque de la Pléiade also publishes an Album de la Pléiade every Summer, which is an illustrated book in the same format as the rest of the series, usually dedicated to one of the writers but sometimes also dedicated to writers from a specific time period (1989 album) or to an important topic (1970 and 2009 albums) from the collection. The Albums are offered for free with the purchase of three books in the series. They are often collected.
In the 1960s and '70s, an Encyclopédie de la Pléiade in the same format was also created, under the direction of Raymond Queneau.
In 1992, Gallimard and Einaudi began a similar series of literature in Italian, the Biblioteca della Pleiade.[3]
The Library of America series, launched in 1979, is a similar project in the United States inspired by the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade.
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