Enduring texts, carefully set
A small press for books that have outlived their first readers — annotated, introduced, and made worth holding again.
A small press for books that have outlived their first readers — annotated, introduced, and made worth holding again.
Why this press exists
A great many older books are in print without being edited. The text is reproduced, the cover is generic, and the reader is left alone with a work written in another century, under another set of assumptions, with no one to say why it still matters.
A text this old deserves a guide, not a photocopier.
Perennifolio publishes editions that have been read closely before they were set: annotated where a reference has gone dark, introduced by someone who can say what the argument is and why it mattered, and typeset so the page is a pleasure rather than an obstacle. What is old is not automatically difficult. It is usually just unaccompanied.
The catalogue
Manuscript studies, Islamic philosophy, Persian poetry, and literature in English. The through-line is not period or region. It is that each book repays a second reading, and that each deserved an edition built for one.
Manuscript material presented as the object it is — the hand, the page, the illumination — with annotation for readers who were never taught to look at script.
See the series → 2 titlesThe arguments about mind, soul, and reality that occupied Islamic thought for centuries — set with introductions for readers coming to them cold.
See the series → 1 titleThe poems and romances that shaped a literary world from Anatolia to Bengal, in editions that treat them as literature rather than curiosities.
See the series → 1 titleNovels and essays in English that are met too early, in editions nobody chose, and rarely returned to.
See the series →Method
A text earns a place by being worth a second reading and by being badly served in print. Both conditions, not one.
The source edition is confirmed, rights and permissions established, and the text checked against a reliable copy rather than whatever appeared first.
An essay on what the book is arguing, when it was written, what it was answering, and what a reader today should watch for. Annotations where a reference has gone dark.
Typography, margins, and running heads chosen for reading rather than for the printer's convenience. Plates included where the manuscript tradition is part of the work.
On the name
Evergreen, in the botanical sense — foliage that does not drop when the season turns. It is also, conveniently, the two things a press is made of: something that lasts, and a leaf of paper.
The peony in the mark is deciduous. It dies back to the ground every winter and returns from the same root every spring. Both kinds of survival are the point.
Announcements
A short note when a book is published, and nothing else. No schedule, no digest, no forwarding your address to anyone.
Roughly four to six notes a year. Unsubscribe any time by replying.