After talking to Charles Boyle of CB Editions, here's another one-man publishing outfit. Says John Hughes of Myna Classics, "The aim of Myna Classics is to publish forgotten or neglected (i.e. 'minor') classics of English literature in an attractive and affordable paperback format. I have no previous experience in publishing or design, but I love books, and this is a sort of one-man crusade against the dozens of other Print-On-Demand companies who publish sloppily-edited texts (usually pilfered straight from Project Gutenberg) with plain, generic or completely inappropriate covers, and then charge you the earth for the privilege."
I think we can guess the sort of publisher he's railing against.
Anyway, here are the covers of the first five Mynas. I'm especially pleased that he's resurrected Cabbages and Kings, O. Henry's only novel, an entertainingly odd book that was undeservedly out of print until now. Lawrence's The Trespasser is very good too--and one he wrote before he became so terrified that his readers wouldn't get him that he decided he had to spell everything out at the most appalling length. And Richard Jefferies is also the author of one of the earliest after-the-end-of-the-world novels, After London, which is excellent and unfairly neglected.
John does all of the cover art, too. What do you think?
