Zodiac Press

The Zodiac Press (London, UK) / Chatto & Windus  (London, UK)
Series dates: 1946-1980
Size: 5.5″ x 8.25″

zodiac_press_logoA full-size (8vo) series of classics initiated by Chatto & Windus under their Zodiac Press imprint in 1946. The series was sold in the U.S. (starting in 1952, for $3 a copy) by the Grove Press. There do not seem to be copies of the Zodiac Press series with the Grove Press imprint. Like the short gift-book series the Zodiac Books, the Zodiac Press series featured creative patterned bindings created with assistance from the fabric printing industry. Common jackets were supplemented (but not replaced by unique, illustrated jackets in the late 1960s. The last new titles were two by Thomas Hardy issued in 1980. Titles in the series were reprinted until 2003, several years after Chatto & Windus was absorbed by Random House.


39 titles in all were issued in the Zodiac Press series, between 1946 and 1980. There were numerous reprints of most titles. Some faux-fine bindings appear in the 1940s and 1950s, including sets of Austen and Trollope titles.

Emma, by Jane Austen (1950)
Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen (1948)
Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen (1949)
Persuasion, by Jane Austen (1949)
Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen (1946)
Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen (1947)
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë (1946)
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Brontë (1954)
Villette, by Charlotte Brontë (1948)
Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë (1947)
Armadale, by Wilkie Collins (1975)
A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens (1948)
Adam Bede, by George Eliot (1952)
Daniel Deronda, by George Eliot (1971)
Middlemarch, by George Eliot (1950)
The Mill on the Floss, by George Eliot (1950)
Silas Marner, by George Eliot (1954)
The Vicar of Wakefield, by Oliver Goldsmith (1946)
The Return of the Native, by Thomas Hardy (1980)
Tess of the d’Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy (1980)
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley (1948)
Miss Marjoribanks, by Mrs. Oliphant (1969)
The Big House of Inver, by E.OE. Somerville & Martin Ross (1973)
The Real Charlotte, by E.OE. Somerville & Martin Ross (1972)
The Charterhouse of Parma, by Stendhal (1961)
Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson (1946)
Vanity Fair, by William Makepeace Thackeray (1948)
Barchester Towers, by Anthony Trollope (1946)
Dr. Thorne, by Anthony Trollope (1947)
Framley Parsonage, by Anthony Trollope (1947)
John Caldigate, by Anthony Trollope (1972)
The Last Chronicle of Barset, by Anthony Trollope (1949)
The Small House at Allington, by Anthony Trollope (1948)
The Warden, by Anthony Trollope (1946)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain (1963)
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain (1962)
Pudd’nhead Wilson, by Mark Twain (1955)
A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur, by Mark Twain (1957)
Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf (1947)


The 1947 copy of Austen’s Sense and Sensibility has a common jacket design used through at least 1972. The price of 7s./6d. is indicated on the otherwise blank front jacket flap.

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Titles published (and soon to be published) as of 1947 are listed on the back of the jacket.

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Each book had a patterned cloth binding.

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Half-title page.

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A very brief biography of the author faces a color title page.

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The copyright page indicates for at least this Austin title the book was co-published by Chatto & Windus with Oxford University Press.

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