Palazzo's Classics Hit 500,000 Colin and Pam Webb of Palazzo (left) are celebrating five years and 500,000 copies of Classic Editions - unabridged children's classics, each illustrated by Hans Christian Andersen Medal-winner Robert Ingpen.
The series, which launched with a centenary edition of Peter Pan and Wendy, produced in collaboration with Great Ormond Street Hospital, is published in the UK by Templar, and the list of territories into which it has been sold includes (in addition to Western European countries and the English-speaking world) Greece, Poland, Russia, China and Korea. In the US, the Sterling edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has sold 50,000 copies. Titles now include Jungle Book, A Christmas Carol and The Wind in the Willows. An edition of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer this spring commemorates the centenary of Mark Twain's death, while the autumn brings Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, just ahead of its centenary in spring 2011. The Webbs are also engaged in a second Great Ormond Street collaboration, The Children of Charles Dickens - the author was a patron of the hospital and lived just down the road from it.
Ingpen, who is Australian, turns 75 next year, and his birthday will be marked with a series of exhibitions around the world. Webb believes his is the largest body of children's book illustration since Wyeth and Rackham.
- Written by Liz Thomson (26th March 2010) for BookBrunch.co.uk |
