CARDENIO PRESS
Timothy Higgs
Founder, Cardenio Press
The name Cardenio is the title of a lost play, known to have been performed by the King’s Men in 1613, and attributed to William Shakespeare and John Fletcher. The story of the play is not known, but is likely to have been based on an episode featuring a character of the same name in Cervantes’ Don Quixote, an English translation of which was published in 1612.
The Cardenio Press is a very small publishing house established in January 2021. Our raison d’ȇtre is to publish lesser-read novels (not necessarily out of print) with attention to quality of typography and overall design. Secondly, we aim to avoid distribution through Amazon, concentrating instead on selling directly from our website.
The transition from retired classical musician to bookseller is not as improbable as it would seem to suggest. Aside from my work as a former copy editor and proof reader for the OUP and as a freelance music engraver for the Peters Group in London and Leipzig, the art of typography and graphic design has been an absorbing and passionate interest of mine since I was in primary education. These skills held me in good stead in my professional work. But I longed to publish books for myself, to be able to apply these same skills to publish books of typographical and graphic excellence, such as might proudly take their place amongst the novels on the shelves of a discerning collector. Quality was to be of the essence.
What was I going to publish? After much humming and hawing it occurred to me that there were surely novelists who had not, as it were, stood the test of time, and whose names were virtually forgotten, but amongst whose novels there might be a gem or two. Such was the case when I discovered Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s first novel The Trail of the Serpent.
This, then, is to be our first published paperback. Should all go according to plan, we shall publish hardback editions, as well as annotated editions. On our limited resources, this is, for the time being, sadly not possible.
We are hoping to establish a circle of loyal enthusiasts, such as will come to look upon us as a kind of book club, eager to explore each of the novels we promote.