Vintage to celebrate 30th anniversary with new 10 Most Red classic series

Vintage has unveiled a new classic series, Most Red, celebrating 10 of its “most loved” titles ahead of its 30th birthday.  

The Most Red series, featuring the Vintage Classics red spine, will be published on 2nd July 2020. The series includes 10 of its “most loved” classics, chosen for readers by the team at Vintage, each priced £9.99. The series features covers designed by Vintage creative director Suzanne Dean and the Vintage Design team. 

The series includes: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (featuring a new introduction by Yuval Noah Harari), Brighton Rock by Graham Greene, Catch 22 by Joseph Heller, The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (newly introduced by Naomi Alderman), To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Stoner by John Williams, The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter (with a new introduction from Laura Dockrill), as well as The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. Paul Kalanithi’s 2015 memoir, When Breath Becomes Air, is also being added to the classics list as it “has all of the ingredients that, by our definition, makes a classic,” Vintage said.

The series kicks off a summer-long celebration for Vintage’s 30th anniversary, with details of a nationwide campaign to be announced in the New Year.

A Vintage Classics 2021 diary will then be published in September, featuring artwork from the series and many of the jacket images from the Vintage Classics catalogue. “This beautiful diary is designed with a focus on reading, with suggested reading every month, extra room for the weekends, space to fill in about books read throughout the year, author birthdays and seasonal extracts,” the publisher said.

Hattie Adam-Smith, Vintage Classics editorial director, who took up her post in July, said: “I’m so excited to publishing these handsome new editions of some of the most radiant books on our Vintage Classics list. It’s hard to know where to point our attention in this fast-paced world. The amount of choice can be overwhelming. These 10 books have been hand-picked for our readers because they are still the purest forms of many of the issues and ideas that dominate our news cycle today. They are beacons; extraordinary feats of imagination and creativity that have stood the test of time. We’ve chosen them because we know that readers will be thrilled, energised and entertained by them, whether they are rediscovering them or coming to them for the very first time.”

Dean spoke of the brief for the series, revealing the "illustrative approach was inspired by Polish poster art". She said: “The Vintage Design team worked together on this project," she said. "We decided from the outset that these books were so iconic that we could make a bold statement by removing any lettering from the front cover. Because of this, these images had to work harder to convey the author and title, while still being original and witty. We took two visual elements from each book and juxtaposed them through form, colour and photographic details. Without conventional lettering, the viewer is engaged in reading the visual message and deducing the author and title, which are revealed on the back cover. In celebration of our 30th anniversary we will be producing a limited edition series of screenprints featuring the Vintage Most Red cover designs."