History

George Macy founded the Limited Editions Club in October 1929, launching its first title the very month of the Great Crash. Despite the challenging economic landscape, Macy’s vision thrived: to republish classics of world literature paired with fine art, world-class typography, and exquisite book craftsmanship. Each edition was strictly limited to 1,500 copies sold via annual subscriptions.

Macy ran the Club brilliantly for 27 years until his death in 1956. His achievements were so celebrated that he became the first living—and first American—publisher honored with dedicated exhibitions at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris (1948) and the British Museum in London (1952).

Following his death, the Club was managed by his widow, Helen, before being sold to corporate ownership and falling into hard times. In 1978, Sidney Shiff acquired the deeply indebted Club, revitalizing its legacy by shifting its focus to contemporary artists, hand-craftsmanship, and smaller print runs. Over its multi-decade history, the Club produced nearly 600 titles, leaving an unparalleled legacy in American fine printing.

The enduring cultural significance of the Limited Editions Club is reflected in the world-renowned institutions that preserve its legacy. Most notably, the Library of Congress holds the Club’s complete Number One Collection. Its volumes and print portfolios are housed in prestigious international libraries and museums, including the Bodleian Library at Oxford, the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Harvard University, The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum, and The Tate Museum, London. Furthermore, the Club’s archival history is preserved for research at Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library and the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

Artists
The Limited Editions Club’s history is defined by its extraordinary, highly collaborative relationships with artists, boasting an honor roll of creators unmatched in modern publishing.

The Club brought together both traditional book illustrators and world-renowned fine artists and photographers. Under George Macy, celebrated illustrators like Rockwell Kent, Arthur Rackham, Valenti Angelo, Fritz Eichenberg, and Claire van Vliet contributed alongside iconic American figures such as Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, Norman Rockwell, and Edward Steichen. Under Sidney Shiff, the roster expanded to include titans of modern art, such as Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Ellsworth Kelly, Jacob Lawrence, Faith Ringgold, Balthus, Betye Saar, and Henri Cartier-Bresson.

The Club’s approach to artwork evolved across its distinct eras. While most commissioned artists worked in the traditional narrative style of the 19th and early 20th centuries, Macy was audacious enough to enlist early modern masters. He famously persuaded Pablo Picasso to illustrate Lysistrata (1934) and Henri Matisse to illustrate Ulysses (1935), even though Matisse famously ignored James Joyce’s prose to draw from the Ulysses of Greek mythology instead.

During the Shiff Era publishing important contemporary artists became the Club’s primary focus. Here, literal illustration was often rejected in favor of “images that emotionally connect with the subject matter”. A prime example is Robert Ryman’s abstract white-ink aquatints for Samuel Beckett’s Nohow On, which offered an evocative emotional visual response to the stripped-down prose.

In these later years, artists were given total creative freedom to choose texts that deeply inspired them. This personal connection led to extraordinary pairings, such as Ellsworth Kelly choosing Stéphane Mallarmé’s poetry, Francesco Clemente selecting Ezra Pound’s Cathay Poems, and Jacob Lawrence illustrating The Book of Genesis and John Hersey’s Hiroshima. Artists often worked side by side with master printers and artisans, directly supervising production to bring their vision to life exactly as intended.

Authors
Over its multi-decade history, the Limited Editions Club published a wide-ranging literary roster spanning the classics to modern masterworks. Its titles range from giants like Sophocles, Shakespeare, Aristophanes, and Jonathan Swift to 20th-century masters such as James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Joseph Conrad, Walt Whitman, Flannery O’Connor, and Ray Bradbury.

The Club possessed a remarkable knack for publishing contemporary literary figures right before they achieved peak global recognition. Under Sidney Shiff, the Club published works by Seamus Heaney, Derek Walcott, and Octavio Paz before each was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. It also published works by Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz.

Beyond the traditional Western canon, George Macy actively published foundational texts from diverse global cultures, including the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Mayan Popol Vuh. The Shiff era expanded on this commitment to cultural diversity by prominently featuring celebrated African American writers, including Zora Neale Hurston, Maya Angelou, and Martin Luther King Jr.

Whenever possible, living authors actively participated in the design and creation of their editions. Most famously, James Joyce provided his own corrections for the Club’s landmark 1935 edition of Ulysses and hand-signed 250 copies.

Translations & Introductions
The Club was as meticulous with the words on the page as it was with the artwork. It frequently commissioned new translations, updated editions, or editorial revisions to ensure texts were of the highest scholarly standard. Some examples were Edward Seidensticker’s brand-new translation for Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country, and Paul Schmidt translated and introduced Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell.

Introductions or prefaces were commissioned from authorities in the field who were often household names themselves, such as Robert Penn Warren composing an introductory poem for John Hersey’s Hiroshima and Maya Angelou’s introduction for Sunrise Coming After While.

Book Arts
As commercial publishing shifted toward mass production, the Limited Editions Club redoubled its dedication to traditional craftsmanship, treating bookmaking as an uncompromising art form.

Without exception, every edition was printed via letterpress, allowing readers to physically feel the impression of the metal type on the page. Books featured world-class typefaces custom-set on the Monotype system—with type occasionally cast specifically for a single volume, such as Dan Carr’s modified Bodoni or Eric Gill’s Bunyan face. The process was extraordinarily painstaking; typesetters could spend minutes setting a single word and over an hour composing a page.

To realize these volumes, the Club recruited a global network of elite book architects, designers, and craftspeople—including Bruce Rogers, Frederick Goudy, Jan van Krimpen, Hans Mardersteig, and the Grabhorn brothers. Editions were constructed using fine mouldmade or handmade papers (such as French Arches and rare Japanese Kitakata, Kozo, and Gampi), and bound by hand in natural linen, silk, or Nigerian oasis goatskin.

Artwork was produced using original graphic techniques executed directly by the artists on plates, blocks, or screens—including lithography, etching, woodcut, silkscreen, and aquatint. Photographic works were rendered through deep photogravure. In later years, the Club married classical methods with modern innovations, such as advanced giclée reproductions accented with hand-applied gold and silver leaf.

Limitation & Authenticity
Throughout the entire history of the Limited Editions Club, every single volume was numbered and hand-signed on the colophon page at the end of the book by the artist and by the author whenever possible.

While earlier editions were limited to 1,500 copies and later rose to 2,000 copies, Sidney Shiff drastically reduced the limitation to as few as 250 copies. This structural evolution ensured that modern Club publications remained rare, highly collectible treasures.