Introducing: Pressed Rose Classics

As the years have flown by in the classroom, I’ve noticed that ordering replacement copies of my favorite classic novels has been increasingly difficult. The most beautiful classics have tragically gone out of print, leaving us to the devices of those who want to make a quick buck. Using beautiful art as their starting point, these “publishers” copy and paste from typo-ridden photocopies and use AI to generate horrendous covers, then hastily squish them together into a self-published nightmare.

Just like my career was born from my resentment of my own education, so was “Pressed Rose Classics” born out of my resentment for cheap re-prints of beautiful works. Now, I am self-(re)publishing beautiful classics in affordable, pleasant-to-read paperback form. I’ve designed covers and written forewords myself, using a combination of my own passions for fonts and classic literature.

This project fits perfectly into my interests and strengths, and I wonder why I didn’t think of it sooner. As it happens, the idea came to me last year when I taught Eleanor H. Porter’s Just David for the first time. I was so excited to teach that beautiful story, but it just didn’t land as well as I thought it would. My students were the ones to tell me why. One of them said, “I love this story but I hate reading this book. There are SO many words on one page, and I feel like it takes me an hour to read a single chapter., even when it doesn’t.”

I immediately knew exactly what she meant, because I also despised the paperback version I ordered for our classroom. The margins on the sides of the page are awkwardly small, the chapter headings are very tiny, and the cover art is ugly. The only reason I ordered them in the first place is because that version was the best out of the six I could locate in the entire world for a reasonable price. I kind of figured the kids wouldn’t notice the problems like I did, because I have a reputation for being a little too finicky about appearance and design. Imagine my feelings of vindication after hearing my student’s comment!

And so, I told the kids right then and there that I would try my best to figure out a solution for next year’s class. They assured me that would help. And so, over the summer I learned how to self-publish books, made up a manuscript, designed a cover, and…

Pressed Rose Classics was born!

And now, I see it as my mission to bring the classics out of their out-of-print obscurity, and to give them the beautiful covers they deserve. I hope you will follow along with this pursuit, and if there are any that catch your eye, you might add them to your own bookshelf.

Click below to browse my current offerings, and check back often—I will be adding more quickly.