The Exorcist – Folio Society Reviews

About a year ago the Folio Society had a "poll" on Twitter were The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty was one of five horror titles (if I remember correctly) that you could vote on. I don't know if Folio Society followed up on that poll afterwards but here, one year later, we have The Exorcist.

My initial reaction when the book first arrived was not overly positive. While the typography and simple binding design was attractive and fitting to the book, what I found inside did disappoint me a bit.
The book compared to other Folio Society editions felt a bit cheap. This was mainly due to the paper used (Abbey Lynx Rough Paper) and the paper used for the illustrations.
I still stand by my initial reaction and I will go into more details below.

Burnt-red binding with inverted crucifix

Binding:

There is not much to say about the binding other than that I do really like it. The burnt-red cloth, the embossed letters with an interesting and pleasant typeface, the inverted crucifix. It is simple but it works very well.
The headband is also the same red colour as the binding, and the same with the endpapers. All-in-all a positive experience, with a cloth that both feel and smell good (although, the cloth leaves a powdery/sticky feeling on your hands afterwards, something that I have experienced in other cloth bound editions).

Paper:

The decision to use a completely white paper for this edition makes sense. The Abbey Lynx Rough Paper (will shorten it to ALRP) is a good paper and I do not doubt the quality of it compared with other Folio Society editions. However, my initial reaction was that the paper felt and looked cheap. Maybe I'm too used to other Folio editions cream-coloured paper (that is Abbey Wove Paper) and seeing a white paper inside a Folio book just surprised me. Or maybe I associate white paper with books of lesser quality? I don't know. I still feel that a book like The Exorcist should have a warm cream-coloured paper.

But since the book has coloured chapter headings (illustrated by the artist Jeremy Caniglia), having a white paper makes sense to bring out the correct colours. Even the page numbers are in a brown/gold colour. It is then clear that the Folio Society decided to use a white paper since they used coloured chapter headings and page numbers. It is a very logical decision and I therefor respect the use of ALRP.

Something I don't understand though is the paper used for the illustrations. Why in the world would you not use photographic paper for photographic illustrations?!
For me it ruins a lot having an even thinner paper (I believe it is thinner than ALRP) used for the illustrations and deciding not to use photographic paper. Not only does it bring the quality of the print down when you use regular paper, but it also takes away the feeling of the illustrations. Using photographic paper would undoubtedly bring more authenticity to the illustrations, and authenticity is exactly what you want to experience when you are reading a horror novel that is based on a real life events.

Illustrations: 

And then we have the photographic illustrations by Jeremy Caniglia. They are both realistic and creepy, but I would not say that I enjoy all of them. It is quite hard to differentiate what is what in some of the illustrations. They are also very dark and with the added lack of printing quality, I'm not overly impressed with them.

Illustration of Regan McNeil

Conclusion:

I cannot help but to feel that this edition of The Exorcist was a bit rushed. No original illustrations combined with a simple binding design and a lack of good paper for the illustrations do not convince me that this book is worth its asking price of £40 (plus the quite premium shipping costs...).

But if you are a fellow horror fan, then I guess you wont be able to help yourself. I know that I couldn't...

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Here is a link to my video presentation: https://youtu.be/MQZRWJKwBLk