Ella Griffiths on the business of bringing old books back to shelves

In this episode Rachel and Simon speak with Ella Griffiths, head of classics and heritage at Faber. In 2021 Ella launched Faber Editions, an imprint focusing on republishing work from Faber’s archive and elsewhere, with the aim of “resurrecting radical literary voices who speak to our present”. Published quarterly, these titles include Gwendolyn Brooks’s “Maud Martha”, Kay Dick’s “They” and Rachel Ingalls’s “Mrs Caliban”. Ella also works with the estates of writers including Samuel Beckett, Flannery O’Connor and William Golding. Alongside her work on the backlist, Ella acquires, commissions and edits frontlist non-fiction, in particular literary biographies and cultural histories. We spoke to Ella about what constitutes a publisher's backlist, the thrill of republishing a forgotten gem and working with literary estates.