The Philolexian Foundation

The Philolexian Society counts more published authors, over its two and a quarter centuries, than most colleges count members of Phi Beta Kappa. A great many of them are forgotten. Some are now public-domain by virtue of age: old enough that no one collects royalties, but no one keeps the books in print either. Others are merely out of fashion, or in copyright purgatory, or held by disinterested estates. The Philolexian Foundation preserves the works of members of our beloved Society.

What we publish

Books by Philolexians (current students, recent alumni, the long-departed Geezers of earlier generations) that are either (a) in the public domain by virtue of age, or (b) rights-reverted by their authors or estates. We do not compete with major publishers. We re-issue the orphaned, the long-forgotten, and the merely out-of-print. Trees, by Joyce Kilmer (CC '08), the namesake of our annual Bad Poetry Contest, is our inaugural title.

For authors of new works, the Press will publish the writing of any current or former member of the Philolexian Society in need of a (very) modest imprimatur. Philolexians: your works will always have a home in these hallowed halls (see: The Quest for Halls).

Who runs the Press

Volunteers: alumni and students, with light editorial oversight from the Foundation, which attempts to keep matters within the bounds of good taste. Given that our current and past members and their occasionally notorious publications have been censored and banned by Kings, Senators, libraries, church groups, and the U.S. Customs Service, but have, all in all, been terrific reads, we tend to give our artists a pretty wide berth. Students who volunteer learn manuscript preparation, copy-editing, cover design, typography, the small absurdities of Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing platform, the larger absurdities of marketing books in the year 2026, and, eventually, a few of the simpler pleasures of holding a finished volume in one's hand. It is the closest thing to an undergraduate publishing apprenticeship currently on offer in New York.

What happens to the money

Royalties go to the Foundation. The Foundation supports the student Society, the awards program, and (as proceeds permit) the Quest for Halls. Books are priced modestly; the Press is not designed as a revenue center, but each title contributes what it can. Donors who wish to underwrite a specific title are asked to write to the Cryptkeeper.

The look of a Philolexian Press book

Each volume is set in EB Garamond, with a frontispiece engraving where one can be located, a brief scholarly introduction by a fellow Philolexian or a sympathetic faculty member, and a colophon that records the editorial team. The covers belong to a single design family so that, eventually, the catalog reads as a shelf rather than a scattering. We are aiming for the look of an 1880s Strand Magazine library, executed by undergraduates in 2026, which is more or less the brief for the Society itself.