The Castalia Library
The Castalia Library is a subscription-based collection of the world’s most beautiful books, all of which are bound in leather. Each book is chosen for its literary appeal to Castalia House’s core community of book collectors, which provides an eclectic variety that clearly distinguishes it from other fine books publishers that tend to concentrate primarily on bestsellers and classics.
Launched in 2019, there are now more than thirty books in the Castalia Library collection, more than half of which are sold out. The list of all the books.
The Library books were initially published in top grain Italian cowhide, although a discovery of a reliable source of full grain pigskin leather in 2025 allowed Castalia House to upgrade the leather quality to the now-defunct Franklin Library standard beginning with the books bound in 2026.
Castalia Library books are bound in two locations, a US bindery in Tennessee and the Castalia Bindery in Switzerland. All of these images are photographs of genuine books from the actual print run, not mockups or special editions.
THE MISSIONARIES by Owen Stanley is the first book in the Castalia Library collection. A print run of 500, it sold out quickly. A popular work; second and third editions have since been produced. It is one of the funniest and most outrageous novels ever published. The author subsequently published a quasi-sequel, THE PROMETHEAN, which is also available in a leatherbound edition from Castalia Library.
THE MEDITATIONS by Marcus Aurelius. This proved to be surprisingly popular, so much so that it sold out before it had been produced. Although we haven’t published an official second edition yet, we did produce about 150 test editions in green leather that were made for the purposes of getting the Castalia Bindery in Switzerland operational, which were subsequently sold at a discount to interested subscribers.
Note that the test editions do not have spine hubs or gilded page edges, since those were not the production processes that required testing.
AWAKE IN THE NIGHT LAND by John C. Wright
THE DIVINE COMEDY by Dante Alighieri is one of the true classics of literature and the Castalia Library edition, which features the Longfellow translation and artwork from a sixteenth-century Venetian edition, is one of the most attractive ones ever published.
LIVES Vol. I by Plutarch
LIVES Vol. II by Plutarch
SUMMA ELVETICA & OTHER STORIES by Vox Day
This is the first in what is presently a five-volume epic fantasy series entitled THE ARTS OF DARK AND LIGHT. All five volumes have been published in leatherbound editions by Castalia Library.
At over 768k words, ARTS OF DARK AND LIGHT is already longer than THE LORD OF THE RINGS and THE HOBBIT combined, and there are still two more volumes to go! There is no better epic fantasy being written today.
HEIDI by Johanna Spyri contains both of the original Heidi novels.
RHETORIC by Aristotle has somewhat surprisingly proven to be one of the most popular books in the collection. It’s the first of four Aristotle works published by Castalia Library, followed by ETHICS, POLITICS, and METAPHYSICS.
DISCOURSES ON THE FIRST TEN BOOKS OF TITUS LIVIUS by Niccolo Machiavelli.
The ARTS OF DARK AND LIGHT epic fantasy series continued with A THRONE OF BONES Vol. I and A THRONE OF BONES Vol. II by Vox Day. The series is generally characterized by reviewers as being better than A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE but not as good as THE LORD OF THE RINGS.
ETHICS by Aristotle.
THE JUNGLE BOOKS by Rudyard Kipling include the complete texts of both THE JUNGLE BOOK and THE SECOND JUNGLE BOOK.
POLITICS by Aristotle
ANTIFRAGILE by Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a part of the official Library subscription. However, we actually published four of his books, two of which were not included in the subscription.
THE BLACK SWAN by Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a bestseller that is probably his most famous book. Although it was not part of the subscription, we produced a print run of nearly 1,000 books in order to meet the demand.
THE PROMETHEAN by Owen Stanley. A satire and quasi-sequel of sorts to THE MISSIONARIES.
SKIN IN THE GAME by Nassim Nicholas Taleb is the third of the four Incerto books published, and the second that is part of the official Library subscription.
FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS is the fourth of the four Incerto books by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. All four books are also available in black goatskin leather Libraria Castalia editions.
THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON by Johann Wyss is a Swiss classic that has proven to be extremely popular with Library subscribers. One of the challenges in producing it was the fact that it has a number of unofficial endings that required some judicious decisions in the process of laying out the final text.
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE by Jane Austen represented the first time we utilized a scanned interior rather than producing an original layout. This was because we wanted to not only perfectly replicate the 1894 Peacock edition, illustrated by Hugh Thompson, but improve upon it. Justly famous for its beauty, the original layout was slightly cramped vertically, so we added more space between the text block, the page titles, and the page numbers to improve the reading experience.
The massive popularity of the book is why the print run for this edition was 25 percent higher than our largest previous print runs, although that didn’t prevent the book from selling out very quickly upon release.
The two volumes of A SEA OF SKULLS are the fourth and fifth books in the epic fantasy series by Vox Day.
To obtain a deluxe leatherbound editions, subscribe to Castalia Library.
For questions about subscription status and billings: subs@castalialibrary.com
For questions about shipping and missing books: castaliashipping@gmail.com
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