A good book from yesterday is a great place to start a conversation today.

Dear Reader,

We’re Quite Literally Books, a small heritage press dedicated to rediscovering and reprinting great reads by women authors.

A few years ago we, two lifelong best friends and book lovers, decided to start our own publishing company. During the pandemic, somewhere between pining away for our local libraries and ordering yet another batch of books (from our favorite independent bookstores, of course), an idea began to take shape… What if we, who had absolutely no bona fides in publishing, were to seek out neglected books by once-popular-but-now-largely-forgotten American women authors? And then, what if we—still lacking any practical publishing experience—put those books back into print? And printed in such a way that the books themselves would be an absolute delight to behold and smell?

We were seized with a wild, naive hope that we weren’t the only ones who wanted these questions to be more than rhetorical. Now, more than ever, it’s important to consider essential questions of belonging with respect to the American literary canon—who’s in? Who’s out? And, who gets to decide? And we’d like the women from the past to have a voice in this conversation.

And so, dear Reader, we reprinted them.

Our first three Quite Literally Books volumes will be released in April 2025, and are now available for pre-order. See descriptions of them below. We can’t wait for you to read them and hear what you think. Each of the books is not only a gratifying read, but also a delightful object—an un-put-downable story nestled between beautifully designed covers and presented on pages that feel and smell amazing.

You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook, and here, on our new Substack. We’ll be sharing book recommendations, updates on our books and book events, and places we love to read and get inspired.

Our hope is to build a home for readers, like you, who quite literally love books as much as we do. Thank you for being here!