Slightly Foxed

About Slightly Foxed

Slightly Foxed is a British quarterly literary magazine whose primary focus is books and book culture. Established in 2004 by former John Murray editors Hazel Wood and Gail Pirkis, it is the independent-minded quarterly "for people who don't want to read only what the big publishers are hyping" — examining older and more obscure titles rather than the current bestseller lists. Its offices are based at Hoxton Square, London N1, and its website is foxedquarterly.com.

The title comes from the term "slightly foxed" as a description of a book's physical quality — commonly used in the second-hand book trade to describe the brown spots on older paper. Notable authors to have written for the magazine include Penelope Lively, Richard Mabey, Diana Athill, Ronald Blythe and Robert Macfarlane.

Founded in 2004 by Two John Murray Editors

Slightly Foxed was founded in 2004 by Gail Pirkis and Hazel Wood — both former editors at John Murray, one of Britain's great literary publishing houses. It began as a "kitchen table" enterprise: when the two had the idea for the quarterly, they started with a physical object, commissioning a dummy from the Yorkshire craftsman printers Smith Settle — 96 pages of good-quality cream paper, sewn like a hardback — and a first page design in Garamond typeface by Octavius Murray.

The format deliberately echoed The Cornhill Magazine — the celebrated John Murray literary magazine of the 1920s and '30s: a sewn, elegant quarterly built for reading rather than display.

The Real Reader's Quarterly

Slightly Foxed calls itself "the real reader's quarterly": the good-looking and intelligent quarterly magazine for book lovers. Instead of books currently marketed by big publishers, it tends to examine older and more obscure titles — the backlist gems, the forgotten classics, the books that deserve a second look.

"Companionable, entertaining and elegantly produced, it's more like a well-read friend than a literary review" — sixteen shortish articles per issue, beautifully produced on gorgeous cream paper, each recommending good reading beyond the hype.

The Books Imprint

As well as the magazine itself, Slightly Foxed has a books imprint, focusing on republishing classic memoirs in beautiful clothbound hardbacks. Original books published by the imprint include Philip Evans's Country Doctor's Commonplace Book and Charles Phillipson's Letters to Michael — selected by the Telegraph as one of the best books of 2021.

The imprint has also reissued a number of classic works and children's books, including Rosemary Sutcliff's novels about Roman Britain and the Carey novels of Ronald Welch — extending the magazine's mission of rescuing good books from obscurity into book publishing itself.

The Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize

Since 2014 the magazine has sponsored the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize, for the best first biography or literary memoir published each year. In 2023 the prize was won jointly by Katherine Rundell for her biography of John Donne, Super-Infinite, and Osman Yousefzada for his memoir The Go-Between. Winners from previous years include Edmund Gordon for The Invention of Angela Carter and Alan Cumming for Not My Father's Son.

The prize — with a winner's award of £2,500 — reflects the magazine's deep engagement with life-writing: the memoir and biography are Slightly Foxed's home territory.

The Bookshop, 2009–2016

Between 2009 and 2016, Slightly Foxed ran a bookshop of the same name on London's Gloucester Road — a physical home for its philosophy, selling the books the magazine championed. The shop became a beloved fixture of London's book culture before its closure.

In addition to the quarterly magazine, Slightly Foxed produces a podcast about books, book culture and writers — extending the kitchen-table conversation to listeners everywhere.

Slightly Foxed Today

From a kitchen-table startup in 2004 to an independent publishing company with a quarterly magazine, a books imprint, a literary prize and a podcast, Slightly Foxed has built a devoted readership of book lovers — celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2024.

As "the independent-minded quarterly that combines good looks, good writing and a personal approach," it remains the essential magazine for readers who want to discover the books that time forgot — at foxedquarterly.com.

Eleven March, Daunt Books, Marylebone

The first issue of Slightly Foxed appeared in 2004, and the magazine was launched on 11 March at Daunt Books in Marylebone — the celebrated bookshop in Marylebone High Street, with its long oak galleries and Edwardian atmosphere, was a fitting birthplace for a quarterly devoted to the pleasures of old books. Gail Pirkis and Hazel Wood, who had met as editorial colleagues at the publisher John Murray, had conceived a magazine for the general reader rather than the academic: personal, discursive essays about books that were no longer new.

The launch was a statement of intent. Daunt Books was — and remains — the natural home of the literate traveller and the curious browser, and Slightly Foxed positioned itself from the first as the magazine for that reader: someone who reads for pleasure, who loves second-hand bookshops, and who believes that a book published decades ago can speak as urgently as anything on the current bestseller lists.

From that Marylebone beginning, the quarterly grew steadily. It is now published from Hoxton in London, but the spirit of the launch — books as companions, reading as pleasure — has remained the magazine's defining note for more than two decades.

From Six Hundred to Ten Thousand

Slightly Foxed is one of the great slow-burn success stories of British independent publishing. The magazine began with around 600 subscribers; over twenty-two years that figure grew to more than 8,000, and the paid circulation now stands at around 10,000 — achieved without the marketing budgets of the large publishing houses, on the strength of word of mouth and the loyalty of its readers.

The contributors reflect the magazine's broad church: established authors, academics and journalists write alongside previously unpublished writers, all of them united by the brief of writing personally and engagingly about books that matter to them. The quarterly's reach has been extended by its podcast, which carries the magazine's discursive, bookish conversation to a wider audience, and by its cloth-bound reissue publishing arm, which brings neglected classics back into print in handsome editions.

It is a model that has proved remarkably durable: a print quarterly, published in the digital age, that has grown every year by doing one thing well — writing about books with love, knowledge and wit.

Printed in Yorkshire, Twenty Years On

Twenty years after the first issue, Slightly Foxed was still going strong — as Gail Pirkis herself put it, 'People thought we were mad but 20 years on, we're still going strong.' The magazine is printed in Yorkshire by the craftsmen printers Smith Settle, and its covers are illustrated by contemporary British artists: a physical object made with care, in an age when so much reading has moved to the screen.

The founders' original frustration has lost none of its force. They had started the magazine in 2004, when chain bookshops were everywhere, flogging three books for the price of two and selling piles of celebrity memoirs — and the back list, the books that are still worth reading, was being neglected. Slightly Foxed was their answer: a quarterly celebrating fiction and non-fiction books that had been lost, forgotten or overlooked.

The magazine's conversation has since spread beyond print. The Slightly Foxed Podcast, recorded around the kitchen table in 'cosy Hoxton Square' with Pirkis, Hazel Wood and friends, was selected as one of the Evening Standard's ten best literary podcasts for book lovers. And the editors' writers' competitions continue to find contributors from the widest possible range of backgrounds — proof, as the editors like to say, that you don't have to be a 'writer' to write well.