Comparison with “Pléiade” comes naturally to mind. How do the two imprints complement each other, apart from having a different shape and price ? First of all, “Quarto” does not offer the same level of critical tools as “Pléiade”. But then that is not its aim. Often the publication includes illustrations and documents about a work and its author. Notes on the other hand are reduced to the bare essentials, offering the work as it stands. In his Oeuvres, which launched the imprint, Cioran wrote “comments on a work are either wrong or useless, because anything indirectly expressed is of no value” (Syllogismes de l’amertume). One cannot be clearer. In that respect the publication in one volume, with no annotations or preface, of A la recherche du temps perdu is exemplary (!). The clarity and lightness of the layout of the books is a graphic application of the principle.
  Other editorial differences may come to mind. “Quarto” embraces social science. By working, whenever possible, with the authors themselves in the compilation of their major works and other scattered writings, the imprint often reveals a coherent theme and the unity of a questioning and intellectual journey.
  “Quarto” offers bodies of work which have either been turned down by “Pléiade” or written by authors already been given the “Pléiade” treatment as Céline called it (“pléiadisés”) : for instance the short stories of Pirandello and Hemingway, Michel Leiris’ ethnological writings on Africa, or Aragon’s singular Henri Matisse, roman. For other authors “Quarto” offers a welcome context for assembling a prolific production (Tardieu, Desnos). Sometimes it is only a selection of works, because of editorial policy (the imprint has specialised in the publication of short stories : Aymé, Conrad, Hemingway, Pirandello), or because it has been impossible to obtain the rights to the complete works (Duras). Occasionally “Quarto” publishes new editions of works previously published in “Pléiade”, such as the new translations of Plutarch and Polibe published recently.
  It is worth looking at the editorial work of “Quarto” with regard to Gallimard’s list in particular.
  For instance, although the Piroué edition of Pirandello’s Nouvelles pour une année is re-used, “Quarto” has added the previously unpublished volumes XIII to XV. By doing so “Quarto” is fulfilling the wishes of the author who wrote in 1922 : “In keeping with the intention that gave me the idea for the title, I would like the whole collection to be published in one volume, one of those huge volumes now out of fashion in the literary world.” Pirandello’s wish has now come true – among others. Indeed each new “Quarto” book is a project in itself.