Collection (publishing)

In the field of book publishing, a collection or, more precisely, editorial collection (collection éditoriale; colección editorial; collana editoriale; coleção de livros), is a set of books published by the same publisher, usually written by various authors, each book with its own title, but all grouped under the same collective title. The collective title is the title of the collection, it must be mentioned on each book. The books that make up an editorial collection can be published in a specific order or not. When each volume in the collection has a serial number, it is called a numbered collection. A collection generally using distinctive, common formats and features. The title of a collection can be accompanied by the term "series" or its equivalents in other languages, such as in the English-speaking world, for example, the "Bibliothèque de la Pléiade", "Découvertes Gallimard" and "Que sais-je?" are all termed "book series" instead of collections. Conversely, Thames & Hudson's "World of Art" series was published as a collection in France and Spain. In France, the concept of "collection" was invented by Louis Hachette, a 19th-century publisher, under the name bibliothèque, which means "library". In 19th and early 20th-century Spain, literary collection publishings such as "Biblioteca de Autores Españoles", "Biblioteca Mignon", "El Libro Popular" and "La Novela Corta" were in full swing. The "Biblioteca ilustrada de Gaspar y Roig", created in 1851 in Madrid, notably for its encyclopaedia-like contents. It contains not only the literary works (popular novels of the 19th century), but also reference work (dictionary), Comte de Buffon's Histoire Naturelle, Cesare Cantù's Storia Universale, Juan de Mariana's Historia general de España... and it even contains the whole Bible in Spanish (Biblia de Scío). In Italy, the first editorial collection was the "Collana historica" (or "Collana historica de' Greci"), which included vulgarised works of twelve Greek historians, edited by the 16th-century humanist Tommaso Porcacchi and printed in Venice by Gabriele Giolito de' Ferrari from 1563 to 1585.