The editorial director of New York Review Books and editor of NYRB Classics explains the origins and cult status of the incredibly popular series. Since its founding by Frank in 1999, NYRB Classics’s mission has been to reintroduce out-of-print gems to a new audience, everything from Walt Whitman’s Drum Taps to a Janet Malcolm work of journalism. Combined with a simple and magnetic design, this model inspired David Zwirner Books’s own ekphrasis series, which focuses on writing about art, and which just celebrated its 20th edition with the publication of Virginia Woolf’s Oh to Be a Painter!.  

Oh to Be a Painter!, the most accessible collection of Woolf’s writing on art, is available through David Zwirner Books. The entire ekphrasis series is now available as a special collection.