Library of America is publishing Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea novels
Coming September 2026
Library of America, a nonprofit publisher dedicated to celebrating America's great literature and writing is publishing one of the best works of fantasy literature: Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea series.
The six-book cycle will be broken into two volumes, which will be released on September 8th. Volume One will contain A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, and The Farthest Shore, as well as two shorter stories, while the second will include Tehanu, Tales from Earthsea, The Other Wind, and the rest of the short stories set in the world. The books will also include Le Guin's essays about the series and her previously-unseen, hand-drawn maps. The books will be available individually and as a boxed set.
Le Guin published A Wizard of Earthsea after Parnassus Press publisher Herbert Schein entreated her to write a book for younger readers in 1967. It prompted her to begin thinking about wizards and where they learned about magic, and she quickly came up with a coming-of-age story about a promising young wizard named Ged. After saving his village, he goes off to attend a magical academy in an archipelago and accidentally unleashes a shadow, prompting him to try and escape. It's a phenomenal read, and having picked it up a recently, it holds up wonderfully.
While LoA usually decks their books out in a standardized black cover, they've brought in artist and printmaker Olivia Lomenech Gill to produce the cover art and boxed set for this edition.
Le Guin is a familiar name for Library of America: the publisher has been steadily working its way through her books, including Ursula K. Le Guin: Five Novels (The Lathe of Heaven, The Eye of the Heron, The Beginning Place, Searoad: Chronicles of Klatsand, Lavinia), Ursula K. Le Guin: Collected Poems, Ursula K. Le Guin: Annals of the Western Shore (Gifts, Voices, Powers), Ursula K. Le Guin: Always Coming Home (Author’s Expanded Edition), Ursula K. Le Guin: Hainish Novels & Stories, Volume One (Rocannon’s World, Planet of Exile, City of Illusions, The Left Hand of Darkness , The Dispossessed), Ursula K. Le Guin: Hainish Novels & Stories, Volume Two (The Word for World Is Forest, Five Ways to Forgiveness, The Telling), Ursula K. Le Guin: The Complete Orsinia (Malafrena, Orsinian Tales), Ursula K. Le Guin’s Book of Cats, and Ursula K. Le Guin: Searoad: Chronicles of Klatsand.
Le Guin's works have been reprinted a lot in recent years. The Folio Society has produced some great editions of her books, Tor recently released Worlds of Exile and Illusion (which includes Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile, and City of Illusions), Saga Press released The Unreal and the Real: The Selected Short Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin, The Found and the Lost: The Collected Novellas of Ursula K. Le Guin, and The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition, while HarperCollins will include The Dispossessed in its forthcoming Harper Perennial Modern Classics series. There's also an excellent graphic novel adaptation of A Wizard of Earthsea that came out last year and a television adaptation somewhere in the works in Hollywood. There's certainly no shortage of choices when it comes to finding new editions of her books.
That said, I really like what Library of America produces: these books are nicely curated with additional essays or commentary, and if you're looking to save some space, they're pretty compact. But more than that, I think of these as carrying a level of prestige with them: they're included in this incredible, curated body of American writing that the publisher has been putting out since the 1970s.
Andrew Liptak
LoA has been slowly adding genre novels to its collection, including authors such as Octavia Butler, Philip K. Dick, Shirley Jackson, Madeleine L’Engle, H.P. Lovecraft, and Joanna Russ, as well as anthologies and collections such as The Black Fantastic, American Science Fiction: Nine Classic Novels of the 1950s, American Science Fiction: Eight Classic Novels of the 1960s, The Future Is Female: Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women, and The Future Is Female! More Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women.
Le Guin's Earthsea cycle isn't the only genre title coming out from LoA this year: in October, it'll release Peter Straub: Three Novels of the 1970s, which includes Julia, If You Could See Me Now, and Ghost Story.