TLR stands for The Lemon Room, the name of Renan Larue’s study in his Santa Barbara apartment. On its wall hung a painting of a lemon, a gift from a contemporary Santa Barbara artist. It was in this room, surrounded by books, that the idea for TLR Press first took shape. The publishing house was officially founded in Santa Barbara in 2026.
The project began with a simple observation: many important works from the past are no longer readily available to contemporary readers. Some survive only in excellent but prohibitively expensive scholarly editions; others are out of print, available only in dated publications, or accessible online without introductions, annotations, or the comfort of a carefully produced book. TLR Press was created to bring major authors such as Plutarch, Porphyry, Voltaire, and Christiaan Huygens back into circulation through reliable, accessible, and affordable editions.
The first publications of TLR Press will explore two central themes: the history of animal ethics and vegetarianism, and the ways extraterrestrial life and civilization have been imagined from antiquity to the present. These apparently different fields raise many of the same fundamental questions about humanity, intelligence, anthropocentrism, and our place within the cosmos. They form the core identity of this young publishing house, whose catalogue will gradually expand in the years ahead. Renan Larue, Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has brought together an editorial board of distinguished scholars and leading specialists to guide TLR Press in this adventure.