Today I’d like to introduce you to an independent UK publisher and bookseller called Persephone Books and show you my small collection. I’ve been thinking about how to describe how special Persephone is. It’s always lovely to receive books as a present, but if you open the wrapping paper and it’s one of these, it’s like ‘!! it’s a Persephone book!’ I don’t need to know what the book is about, as long as it has this iconic grey jacket, I know it’s going to be good. Then I look forward to finding out what the book is actually about. It’s all very exciting!
The publisher
So firstly the publisher. Persephone Books was founded in 1999 by Nicola Beauman, who is a writer herself. They reprint works that are little known or lost, they call it ‘neglected’, mostly by mid-20th century women writers, and they re-introduce them to the readers. I’d love to hear how they discovered the titles and how they judge and decide if it’s worth a reprint. They have published 149 books so far, including fiction (like novels and short stories) and non-fiction (like diaries, memoirs and cookery books). Among the authors, there are well known names like Virginia Woolf, Leonard Woolf, E M Forster and Katherine Mansfield. But most of them I’ve never heard of, but are hidden gems. Some immediately intriguing ones are Charles Dickens great granddaughter Monica Dickens, and Edward Thomas’ wife Helen Thomas.
It sounds like Persephone Books started in 1999 as a passion project by the founder and it grew and flourished over the years. It started in a basement in London. When they got enough money from a bestseller, they moved to Bloomsbury in 2001 and stayed there for 20 years [photo]. In April 2021 mid pandemic they moved to Bath.
The physical object
You might have been intrigued by the uniform grey cover – this is another reason why it’s hard to decide which to buy. I said just now as long as it has this grey jacket, I know it’s going to be good. The problem with that is it’s almost impossible to decide which one to buy, either online, or even worse, when I visited the shop in Bath. I just wanted the whole shop.
Apart from the fact that they’re all excellent, you can’t judge the book by its cover at all. So most of them have the grey cover. Persephone Classics have more colourful cover designs. The inside, text and paper are identical to the grey ones. They’re slightly cheaper because these ones do not have the full-colour endpapers.
The endpaper design is a big feature of each Persephone book. They are taken from fabrics or textiles that are either designed the year the book was written, or linked with the theme of the story. They all have a matching bookmark as well.
The books are printed and bound in Germany. I don’t know what the paper stock it is. But it’s high quality. I can tell when I write on it. I’m so used to writing in the margin of every book I read now. But when I put my pen on a Persephone book I still hesitate. When I started Mariana, I actually reached for a pencil. I never use a pencil now. I switched to my normal pen immediately after telling myself off for showing partiality between books. But it does show that Persephone books are quite special.
No.1 William: An English Man
The first Persephone book I read was William: An English Man. It was also the first book Persephone published in 1999. You see once again, my long term followers you know this, my obsession with impossible perfection and unrealistic ambition when it comes to reading an author or in this case, a publisher – I wanted to start from their first book and read all the way to the end! But the busy bees at Persephone publish faster than I can read and they’re quite pricy…
William: An english Man was orginally published in 1919. It was written by Cicely Hamilton. Cicely Hamilton started as an actor in theatre and wrote plays herself. Then she was active in the women’s suffrage movement in the early 20th century and made use of her theatre experience and wrote feminist and suffrage plays. When WWI broke out, she initially worked as a nurse in Paris and then made use of her theatre experience again and joined a company that set up entertainment for the troops. This was when William was written.
It’s an extraordinary novel which, I feel, is quite different to many other Persephone books. It left a deep impression on my memory the way Miss Buncle’s Book and Mariana would never do. It’s not a cosy novel for a rainy afternoon or a pleasant story to cheer you up on a depressing day. It’s a perspective shifting story that would shock one out of any petty despair.
I don’t want to tell you anything about the plot line, you need to go in knowing nothing to get the full effect. But just a hint the story comes from the author’s very own experience of the suffragette movement and of WWII.
No.2 Mariana
This is the second book Persephone published in 1999, Mariana by Monica Dickens, first published in 1940. Monica was Charles Dickens’ great granddaughter – I love that detail. Mariana is an autobiographical novel about a girl’s childhood and growing up in the 1920s and 30s, in the same vein as I Capture the Castle and The Pursuit of Love. It’s amazing how an overall uneventful story can be so unput-down-able.
No.9 Few Eggs and No Orange
This is a non-fictional work, published as number 9 by Persephone in the same year as the previous two. The full title of the book is Few Eggs and No Orange, a Diary showing how Unimportant People in London and Birmingham lived through the war years 1940-1945 written in the Notting Hill area of London by Vere Hodgson.
I don’t know much about the history of WWII but I think it was an extraordinary time to live through. I read a non-fiction book about the ministry of food during the war, called Eggs or Anarchy, and really enjoyed it. This would be from an ordinary person’s point of view. Interesting both books mention eggs in their titles. It’ll be interesting to see what the effect there was on Vere Dodgson’s life by the decisions made by Lord Woolton, the minister of food.
Persephone also published a collection of letters about life during the same period written by a German woman living in Hamburg, called On the Other Side. You can read the two titles side by side and see some of the historical events from two perspectives.
No.81 Miss Buncle’s Book
No.81 Miss Buncle’s Book by D E Stevenson was first published in 1934 and reprinted by Persephone in 2008. D E Stevenson was a Scottish writer who published more than 40 novels from 1920s to 70s. Miss Buncle’s Book is one of Persephone’s bestsellers, it was reissued as a Persephone Classic at the end of 2021. It’s about the novel that Miss Buncle wrote that is based on her neighbours in the quiet village, and how that novel explodes like a bomb when the villagers start to realise it’s talking about their very lives and revealing things that they’re trying to hide from their neighbours. How would each person react? Would the unassuming Miss Buncle escape the witch hunt?
Ways to engage
If you’re interested in finding out more about the publisher or checking out their books, there are many ways to engage with them. There are social media of course, website and email newsletter. Their sales are 80% via mail order but they do have a beautiful shop in Bath. They also host events.
They used to post out physical copies of their magazines, the Persephone Biannually until 2023. They introduce new books they publish and review previous one. They also include short stories that were published decades ago. For example, there’s a 1958 piece by E M Forster imagining what his characters in A Room with a View are doing 50 years later. It’s very short, on a double page spread, I loved it. There are small articles about the history of Bath, and an interesting one about the recent publishing landscape on the reprinting of the second generation of modern classic backlist. I loved receiving them. They stopped posting them now. Not 100% sure if it’s just me or in general. Digital copies are available on their website.
A Day of Small Things 