Persephone Books
Founded | 1999 |
---|---|
Founder | Nicola Beauman |
Country of origin | United Kingdom |
Headquarters location | Bath, Somerset |
Publication types | Largely-neglected fiction and non-fiction by women writers |
Official website | www |
Persephone Books is an independent
The company sells books mostly through its website, but also maintains a shop in Bath.
History
Persephone Books was founded as a
The company's first offices were in Clerkenwell, London. Sales at first were modest, but its 2000 reprint of Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, the publisher's 21st book, became a bestseller with over 100,000 sales by 2012.[1] The success of Miss Pettigrew allowed the company to set up a new shop in Lamb's Conduit Street in Bloomsbury, where it remained for two decades. In May 2021 the Bloomsbury shop was closed and the company moved to Edgar Buildings in Bath.[4]
Publications
Most of Persephone's publications are issued in a uniform grey colour, with
Most titles in the catalogue were written by women in the early or mid 20th century and focus on representations of the home in a genre sometimes called domestic feminism.[8] In this way, Persephone combines both modernism and feminist literature.[3]: 244 The catalogue is described as containing "the type of books where very quiet things happen in very dramatic ways to perfectly normal people without anyone thinking twice about it."[6] In some cases, the publisher has actually adopted the label of "middlebrow" for combining both a literary sensitivity and a desire for driving plot in its book selections.[3]: 244 Books on cooking, memoirs, and collected letters are also included.[3]: 242
Persephone Books also publishes the Persephone Biannually (once the Persephone Quarterly)[2] magazine for subscribers, which includes articles on its newest publications. A monthly email The Persephone Letter keeps readers up to date on literary events at the Edgar Buildings in Bath, as well as on current theatre productions, exhibitions, relevant newspaper articles and obituaries of authors and of revolutionary women such as Mary Quant and Beverley Lawrence Beech. [7]
Authors
Authors published by Persephone Books include:
- Elisabeth de Waal
- Elizabeth Anna Hart
- Margaret Bonham
- Dorothy Whipple
- Gladys Huntington
- Cicely Hamilton
- Monica Dickens
- Susan Glaspell
- Robin Hyde
- Etty Hillesum
- Marghanita Laski
- Dorothy Canfield Fisher
- Mollie Panter-Downes
- Vere Hodgson
- Florence White
- Judith Viorst
- E. M. Delafield
- Betty Miller
- Elizabeth Berridge
- Noel Streatfeild
- Oriel Malet
- Isobel English
- Ruth Adam
- Winifred Watson
- Virginia Graham
- Amy Levy
- Richmal Crompton
- Katherine Mansfield
- Eleanor Graham
- Frances Hodgson Burnett
- Agnes Jekyll
- Jocelyn Playfair
- Thea Holme
- Emma Smith
- Denis Mackail
- Susan Miles
- Elizabeth Anna Hart
- Julia Strachey
- Anna Gmeyner
- Elizabeth Cambridge
- Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
- Leonard Woolf
- Frances Towers
- Ambrose Heath
- Barbara Euphan Todd
- Lettice Cooper
- Margaret Bonham
- Helen Ashton
- Hilda Bernstein
- Duff Cooper
- Ruby Ferguson
- Georges, Vicomte de Mauduit
- Virginia Woolf
- R. C. Sherriff
- Ethel Wilson
- Norah Hoult
- Barbara Noble
- Molly Hughes
- Kay Smallshaw
- Joanna Cannan
- Diana Gardner
- Rachel Ferguson
- Muriel Stuart
- Dorothy B. Hughes
- Patience Gray
- Primrose Boyd
- Winifred Peck
- Edith Henrietta Fowler
- Mathilde Wolff-Mönckeberg
- Winifred Holtby
- Penelope Mortimer
- Maud Pember Reeves
- Lucy H. Yates
- D. E. Stevenson
- Arthur Hugh Clough
- Christine Longford
- Maria Eliza Rundell
- Irène Némirovsky
- Beth Gutcheon
- Mrs Oliphant
- Diana Athill
- Adam Ferguson
- Constance Maud
- Elizabeth Jenkins
- John Coates
- Helen Hull
- Enid Bagnold
- Eugenia Ginzburg
- Jonathan Smith
- Rosalind Murray
See also
References
- ^ a b c Cooke, Rachel (25 November 2012). "One shade of grey: how Nicola Beauman made an unlikely success of Persephone Books". The Observer.
- ^ a b c Clough, Danielle. "Reclaiming Women's Words with Persephone Books". Syracuse University London. Retrieved 27 April 2021.
- ^ JSTOR 26287648. Retrieved 27 April 2021.
- ^ "Our Shop". Persephone Books. Retrieved 9 May 2021.
- ^ Waldman, Katy (24 June 2015). "How a Homespun Book Publisher Built a Cult Following". Slate Magazine. Retrieved 27 April 2021.
- ^ a b Mondor, Colleen (September 2004). "Reading with Persephone Books". Bookslut. Archived from the original on 20 October 2019.
- ^ a b Lyall, Sarah (14 April 2019). "A Bookstore of One's Own". The New York Times. Retrieved 27 April 2021.
- ^ "Persephone Books and Domestic Feminism". The Bath Festival. Retrieved 9 May 2023.
Further reading
- Housham, Jane (9 October 2012). "The Persephone Book of Short Stories - review". The Guardian. Retrieved 30 April 2021.
- Thorpe, Vanessa (26 April 2008). "How a 1938 novel led to a surprise box-office hit". The Guardian.