Persephone Books

I fell in love with Persephone Books over ten years ago, when I was researching and writing The Bookshop Book - a publication about 300 weird and wonderful bookshops around the world. Persephone Books is both a publishing house and bookshop, set up by Nicola Beauman, and it reissues forgotten classics, mainly written by women. Back then they were in the heart of Bloomsbury, luring me in with their gorgeous paperbacks and their patterned lampshades, and when I first visited that autumn, the warm light of the bookshop trickled out onto the rainy street like a spell. These days, you can find them in Bath, and I urge you to pay a visit - go on a pilgrimage if the mood takes you; I promise it’s worth it. And if you can’t make it in person, you can chat to them on the phone or via email, and they can post books to wherever you happen to be.

They’ve published over 150 titles now, and I’m often asked for recommendations, so here are my favourites: Doreen by Barbara Noble is about a young girl evacuated during World War II; Still Missing by Beth Gutcheon is a stressful (in the best way) crime novel about a missing child; The Hopkins Manuscript by RC Sherriff is an old-school sci-fi novel about the moon colliding with the earth - although my favourite Sherriff is another they publish called The Fortnight in September, a cosy but astute novel following a family going on holiday to the English seaside, and it is perfect for this time of year. In April, they reissued Crooked Cross by Sally Carson, which became an instant bestseller, an engrossing novel from the early 1930s, predicting the rise of Nazism. I’ve been describing it to people as the TV show Years and Years but historical and in book form. It’s definitely speaking to our current times.

I feel like so many TOAST readers would love Persephone Books as much as I do. So, in case you’re not already familiar with them, I decided to sit down with Francesca Beauman, managing director of Persephone Books, to chat about what they do and share it with you.

Can you tell us a bit about how Persephone Books began? What was the first book you published, and when did you open the bookshop?

Persephone Books published its first title in the spring of 1999. Founder Nicola Beauman’s original concept was to re-print a handful of 'lost' or out-of-print books every year, most of them interwar novels by women. The name Persephone was chosen as a symbol of female creativity, as well as of new beginnings (the daughter of Zeus is associated with spring). The company was initially run from a basement office in Clerkenwell and the first book published was William – An Englishman by Cicely Hamilton, with an endpaper named 'Pamela' designed by the Omega Workshop. After three years in the basement, Persephone Book no. 21, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson, became a word-of mouth bestseller (and later a film starring Amy Adams and Frances McDormand) and, following its success, Persephone moved its office to Bloomsbury, also opening its first shop on the same premises. In 2021, the whole business moved to Bath.

How was the move to Bath?

Energising.

What can visitors to your bookshop expect? Can you describe the shop for us?

It’s quite different to other bookshops. Fresh flowers, antique posters, and rows and rows of books with grey covers give it a timeless and calm atmosphere. And because we only sell the books we publish, all of them by neglected writers you probably haven’t heard of, everyone who works there knows them really well, welcoming customer enquiries such as “Do you have anything featuring a female scientist?” (The Call) or “I’m looking for a book set in Leeds” (National Provincial) or “I need a housewarming present” (How to Run Your Home Without Help). However, it is also a working office and we publish all the books from there as well as sell them: how many other publishers do you know where you can walk right in any time and ask questions about what they do?

Exactly. That’s one of the many reasons why I love Persephone so much. Let’s talk about the design of the books, for anyone who isn’t familiar - the endpapers! The bookmarks!

Persephone books are all grey because – well – we really like grey. We also had a vision of a woman who comes home tired from work, and there is a book waiting for her, and it doesn't matter what it looks like because she knows she will enjoy it. Our books look beautiful because we believe that, whether they are on an office desk or hanging in a bag over the handles of a pram, it is important to take pleasure from how they look and feel. Each book also contains a patterned endpaper, along with a matching bookmark, taken from a fabric or textile that was designed around the same time the book was written and that somehow thematically evokes the subject matter. Choosing the endpapers is one of the most fun aspects of what we do!

Do you have any lovely customer moments you can share?

It felt very meaningful recently when a high school teacher in Texas placed an order for 40 copies of our latest publication, Crooked Cross by Sally Carson, because he wants to use it in his classroom when he is teaching his students about the rise of authoritarian governments. I of course wish the book wasn’t so timely, but there we are.

The success of Crooked Cross, even on the run up to publication this year, was so lovely to see. Did it catch you off guard or did you have an inkling it would be as big as it was?

I did have an inkling, yes.

Will you be publishing its sequels? And what can we expect from them? (Without spoilers, of course!)

We will be publishing the second book in Carson’s trilogy next year, yes. We haven’t quite decided about the third book, though. They both pick up right where the previous ones leave off, continuing to track the hideous onward march of the Nazis in Germany in 1933-4.

How do you discover these forgotten classics to republish? Can you give a couple of examples?

Persephone Books arose out of years of being at home with small children: so much time to rediscover twentieth-century women writers, as well as to buy books for 20p or go to the London Library and come home with an armful of forgotten novels. Once the children were older there was time to read in the British Museum reading room and browse in second-hand bookshops. Now there’s the Internet. Sometimes a reader brings a book into the office or we realise that a book of classic quality is unaccountably not in print. We also sometimes find books in rather odd ways. Lettice Delmer was ‘puffed’ by TS Eliot on the flap of another book; the author of The Happy Tree was mentioned intriguingly in Virginia Woolf’s diary; we read an obituary of the author of One Afternoon in the Guardian, and so on.

I know it’s hard to pick favourites but what is your favourite book that you publish and, if this is a different answer, which book do you most enjoy placing into the hands of customers?

I don’t have a favourite Persephone book, I love all of them for different reasons, but I am always thrilled to introduce a teenager to The Expendable Man or The Victorian Chaise-Longue, a new mother to The Home-Maker or Hostages to Fortune, a newly-wed to Greenery Street. For anyone interested in the history of feelings – what it felt like to be a suffragette like in No Surrender, what it felt like to leave your husband during World War II to have dalliances with RAF airmen like in To Bed with Grand Music, what it felt like to live through the rise of the Nazis like in Manja – these books are the best evidence we have. It’s also always a joy to share the novels of Dorothy Whipple with new readers since all those who’ve read her know for certain that they are in for a treat.

What are Persephone’s plans for the future?

To keep doing what we’re doing: shining a light on neglected women writers, whilst smashing up the literary canon bit by bit along the way.

Francesca wears the TOAST Donegal Wool V Neck Cardigan and Painted Tweed Cotton Linen Skirt.

Jen Campbell is a bestselling author and award-winning poet. She also writes for TOAST Book Club.

Photography by Aniella Weinberger.