Persephone Books

Persephone Books Publisher of neglected fiction and nonfiction by mid-twentieth century (mostly) women writers, all in elegant grey matching editions. Also a bookshop.
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This week’s The Times and Sunday Times newsletter recommends the 1953 novel PB no. 3 SOMEONE AT A DISTANCE by Dorothy Wh...
16/06/2026

This week’s The Times and Sunday Times newsletter recommends the 1953 novel PB no. 3 SOMEONE AT A DISTANCE by Dorothy Whipple:

“Ellen and Avery North have a contented, commuter-belt family life until Louise, a penniless, ruthless young Frenchwoman, inveigles her way in and sets to work on vain, foolish Avery. SOMEONE AT A DISTANCE is a superbly subtle portrait of a family splitting apart: furious, miserable teenagers; a wife wrecked and suddenly poor; and of course the villainous “other woman”, whom the novel takes the trouble to make svmpathetic. It’s a domestic drama that also reads like an allegory for the traumatic years Europe had just endured: bucolic rural life torn asunder; men lured away by France; women’s lives transformed for ever. Dorothy Whipple is lesser known today among the gang of brilliant mid-century British women writers with misleadingly cutesy names, but she shouldn’t be. This is a beautiful, shattering and underappreciated novel.”

Pictured here is our Classic paperback edition of the novel (£12 plus shipping), but it is of course also available in the usual Grey edition for those of you who are building up your collection (£15 plus shipping) and as an audiobook and an Ebook too via all the usual platforms.

One of the Persephone girls went to see Harry Styles at Wembley stadium this weekend, so in his honour let us tell you a...
15/06/2026

One of the Persephone girls went to see Harry Styles at Wembley stadium this weekend, so in his honour let us tell you about AS IT WAS, Persephone book no. 142 which pleasingly has the same title as Harry’s hit song of course.

AS IT WAS consists of two short, beautifully written memoirs, ‘As It Was’ (1926) and ‘World Without End’ (1931), about Helen Thomas’s life with the poet Edward Thomas, who wrote the much-loved poem ‘Adlestrop’. In the first book they meet, fall in love, make love, and get married. The second describes their life until the day Edward left to return to the trenches in France. Read together, they are a powerful love story written with extraordinary frankness for the time.

‘Whether you read a book because it is a work of art or because it is a most moving human story, do not fail to read AS IT WAS’ (Vita Sackville-West).

By the way, anyone know what Harry Styles likes to read? Following quite a bit of discussion here in the Persephone Books office, we reckon he’d love PB no. 6 THE VICTORIAN CHAISE-LONGUE, PB no. 51 OPERATION HEARTBREAK, and either PB no. 56 THEY WERE SISTERS because it is set near where he grew up or PB no. 153 because it is so fascinating about working in a bakery just like he once did. Let us know your suggestions in the comments below!

To purchase AS IT WAS - the book, not the song - head to the Persephone Books website: https://persephonebooks.co.uk/products/as-it-was.

Harry Styles HQ

This is a 1927 dress fabric called ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’ that was designed by Ralph Barton for the Stehli Silks Cor...
11/06/2026

This is a 1927 dress fabric called ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’ that was designed by Ralph Barton for the Stehli Silks Corporation and printed on silk crêpe de chine. It was part of ‘Americana’, a range of dress fabrics that Stehli Silks commissioned from leading artists following the Paris Exhibition of decorative arts in 1925, which had an enormous impact when it toured the USA the following year, encouraging American designers to move away from floral patterns and towards designs that depicted contemporary American life in a more modern way. We are using it for the endpaper for our forthcoming October book, PB no. 155 HER SON’S WIFE by Dorothy Canfield Fisher. Isn’t it terrific? (The book goes to the printer in a month, eek.)

An extract from PB no. 98 A WRITER’S DIARY by Virginia Woolf:“June 10th, 1919.We are just in from the Club; from orderin...
10/06/2026

An extract from PB no. 98 A WRITER’S DIARY by Virginia Woolf:

“June 10th, 1919.

We are just in from the Club; from ordering a reprint of the ‘Mark on the Wall’ [a short story by Woolf] at the Pelican Press; and from tea with James [Strachey]. His news is that Maynard [Keynes] in disgust at the peace terms has resigned, kicked the dust of office off him and is now an academic figure at Cambridge. But I must really sing my own praises, since I left off at the point when we came back from Asheham to find the hall table stacked, littered, with orders for ‘Kew Gardens’ [another short story by Woolf]. They strewed the sofa and we opened them intermittently through dinner and quarrelled, I’m sorry to say, because we were both excited, and opposite tides of excitement courses in us, and they were blown to waves by the critical blast of Charleston. All these orders – 150 about, from shops and private people – come from a review in the Lit. Sup. Presumably by Logan, in which as much praise was allowed me as I like to claim. And 10 days ago I was stoically facing complete failure! The pleasure of success was considerably damaged, first by our quarrel, and second by the necessity of getting some 90 copies ready, cutting covers, printing labels, glueing backs, and finally despatching, which used up all spare time and some not spare till this moment. But how success showered during those days! Gratuitously, too, I had a letter from Macmillan in New York, so much impressed by ‘The Voyage Out’ that they want to read ‘Night and Day’. I think the nerve of pleasure easily becomes numb. I like little sips, but the psychology of fame is worth considering at leisure.”

To purchase our elegant grey edition of PB no. 98 A WRITER’S DIARY by Virginia Woolf for £15 plus shipping, head to the Persephone Books website: https://persephonebooks.co.uk/products/a-writers-diary.

The day began with not one enormous delivery of books, but two. Luckily the rain held off while we lugged them inside – ...
06/06/2026

The day began with not one enormous delivery of books, but two. Luckily the rain held off while we lugged them inside – mostly copies of PB no. 133 EXPIATION in response to our recent mention of it. There’s been some discussion around whether it really is a funny novel or, conversely, a bitter, tragic one; we’ve concluded that it very much depends on your idea of sin. The 20th Century magazine ran a nice piece about PB no. 49 BRICKS AND MORTAR: “a tenderly subtle saga about an architect and his family, which offers a remarkable historical source for its keen eye on generational shifts in architectural culture and practise from the 1890s into the 1930s…” And we began the task of updating the Persephone Catalogue, which we’re hoping to reprint by the end of the summer – this mostly involves adding info about the endpapers whilst also wrestling with InDesign, oh dear we probably ought to do a course. The end of the academic year always brings some staff changes. Matilde is leaving, sob, but she is such a whirlwind of intelligence and charm that we have no doubt that she’ll be running the UN or some such soon; Poppy is going to work Wednesdays in her place. One customer asked if we had any “nun lit” (yes: PB no. 13 CONSEQUENCES) and the council, who are our landlord, turned up wanting to discuss fire safety doors. And some frustrations dealing with a couple of the so-called Big Five publishers recently have made us resolve to try even harder to avoid having to interact with corporations or platforms when we can – call us Rosa Luxembourg, but they behave without honour or decency and simply don’t seem to care about their books or authors at all. We are also continuing to research the life of Sally Carson, author of PB no. 152 CROOKED CROSS: did the plot of her unpublished novel hold the key, we wonder? Lastly, we’re re-reading PB no. 98 A WRITER’S DIARY by Virginia Woolf and so enjoying it: to open it at random, “I had so much of a profound interest to write here – a dialogue of the soul within the soul – and I have let it all slip – why? Because of feeding the goldfish, looking at the new pond, of playing bowls. Nothing remains now. I forget what it was about. Happiness.”

Have you ever noticed that every Persephone book features a different decorative rule across the top of the page? Each o...
04/06/2026

Have you ever noticed that every Persephone book features a different decorative rule across the top of the page? Each one is carefully chosen so that it in some way references what the book is about and when and where it was written. Pictured here are a few we’ve used in the past, but what about for our forthcoming October title, PB no. 155 HER SON’S WIFE by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, which we are spending this month preparing for the printer? Perhaps something with a bit of an art deco feel for this 1920s American novel?

Let us tell you about PB no. 133 EXPIATION by Elizabeth von Arnim, a laugh-out-loud hilarious novel, first published in ...
03/06/2026

Let us tell you about PB no. 133 EXPIATION by Elizabeth von Arnim, a laugh-out-loud hilarious novel, first published in 1929, by the author of ‘The Enchanted April’.

We meet Milly Bott on the day she buries her husband, Ernest. But it turns out he’s written her out of his will, having secretly discovered that for years she has had a lover, Arthur, whom she sees every Wednesday afternoon...

This is a first for us: a novel which has been entirely overlooked and yet is by a well-known writer. Most of Elizabeth von Arnim’s novels are in print with other publishers, yet EXPIATION has been ignored. Why?

Well, the title (a synonym for atonement) is not very catchy. The theme is faintly shocking, or was in 1929, since the book is about adultery. And, although nowadays we read the novel as a satire, at the time the characters and their milieu may have seemed rather tame. After all, the Botts are the backbone of their south London suburb: ‘They subscribed, presided, spoke, opened.’ (This sentence, on p. 2 of the novel, was what deliciously and instantly convinced us that this was a book for us.)

A satire of middle-class prudery, what was mostly ignored in the years after EXPIATION‘s first publication was how funny it is. It is also extraordinarily atmospheric and perceptive about the English. Finally, the effects of Milly’s behaviour are forensically explored and scrutinised, yet, in the end and upliftingly, the power of simple human kindness wins through.

And what did contemporary reviewers think? The New York Times called it ‘a very clever book, written in Elizabeth’s own delightful style, full of delicate irony, and with many capitally done scenes.’ In the Evening News JB Priestley admired ‘the easy writing… Every scene in this story seems to arrive almost casually, and yet not a word or a gesture is wasted.’ Finally, the feminist weekly Time and Tide thought that Elizabeth had tapped into ‘the whole of life – certainly all fiction’ which is made up of only ‘two things: love and consequences.’ In particular, EXPIATION is ‘a delightful, instructive study in the consequences of that kind of love... called sin.’

EXPIATION can be purchased for £15 plus shipping on the Persephone Books website here: https://persephonebooks.co.uk/products/expiation. (We ship everywhere in the world.)

We are pleased to announce that, this October, Persephone Books will publish a new paperback edition of PB no. 152 CROOK...
01/06/2026

We are pleased to announce that, this October, Persephone Books will publish a new paperback edition of PB no. 152 CROOKED CROSS by Sally Carson, pictured here.

We have been particularly encouraged to do so not only by the warm response from readers all over the world, but also by the significant number of History teachers in schools and universities who have bought multiple copies of this title to use in their classrooms to help teach about the rise of authoritarian governments. The hope is that, by bringing out a paperback edition priced at only £12, this will allow even more of them to follow suit.

First published in 1934 and set in a small town in the mountains in Bavaria, we know of no other novel that explains the impact of the rise of the N***s on ordinary people, and in particular young people, in such an accessible way.

We have chosen this painting for the cover because it is highly atmospheric and draws you in, especially the boy in the centre with his direct, somewhat anxious (or is it sullen?) gaze; it was painted in the 1930s not long after the book was written; and it depicts a German family very like the Klugers in CROOKED CROSS. Yet both families will soon be destroyed by the N***s. N***s. (The fact that it is by a N**i-approved painter, Adolf Wissel, makes it even more powerful and chilling.)

The new paperback edition of CROOKED CROSS is out on October 15th, but of course the original Grey edition, described by the Guardian as “a word-of-mouth jaw-dropper passed from hand to hand”, is available now from our website or wherever you usually buy your books.

A sunny bank holiday Saturday in the Persephone bookshop has a particular kind of delight to it. The first task was to f...
25/05/2026

A sunny bank holiday Saturday in the Persephone bookshop has a particular kind of delight to it. The first task was to find the pole that we use to pull out the awning above the shop window, which after hunting all over the place turned out to be exactly where it was supposed to be, as is often the way. It didn’t bring much relief from the heat, though. We then spent the next few hours fielding all sorts of interesting questions about the books. For example:

How does PB no. 133 EXPIATION compare to Elizabeth von Arnim’s better-known work, ‘An Enchanted April’? (It’s funnier.) Have the Grey books been re-designed at all since they were first published in 1999? (No.). Where to start with Dorothy Whipple? (They’re all great, but maybe either PB no. 56 THEY WERE SISTERS or PB no. 85 HIGH WAGES). Do we have any romance novels that are not silly or soppy? (Absolutely - none of ours are silly - but try PB no. 147 ONE AFTERNOON or PB no. 2 MARIANA). What about 19th century writers? (For sure: have a look at PB no. 89 THE MYSTERY OF MRS BLENCARROW by Mrs Oliphant). And something about World War Two that’s slim enough for a transatlantic flight? (PB no. 8 GOOD EVENING, MRS CRAVEN). And lots of questions about all aspects of the Sally Carson trilogy too. A kind friend then stopped by with two choices of cake to help keep our energy levels up for the rest of the afternoon, which was great timing because a little before closing time we were pleased to welcome in a large tour group of students from Oxford. Of these, one asked for a book featuring a journalist (PB no. 130 NATIONAL PROVINCIAL), another was looking to find out more about World War 1 (PB no. 140 THE DEEPENING STREAM or PB no. 1 WILLIAM - AN ENGLISHMAN), and they were all eager to know how the copyright for our books works (about two thirds are in copyright, a third are out of copyright, and it’s a large but rewarding task every February distributing the royalties.)

And then we pulled the awning back in, locked up, and headed home to collapse into a deckchair in the garden with a glass of rosé and a copy of the New Yorker.

In the last few days we have made the decision to publish the third and final book in the Sally Carson trilogy, A TRAVEL...
23/05/2026

In the last few days we have made the decision to publish the third and final book in the Sally Carson trilogy, A TRAVELLER CAME BY, and will do so in April 2027.

The original 1938 jacket is pictured here but ours, of course, will be grey.

A TRAVELLER CAME BY is set in England from 1933-4 and is on a very important theme: how much notice should an ordinary person take of politics in their country, and of what’s going on in other countries, in other words how involved should the average 1930s Englishman and woman have been in what the N***s were doing? Why Sally Carson set A TRAVELLER CAME BY in England rather than Bavaria like the other two books is interesting but one reason would have been that by 1937 when she was writing a N**i or two might have already read CROOKED CROSS and THE PRISONER and she may have realised she could not safely go back to Germany. Then there is the huge theme of appeasement – or not. Lastly, we are beginning to believe that there is an autobiographical element in the love affair described in the book, but this is speculation at the moment.

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