About Persephone Books
One of the things I like about reading is the part serendipity plays and my discovery of Persephone Books came about that way. I was listening to a podcast completely unrelated to books and someone mentioned in passing that they had been bought a subscription to Persephone Books as a present and was really enjoying them.
A quick web search found their web site and this is what they say about themselves:
Persephone Books reprints neglected fiction and non-fiction, mostly by women writers and mostly dating from the mid-twentieth century. All of our 152 titles are intelligent, thought-provoking and beautifully written. As well as novels we publish short stories, diaries, memoirs, poetry, gardening books and cookery books; each title has an elegant grey jacket and a patterned endpaper, along with a matching bookmark.
These books cost £15 plus £3 carriage in the UK so they're not cheap but they have also re-issued seventeen of their bestsellers as Persephone Classics in more 'bookshop-friendly' editions i.e. straight paperbacks with pictures on the front.
The text and paper is identical to their other books, but because the Classics do not have dust jackets or the full-colour endpapers, they retail at £12 each instead of £15.
I was initially a little dubious about the whole proposition but eBay was my friend so I started out with a bundle of four Classics in excellent condition which I picked up at a very reasonable price.
They seem to be very stoutly constructed, with folded over front and rear covers - a bit like a dust jacket - on which is printed some words about the book and the author. They are nicely heavy in the hand and are a physical pleasure to read.
"Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day" by Winifred Watson (1938) is a quite delightful if unlikely story about a middle-aged governess who encounters a glamorous night-club singer and, over a period of twenty-four hours, her life is changed forever. In style in reminded me a bit of Wodehouse and it includes the original illustrations, like the one below.
"The Home-Maker" by Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1924) is a story of gender-role reversal at a time when this would have been exceptional. I didn't warm to our heroine, Eva, initially as in the first portion of the book she does not come over as a nice person but as the real Eva emerges alongside her husband Lester both of their strengths shine through. It is very much a period piece, and it's as much an American history book as it is a novel, but I'm glad I kept with it to the end.
"The Fortnight in September" by RC Sherriff (1931) is another period piece where nothing very exciting happens but the plot just carries you along as you observe the two weeks' holiday through the eyes of the various members of the Stevens family. It's also fascinating for what it tells you about life for a family in southern England in the thirties and how they and their contemporaries lived. For example I was particularly fascinated by the logistics of how they got themselves and their possessions from Dulwich to Bognor Regis and back.
The fourth, "Someone at a Distance" by Dorothy Whipple (1953) is still in my tsundoku pile but I'm sure I'll get to it in the end.
From those four I've moved on to my first book purchased directly from the publisher so now I have had the whole Persephone Books experience.
Here's some snaps of the book when it arrived. Neatly packaged, with a nice label inside thanking me for my order.
And there's the book, with a dust jacket, despite being a paperback. Both the dust jacket and cover are in grey - which seems odd to me and unlike a hardback where the dust jacket is usually illustrated - but inside you can see the patterned endpaper and there's the matching bookmark.
The book is "Few Eggs and No Oranges" by Vere Hodgson. Vere kept a diary for many years and this book covers 1940-45. In my first post I talked about wanting to read more about the home front from contemporary accounts and this is my third find so I'm looking forward to reading it.
Anyway that's Persephone Books, who're being brave enough to do something a little different in the world of publishing; and well done them.
