Events

Summer 2008:

The  first Persephone event this summer will be a Cream Tea in Georgetown, Washington DC: a long-standing Persephone reader is kindly lending her house on the afternoon of Saturday May 3rd from 3-5 for a celebration of the new Classic edition of Good Evening, Mrs Craven. Please ring the office for more details (invitations have already been sent to DC readers).

On Thursday May 15th Valerie Grove will talk at a Lunch in the shop (from 12.30-2.30) about Penelope Mortimer, as well of course about John Mortimer, who is the subject of her recent book.

On Wednesday June 4th   from 3-5 there will also be a Cream Tea at Roppelegh’s, Mollie Panter-Downes’s former house near Haslemere, by kind permission of the Persephone reader who now lives there.  Again, this is to celebrate the publication of Good Evening, Mrs Craven as a Persephone Classic.  It is hoped that Benjamin Whitrow will read a story; and we will  walk through the woods to Mollie’s writing hut.  

We shall be showing the rarely-seen film of Penelope Mortimer’s The Pumpkin Eater  (the screenplay is by Harold Pinter) on Thursday June 12th at the British Film Institute 21 Stephen Street W1. Lunch will be served at 1pm, the film will be shown at 2 and there will be tea and cake afterwards; Valerie Grove will introduce the film.

On Wednesday June 18th  there will be a Cream Tea from 3-5 at Adamczewski’s Fine Houseware shop 196 High Street, Lewes which has ‘traditional, stylish utillity essentials’ (Country Living) and stocks our books, a fun way, we hope, to celebrate the shop and Persephone and to spend time in Lewes.

On Thursday July 3rd Professor Marion Shaw will talk at a Lunch in the shop about Winifred Holtby, who lived round the corner and wrote The Crowded Street.  
        
Other dates for your diary:

• Persephone will be at an event at Much Wenlock on Friday June 20th from 6-8 pm;
• at a lunchtime event at the Wivenhoe Bookshop on Friday June 27th;
• at the Sevenoaks Festival on the afternoon of Saturday October 4th;
• at an evening event in the main Sheffield Library on Tuesday October 14th;
• and at the House and Garden fair at Olympia from November 5th-9th.
• The Fourth Persephone Lecture will be on Tuesday November 18th, again at the Art Workers Guild in Queen Square at 6.30: Professor Elaine Showalter will talk about  ‘The Home-maker and the Home-Wrecker: Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Susan Glaspell, and 20th Century American Women Writers’.  Her new book about American women writers will be published in 2009.

To book for any of the above events please ring  Persephone Books on 0207 242 9292. The Teas costs £10, the Book Group £10, the Lecture £20, the Lunches and the Film £30.

Do try and come along to the Book Group in the shop from 6.30-8 on the first Wednesday of each month; bread, cheese and madeira are served (the cost is £10). In May we shall discuss Family Roundabout.

Find out more about past Persephone Events.