Forthcoming Titles

In 1995 Penelope Fitzgerald wrote about Mrs Oliphant that ‘she is at her very best in novellas and short stories. Two of them, which might well be reprinted together, are “The Mystery of Mrs Blencarrow” in which a conventional widow with a large estate falls in love with her coarse-mannered steward; and “Queen Eleanor and Fair Rosamond”. Here the wife finds out that her husband has made a bigamous marriage. So this autumn the stories will ‘be reprinted together’ for the first time, with a Preface by Merryn Williams, who has written a book about Mrs Oliphant.

 Our second autumn book is The Winds of Heaven by Monica Dickens, the author of Mariana. This is a 1955 novel, much praised by John Betjeman and Elizabeth Bowen, about a widow with three deeply unsympathetic daughters; it is a favourite of AS Byatt, who wrote about it in Nova in 1970 and has now allowed us to use her piece as a Preface.

Lastly, we are publishing the first Persephone Diary: The Persephone Ninety will feature our (by then) ninety endpapers, with details of each fabric – and the first line of each book. It has been designed for us by Kate Lyons.