Letter

We have been delighted, in recent weeks, to welcome readers from Bas Bleu to the shop. For those non-Americans who are not lucky enough to receive their catalogue, this is a wonderful mail-order book supplier, but what books! The genius behind Bas Bleu, Eleanor Edmondson, put in her most recent catalogue: ‘Off to London on your travels? If so, be sure to visit Persephone Books, a little shop on Lamb’s Conduit Street (don’t you love it?), within walking distance of Russell Square and the British Museum. There, Nicola Beauman and her small staff publish the most delightful, and Bas Bleuish, books. (We’d love to offer Persephone editions in our catalogue, but, alas, the economics of importing books from the UK just doesn’t work for us.)…If you do visit, be sure to say “Hello” from Bas Bleu!’ – and several people have.

I cannot resist running another of the reviews from The Edge website; here one is in full: ‘Persephone Books has hit gold with their collection of short fiction, non-fiction, essays and more, all by women, and usually celebrating, explaining, or exploring some aspect of being a woman from the beginning of time to present day. The entire collection of "forgotten fiction and non-fiction by unjustly neglected authors" is brilliant, clever and fun to read.’ (All three Edge reviews are in the Latest News section of our website).

We have very much enjoyed three new books recently: Jane Smiley’s Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel, Reading Women by Stefan Bollmann, which we discovered because the Guardian had the excellent idea of asking well-known writers to choose their favourite painting from the book and writing about it: arts.guardian.co.uk and The Night Watch by Sarah Waters, who wrote an article about her research in the Guardian and we reprint an extract in the next Persephone Quarterly.

Two very spring-like things have happened at Persephone Books in the last couple of weeks. Rachel and Richard who live above us have had Daisy Beatrice. We look forward to having her pram in the yard, which is now much more of a garden since Mark and his staff from Kennards, the wonderful deli next door to us, spent the day lifting york stone (but carefully preserving it), cutting back the eighteenth-century (we like to think) fig tree and the buddleia and creating a patch of earth about three metres square. Here they will grow herbs and vegetables to sell in their shop. And we will have our own Chelsea Physic Garden to sit in to eat our lunchtime sandwich. We also have a little collection of pieces of blue and white china that must have been under the york stone for – what? – 150 years.

Finally, do take a look at a Persephone reader’s wonderful blog: yarnstorm.blogs.com. The photographs of tulips and the general tone is a thing of beauty.

Nicola Beauman
15 May 2006
Lamb’s Conduit Street