Letter

The Lamb’s Conduit Street Festival has come and gone, leaving behind a trail of empty glasses from the free Pimms we had on offer, cake crumbs from the Women’s Institute stand outside our door, new Persephone readers’ addresses, and, despite the torrential rain and gale force wind, much good cheer. Now, along with everyone else, we are longing for warmer weather so that we can leave the shop door open all day and enjoy the life of the street.

Last Saturday I very much enjoyed taking part in OneWord Countdown, a weekly radio programme ‘bringing you the low-down of Britain’s bestselling books…[that] covers all the latest news from the literary world, who’s writing what and what you really, really should read’. This week, the must reads were Persephone’s cookery books! The programme focused on food writing, so I talked about Good Things in England and They Can’t Ration These as well as Persephone Books in general and current literary news. (Radio 4 listeners have two more Sunday evenings at 7.45 to listen to a story from Tea with Mr Rochester.)

Browsing the internet recently, we realised how many people mention Persephone in various blogs and reviews. Bookslut is always loyal to us, which is why Jessa Crispin began a review of Bricks and Mortar by saying: ‘It is getting more and more difficult to review a book published by Persephone Books without first gushing about how wonderful the publisher is.’ She called the book ‘a remarkable profile of a family that perhaps should not have been. Helen Ashton is able to portray the family’s disintegration with dignity and subtlety. It is a quiet book, but very readable, and Ashton is a true find. Just another brilliant book brought back to life by Persephone.’

This is Oxfordshire looked at Elizabeth Cambridge’s Hostages to Fortune, which is set in Deddington near Oxford, and remarked that the heroine of ‘this moving and delightful novel…is a marvellous character, a woman watching the kaleidoscope of her own life expanding and reforming before her mystified gaze'.

And a student at Harvard commented on The Hopkins Manuscript in his blog that he was at first a bit puzzled why we chose it for the Persephone list: ‘Not only was it written by a man, but it’s a work of science fiction. But I can’t say how gratifying it is to have a well-written book about the Moon crashing into the Earth printed in the flawless elegance of the Persephone series, with the usual finely chosen endpapers, beautiful cream pages, and crisp type. And after reading it, I did see the link to the Persephone vision…TThe Hopkins Manuscript is a portrait of England in that moment (1930s), where the end of the world has the function of releasing a camera’s shutter. The impending Moon is an allegory of fascism…The world doesn’t end at all suddenly, and there’s pathos and, surprisingly, comedy in the decline.’ (Al Gore would of course appreciate The Hopkins Manuscript but, we hope and imagine, is far too busy telling the world about global warming to have time to read it. His book and film on the subject, An Inconvenient Truth, is due out in the UK this September).

For all those of you who have been patiently awaiting Mariana or Family Roundabout, we are pleased to report that they, as well as the The Victorian Chaise-Longue and Consequences, have now been reprinted and we shall start sending them out at the end of this week. Also, the fabrics from Borderline are now in stock so readers can make themselves cushions, curtains or table-cloths in the endpaper used for Farewell Leicester Square, The Hopkins Manuscript and Gardener’s Nightcap (one of the June books). Happy sewing!

Emily Hill
30 May 2006
Lamb’s Conduit Street