Letter

The new Biannually is going out tomorrow and should arrive by this weekend; although of course it will take a while to reach our overseas readers (whose copies are put in envelopes by the six kind Persephone readers who come and spend the day in the office in order to send out the fifteen hundred ‘foreigns’). Most of the content of the Biannually is on our website, but although more than half our readers are regular web-users, we are a long way from abolishing the hard copy. In any case we do not want to abandon the ‘flick and click‘ principle  (you flick through a catalogue and then order on line or ring up with the hard copy beside you from which you have already made your choices).

We will also be sending out an email this week (it goes to seven thousand people now) to say that the new books are ‘up’ and the Spring/Summer Biannually is on the way; and we’ll point out that the dramatisation of The Crowded Street is being broadcast on BBC 7.

Last week I went to the three Susan Glaspell plays at the Orange Tree Theatre; they were not as startlingly brilliant as the full-length Chains of Dew but still enjoyable.  Here is Michael Billington’s review in the Guardian, Rhoda Koenig’s in the Independent and Sam Marlowe’s in The Times.

There was am interesting article on The Huffington Post about Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. And a nice early review of A Very Great Profession on the juxtabook blog.

I have been spending quite a lot of time at our new shop in Kensington Church Street, but now Sophie who runs it is back from holiday and I shall mostly be in Lamb’s Conduit Street again; until, that is, I set off to visit one of my daughters in Los Angeles (the other will be holding the fort in London) and one of my sons in Washington (where he is conducting Tamerlano), as well as various friends (including the designer of our new Classics) in New York. I am very much looking forward to the Persephone Tea in Georgetown on May 3rd and will be writing the next Fortnightly Letter from there.

Nicola Beauman
59 Lambs Conduit Street
15 April 2008