Letter

The last days of winter before, we hope, a warm spring: the April books are in and being sent to reviewers, the Persephone Biannually is being written, and when I have time I catch up on the reviews of Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (here, for example, is the one in the New York Times) or with the various websites that tell me how much money the film has been taking in America. It is interesting to us Brits that the opening of a film is so different over there. Here, we tend to read the advance publicity or the reviews and trickle along, whereas in the US the success of a film can stand or fall on how much money it makes the first weekend it is open and then in the subsequent couple of weekends. Miss Pettigrew has done pretty well and so far has ‘made’ $4.7 million.

The Guardian has been giving away little booklets about great poets and we were delighted that in the one about TS Eliot they reprinted an article from the Observer for 6th December 1925 that said: ‘There were amusing things in Mr Eliot’s earlier poems: his satires, never so nimble or so neatly placed as Mrs Susan Miles’s essays in malice and free verse, had memorable lines.’  Susan Miles is of course the author of our wonderful novel in verse Lettice Delmer, and we first discovered it through a ‘puff’ by TS Eliot on the cover of one her other books.  How extraordinary that literary fashions change so much that she was once considered nimbler than him!

Do look at this lovely article about us by Linda Brazill in Madison’s the Capital Times and also there was a nice article in the Guardian by Leonie Cooper (take no notice of little details like saying we have twelve employees, it’s a nice piece and has brought lots of new people to the shop).

Talking of shops: next time I write this Letter I shall have to distinguish between the Bloomsbury shop and the Notting Hill Gate shop because this week we are officially opening the door of 109 Kensington Church Street, in fact this morning Sophie (de Brant, who is running it) served her first customer – she bought They Were Sisters. We had a happy evening on Saturday unpacking the seventy five boxes of Persephone books and putting them on the (dark grey) shelves; and meanwhile Sophie is unpacking the new books for the back of the shop, which we are shelving by topic (history, cookery, biography etc) and by publisher (Eland, Yale, Granta, Jane Nissen, Everyman etc).  This is an exciting new venture for us, do come and see us if you live in or near London and admire the Persephone books in their new home.

Finally, do try and catch the exhibition Brilliant Women: Eighteenth Century Bluestockings which is on at the National Portrait Gallery until June 15th, and do try and get to one or both of the Lost Musicals which are being put on this year: they are always exceptionally good.

Nicola Beauman
59 Lamb’s Conduit Street
15 March 2008