Persephone and the DNB

The new Oxford University Press Dictionary of National Biography was launched in September 2004. It is available on line and of course the first thing we did was to see how many of our authors have entries. The answer is: 21 out of 46 are in (as well as Julian Grenfell and Marjory Fleming – although, alas, the charming entry for the latter by Sir Leslie Stephen in the original DNB, which we reprint in our edition of Oriel Malet’s book, has been re-written in the light of modern scholarship).

(By the spring of 2006, 25 of our 57 authors were in the new DNB.)

The Persephone authors are: Ruth Adam, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Duff Cooper, Lettice Cooper, Richmal Crompton, EM Delafield, Mollie Panter-Downes, Monica Dickens, Isobel English, Eleanor Graham, Cicely Hamilton, Ambrose Heath, Agnes Jekyll, Marghanita Laski, Amy Levy, Katherine Mansfield, Noel Streatfeild, Barbara Euphan Todd, Florence White, Dorothy Whipple and Leonard Woolf.

There are also some fabric designers such as Vanessa Bell, Marion Dorn, Duncan Grant, and Margaret Calkin James. 

Here are some of the comments: in her entry on Ruth Adam Sybil Oldfield writes: ‘Perhaps her most unusual achievement was A Woman’s Place 1910-1975, a succinct, witty, and trenchant social history of British women in the twentieth century that pulled the many interests of her own life together and testifies to her thoughtful analysis of the gains and losses for British women up to and including the women's liberation movement.’

A long entry on Duff Cooper, by Philip Ziegler, refers merely to Operation Heartbreak as being ‘based on a real-life incident in the Second World War that was viewed unenthusiastically by the cabinet office.’ But it concludes: ‘Courage and joy in living were the most conspicuous features of Duff Cooper’s personality. He was a great-spirited patriot, too proud to court popularity, too reserved to command it readily, but a man whose honesty, generosity, and public spirit were never put in question.'

Lynn Knight calls Lettice Cooper’s The New House ‘a fine and technically accomplished work which was described by the author as “a novel of feelings and relationships, rather than a portrait of a place” and won her the accolade “Chekhov in Yorkshire” from the Manchester Guardian of the time.’

In his entry on Isobel English Peter Parker calls Every Eye ‘perhaps her finest novel: sharply observed and beautifully written, this is an exquisite miniature.’ Agnes Jekyll, concludes Cordelia Moyse, ‘while not professionally trained to run public insitutions, was able to apply many of the skills and values commonly associated with the private domestic sphere to the problems of society; while she was hailed as an exceptionally able amateur, it was remarked that had she been a man she would have been “a great public servant” (The Times).’

Finally, Claire Tomalin comments: ‘Katherine Mansfield's stories [published by us as The Montana Stories] have found many distinguished admirers. She is praised for her economy and speed in assembling and dissolving a scene; for her wit, and touch of the surreal; for her divination of the hatred and cruelties beneath the sweet surface of family life; and for her sympathy with the vulnerable, the displaced, and the lonely.’

The new OUP DNB, which has fifty thousand entries written by ten thousand contributors, is available on line for £195 a year; we heartily recommend it, and if you cannot afford it yourself do try and persuade your library to buy the online version or to pay £7500 for the sixty-volume set.

Ordering books from Persephone

You can see a complete list of Persephone Books and order online here. Or you can email us, telephone on 020 7242 9292, send a fax to 020 7242 9272 or write to the following address: Persephone Books Ltd, 59 Lamb's Conduit Street, London WC1N 3NB All Persephone Books cost £10 each plus £2 postage (see more information on ordering). We can now send a book a month for six or twelve months - more >