From The Persephone Quarterly Autumn 2005 No. 27

‘I am so full of admiration and appreciation over your publishing The Hopkins Manuscript, which I think is the most subtle and brilliant response to the challenge set by the article about climate change in the February Tablet. I've thought about it at least once every single day, and scoured the papers (with disbelief at how few there are) for articles that reflect its wake-up call. Brava Persephone indeed.' BR,
Bristol

'What a brilliant novel Manja is. Being completely obsessed by the subject of National-Socialism, I thought I had read every possible treatment. But the humanity of this book makes one realise how ludicrously melodramatic are most stories describing this period. I thought the set-piece of the classroom, in which the girls are interrogated, is among the most powerful evocations of the spirit of Nazism I have read. What a scene it would make in a film!' KB, London NW1

'I was captivated by the sharp wit of Mariana and roared with laughter, all alone, at Mrs ffrench-Burrowes perched on top of her rodeo-horse "as unshakeably as a feeding mosquito", at "Mr Pee-aire" in the pretentious hairdresser's asking Mary if she wants her hair "to stuff a sofa", at Pierre's mother who was only "a cold, unemotional peg on which to hang diamonds." It's clever to make the whole book Mary's life in restrospect: it's witty, moving, nostalgic, romantic, very English  -a wonderful read. And I see from your website that others have loved Hostages to Fortune too, but what has not been mentioned is the important role nature plays: it comforts Catherine about her defeat as a writer, it binds the family together in their work in the garden. The story is never static: it flows like a river, there is no stationary, analytical introspection, the characters are constantly developing. What also keeps one riveted is the clear description of daily life, the details about cooking, cleaning, clothes, the things in the home -  the reader feels totally part of it. And the language is most wonderfully descriptive. Above all, the guiding tone is understatement.  There is nothing dramatic, yet it is the story of constant struggle, of hard work, of practical wisd-om and undemonstrative but real victory.' DT, London EC2

'A note of appreciation for bringing us The World that was Ours by Hilda Bernstein. I found her account of those terrible times moving in the extreme  -  the courage and integrity of ordinary people shone on every page.  Hilda's story has helped give me a better understanding of the reasons why the expatriate South Africans here had to leave their beautiful country.' JW, Mosman Park, Australia

'I had not read Flush in years, because I remembered it as being fairly slight from my previous reading of it. How wrong I was! The astonishing scene where Elizabeth Barrett and Flush stare hard at one another, trying to plumb each other's depths, is almost a perfect figuration for the task of the biographer. I was also intrigued to see
this time round that this book is perhaps Virginia Woolf's fullest and most textured consideration of domestic material culture, thus making it a perfect choice for Persephone Books. I loved, too, the edition's beautiful endpapers with the swirling Victorian designs in purple (the colour in which Woolf herself often wrote) that suggest the extremely 'bookish' nature of this work.' JW, Portland, USA

'I read Manja a few weeks ago and was moved by the beauty of the writing, the clairvoyance and the haunting story. What a brilliant idea to link the five children by the date of their conception. I am now in the middle of The Village which is amazing in that it brings home just how much society has changed in the sixty plus years since I was born. Thank God the automatic assumption that class was an unbridgeable barrier to friendship (let alone marriage), and that it could be talked about openly in those terms, has gone.' HB, Oxford