Persephone Books
Persephone Books is an independent publisher based in Bath, England. Founded in 1999 by Nicola Beauman, Persephone Books reprints works largely by women writers of the late 19th and 20th century, though a few books by men are included. The catalogue includes fiction (novels and short stories) and non-fiction (diaries, memoirs and cookery books).
Persephone Books
- Name
- Persephone Books
- Founded
- 1999
- Headquarters
- London
VALÉORINE Encyclopedia
VALÉORINE documentary reading
Documentary summary
Persephone Books is an independent publisher based in Bath, England. Founded in 1999 by Nicola Beauman, Persephone Books reprints works largely by women writers of the late 19th and 20th century, though a few books by men are included. The catalogue includes fiction (novels and short stories) and non-fiction (diaries, memoirs and cookery books).
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Documentary evidence
Documentary basis
Authority files
gnd · 1257638408 · wikidata · Q7170105 · wikipedia · Persephone Books
In this article
Overview
Overview
Most books have a grey dustjacket and endpaper using a contemporaneous design, with a matching bookmark. The company sells books mostly through its website, but also maintains a shop in Bath.
Key facts
Key facts
• Name — Persephone Books • Founder — Nicola Beauman • Country — United Kingdom • Headquarters — Bath, Somerset • Keypeople — Francesca Beauman (Managing Director) • Publications — Largely-neglected fiction and non-fiction, mostly by women writers • Website — https: www.persephonebooks.co.uk
History
History
Persephone Books was founded as a mail-order publisher in the spring of 1999 by writer Nicola Beauman, after she received a small inheritance from her father, the jurist F. A. Mann. Beauman named the company Persephone after the Greek goddess connected with spring who is "both 'victim and mistress'". Beauman wanted to upend the devaluing of women writers in literary culture and to restore previously lost works to the canon. She was inspired by Virago Press, which had published her first book A Very Great Profession: The Woman's Novel 1914–39, and its commitment to reprinting lost classics of women's literature. The company's first offices were in Clerkenwell, London. Sales at first were modest, but its 2000 reprint of Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, the publisher's 21st book, became a bestseller with over 100,000 sales by 2012. The success of Miss Pettigrew allowed the company to set up a new shop in Lamb's Conduit Street in Bloomsbury, where it remained for two decades. In May 2021 the Bloomsbury shop was closed and the company moved to Edgar Buildings in Bath.
Authors
Identity
Identity
Persephone Books is associated with United Kingdom. Recorded from 1999.
Institutional history
Dated record
Institutional history
The full dated record · 2 entries
1999
Persephone Books established.
1999
Persephone Books is recorded from 1999.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
- United Kingdom
Publications
Most of Persephone's publications are issued in a uniform grey colour, with endpapers that reproduce prints or patterns from the year of the book's first printing. For example, the They Knew Mr. Knight endpapers represent an industrial town in dark colours, reflecting the theme of the title. Each book is typeset in ITC Baskerville. The design was inspired by the simplicity of 1930s Penguin Books and the design of French publications. Most titles in the catalogue were written by women in the early or mid-20th century and focus on representations of the home in a genre sometimes called domestic feminism. In this way, Persephone combines both modernism and feminist literature. The catalogue is described as containing "the type of books where very quiet things happen in very dramatic ways to perfectly normal people without anyone thinking twice about it." In some cases, the publisher has actually adopted the label of "middlebrow" for combining both a literary sensitivity and a desire for driving plot in its book selections. Books on cooking, memoirs, and collected letters are also included. Persephone Books also publishes the Persephone Biannually (once the Persephone Quarterly) magazine for subscribers, which includes articles on its newest publications. A monthly email The Persephone Letter keeps readers up to date on literary events at the Edgar Buildings in Bath, as well as on current theatre productions, exhibitions, relevant newspaper articles and obituaries of authors and of revolutionary women such as Mary Quant and Beverley Lawrence Beech.
Primary material
Documents and archives
reference work
- Wikidata, structured authority record Q7170105: Persephone Books
Reputable secondary · Wikidata
- “Persephone Books”, English Wikipedia, consulted as further reading
Reputable secondary · Wikipedia
authority file
- Gemeinsame Normdatei 1257638408, Persephone Books.
General reference · Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Literature
Literature
Sylvia Townsend Warner, English Climate: Wartime stories (London: Persephone Books, 2020; ISBN: 978-1-91026-327-3), with a preface by Lydia Fellgett, The Journal of the Sylvia Townsend Warner Society, 2022.
Making it New: Persephone Books and the Modernist Project, MFS Modern Fiction Studies, 2013
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Our Shop. Persephone Books.
- 2.Persephone Books and Domestic Feminism. The Bath Festival.
- 3.Thorpe, Vanessa. Rediscovered, a young English novelist's warning of the Nazi threat. The Observer. 8 February 2025.
- 4.Clough, Danielle. Reclaiming Women's Words with Persephone Books. Syracuse University London.
- 5.Cooke, Rachel. One shade of grey: how Nicola Beauman made an unlikely success of Persephone Books. The Observer. 25 November 2012.
- 6.Lyall, Sarah. A Bookstore of One's Own. The New York Times. 14 April 2019.
- 7.Mondor, Colleen. Reading with Persephone Books. Bookslut. September 2004.
- 8.Seshagiri, Urmila. Making It New: Persephone Books and the Modernist Project. Modern Fiction Studies. 59. 2. 241–287. 2013. 0026-7724.
- 9.Waldman, Katy. How a Homespun Book Publisher Built a Cult Following. Slate Magazine. 24 June 2015.
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
authority file
Gemeinsame Normdatei 1257638408, Persephone Books.Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Secondary witnessreference work
Secondary witnessreference work
Secondary witness
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 16 August 2026.
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