Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski

May 20, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Persephone Books, 2008. Originally published 1949. 232 pgs. Purchased. In 1940, as the Nazis were marching onto to Paris, an English solider named Hilary Wainwright was forced to abandon his wife and newborn son. His wife, Lisa, was too ill from childbirth for a hasty evacuation back to England; his son, John, seemingly better off in the care of his mother and her friends than a single father. In 1942, the British War Office notified Hilary of […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Adoption, Europe, Fiction, France, Persephone Books • Tags: Marghanita Laski

They Were Sisters by Dorothy Whipple

April 22, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Persephone Books, 2005. Originally published 1944. 464 pgs. Purchased. When their mother died of influenza, eighteen-year-old Lucy abandoned her dreams to further her education and returned home to care for her father and siblings, including younger sisters Vera and Charlotte. Their sisterly bond morphed into one where Lucy took on the role of mother – protective, worrying, quick to correct and provide advice – and Vera and Charlotte shared secrets and jokes and excluded Lucy from their […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Persephone Books, United Kingdom • Tags: Dorothy Whipple

Minnie’s Room by Mollie Panter-Downes

March 22, 2019 by Christina

Fiction – print. Persephone Books, 2002. 125 pgs. Purchased. Subtitled “The Peacetime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes”, this collection of ten short stories presents the realities and dreams of the British people following the end of the World War II. Each story was originally published for the American publication The New Yorker between the years 1947 and 1965, a follow-up of sorts to her short stories from 1938 to 1944. Those wartime stories were published by Persephone Books in 1999 as Good Evening, […]

Categories: 2019 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Persephone Books, Short Stories, United Kingdom • Tags: Mollie Panter-Downes

Fidelity by Susan Glaspell

December 26, 2018 by Christina

Fiction – print. Persephone Books, 1999. Originally published 1913. 358 pgs. Purchased. In 1900, Ruth Holland made the decision to leave her hometown of Freeport to be with the man she was in love with. Her lover, Stuart Williams, was married, and the scandal of Ruth’s actions — because women always carry the blame — divided the small Iowa town and the Holland family. “That part of her life had been cut away from her. With most lives the past […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Feminism, Fiction, Mountain West, North America, Persephone Books, United States • Tags: Susan Glaspell

William — an Englishman by Cicely Hamilton

July 10, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — print. Persephone Books, 2014. Originally published 1919. 226 pgs. Purchased. In 1914, twenty-six year old William Tully, a Social Reformist living in England, marries Griselda the suffragette, and the two sojourn to Belgium for a month long honeymoon. Hoping to take a break from their political activism and enjoy their time together, William and Griselda instruct their friends and family not to write to them or send them English-language newspapers. Neither of them ever considered Europe would end […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, 20BooksofSummer, Europe, Fiction, Persephone Books, United Kingdom • Tags: Cicely Hamilton

Cheerful Weather for the Wedding by Julia Strachey

April 4, 2018 by Christina

Fiction — print. Persephone Books, 2009. Originally published 1932. 119 pgs. Purchased. On a March day in England, Dolly Thatcham prepares in her childhood home to marry her fiance, Owen, before the two of them set off for his diplomatic post in South America. The cover image for Strachey’s novel — not to mention the suggestion of “cheerful” in the title — suggests that the day should be serene and wonderful. Yet chaos reigns in the family home. Two cousins […]

Categories: 2018 Reads, Fiction, Persephone Books • Tags: Julia Strachey

Because of the Lockwoods by Dorothy Whipple

April 21, 2015 by Christina

Fiction – print. Persephone, 2014. Originally published 1949. 488 pgs. Purchased. Mr. Lockwood is rather peeved when his wife volunteers him to handle the papers of the newly deceased Mr. Hunter, who died unexpectedly leaving behind three children and wife incapable of balancing a checkbook let alone her husband’s affairs. And he is even further peeved to find that Mr. Hunter recently purchased a paddock abutting Lockwood’s property he had spent years trying to acquire with the three hundred pounds […]

Categories: 2015 Reads, Chunkster, Europe, Fiction, Persephone Books, United Kingdom • Tags: Dorothy Whipple

Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple

November 22, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — print. Persephone Books, 2008. Originally published 1953. 413 pgs. Library copy. Whipple’s novel follows an English family as they grapple with the impact a young, French woman has on their lives. Avery owns his own publishing house in London but lives outside the city with his wife, Ellen, near the home of his demanding mother, known only as Mrs. North or Madame. Their daughter, Anne, attends a boarding school away from her family and her beloved horse, Roma, […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Classics, Europe, Fiction, France, Persephone Books, United Kingdom • Tags: Dorothy Whipple

Good Evening, Mrs. Craven by Mollie Panter-Downes

September 18, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — print. Persephone Books, 2008. 200 pgs. Library copy. Panter-Downes served as the London correspondent for The New Yorker during the Second World War writing the “Letter from London” column, book reviews, and over thirty short stories about English domestic life. This collection – the first for Panter-Downes – contains twenty-one of her short stories and spans the years 1938 to 1944. The titular story follows a young woman engaged in an affair with a Mr. Craven – the […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Europe, Fiction, Persephone Books, United Kingdom • Tags: Mollie Panter-Downes

The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Hodgson Burnett

September 3, 2014 by Christina

Fiction — print. Persephone, 2008. Originally published 1901. 308 pgs. Library copy. Emily Fox-Seton is, unfortunately, an impoverished young women with limited opportunities and largely depends upon the kindness of friends to carve out an existence in the world. But she is well liked by friends and acquaintances, who appreciate her good nature by largely taking advantage of her, and manages to land an invitation to Lady Maria Bayne’s house party at Mallowe Court where she meets a the Marquis, […]

Categories: 2014 Reads, Classics, Europe, Fiction, Persephone Books, United Kingdom • Tags: Frances Hodgson Burnett

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson

June 7, 2011 by Christina

Fiction — print. Persephone Books, 2008. Originally published 1938. 234 pgs. Library copy. On my list of twenty-one things I’d like to accomplish before I turn twenty-one was to read a book published by Persephone Books. I selected Watson’s novel simply because this is one of only two books (and the only fictional book) published by Persephone that my public library shelves. Watson’s novel tells the story of Miss (Guinevere) Pettigrew, an older woman and governess, sent to the wrong […]

Categories: 2011 Reads, Classics, Europe, Fiction, Persephone Books, United Kingdom • Tags: Winifred Watson

Persephone Books

April 1, 2011 by Christina

I have been itching to read a Persephone for a while now, especially after Claire of Paperback Reader and Verity of cardigangirlverity hosted Persephone Reading Weekend at the end of February. I’ve had a hard time finding some of the titles from Persephone Books’ catalog in my library and I just cannot justify the cost of ordering one at this moment. It dawned on me earlier this month that I might be able to find a Persephone or two in […]

Categories: Bookish Notes, Persephone Books