NEGLECTED AUTHORS
Nicola Beauman has been rescuing and republishing ‘lost’ books from forgotten authors for 25 years and has now acquired a list of 149 titles – and a cult following, too
Aged 54, and with a small inheritance from her father, the writer Nicola Beauman decided to launch a business.
It would be called Persephone, after the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, symbol of female creativity. She would republish books by neglected authors, mainly women, from the mid-20th century, packaged in elegant, understated, dovegrey dust jackets, and sell them by mail order.
Unfashionable authors? Understated dust jackets? Books to covet and cherish in an increasingly throwaway society? How could she possibly succeed? If I’d been her friend, I’d have counselled against it. I would have been so wrong.
Now 25 years old, Persephone Books is thriving. It operates from a Grade II-listed Georgian terrace in Bath, having relocated from London three years ago. A doorbell tinkles as I step into the shop, and Gilbert the fluffy white Havanese office dog trots up to greet me.
The ambience is refreshingly informal: cut flowers, rugs, posters, the iconic books stacked on pale blond shelves alongside some tasteful merchandise. At the rear, Nicola occupies a cramped corner, hemmed in by boxes.
Asked how she came to launch Persephone, she says, ‘I was fed up with suggesting books to people and them saying, “No, we don’t think these are good”, so one morning I thought, “I’m going to do it myself”.’ By ‘people’ she means, I guess, Virago, who published her first book, written while she brought up her five children from her marriages to architect Nicholas Lacey and later economist Christopher Beauman.
‘I started having children young, as you did in those days, and at the age of about 25, I had a contract to write A Very Great Profession: The Woman’s Novel 1914-1939. It took about ten years,’ Nicola says. ‘And I wrote one or two prefaces for Virago, though we had different tastes because they’re much more Feminist with a capital F.’
Persephone began life in the basement of a factory in Clerkenwell, London. Upstairs, they made pleated skirts. Down below, Nicola and one staff member revived names and fortunes. ‘My husband did say, “Why don’t you do it round the kitchen table?” But I’d had 25 years at home with the children, so I said, “I’m going to go out”.’
Several of the authors on Persephone’s list are discussed in A Very Great Profession. They include Enid Bagnold, Mollie Panter-Downes, EM Delafield, and 14 works by its bestseller, Dorothy Whipple, with a memoir to come.
Although many Persephone novels reflect a preoccupation with domesticity
