Twenty years ago today we published the very first Persephone Letter. We are reproducing it here because we thought it was interesting for present-day readers to see what was happening at Persephone Books back in 2005. And the answer is, we are happy to say, not that much has changed – to the extent that Jess, Alarys, Lisa and Fran are still Persephone girls; however, we don’t have a photocopy machine any more. The main difference with the Letter is that in 2005 we couldn’t, or didn’t know how to, add pictures.

30th November 2005

The Persephone Books website first went up in 1999. But it is time for a redesign, and with our new look comes a fortnightly Persephone Letter which will contain the kind of news which is too ephemeral to go into the Persephone Quarterly. In this respect reading this blog and looking at the photographs will be like a virtual visit to our Lamb's Conduit Street offices. Those who have been here know that the shop runs straight into the area where Jess and I have our desks, and occasionally people have been startled to be part of a less-than friendly dialogue with a printer, or to have to pick their way round a delivery of 1500 books. Yet whatever is going on most visitors seem to enjoy being briefly part of life at Persephone Books.

Now we want this enjoyment also to be open, courtesy of the web, to those who cannot get to Lamb's Conduit Street in person. Every couple of weeks I shall write about what has been going on in the shop and what has been preoccupying us. Inevitably some will be surprised at the relatively unliterary nature of this letter; this is because the day-to-day business of running a publishing company is mostly focused on the photocopy machine, what to have for lunch, and will we get the orders done before 3.30pm when Jim the postman arrives? Intellectual argument about Ethel Wilson's commas, should The Hopkins Manuscript be labelled science fiction, or where is the vocabulary to describe the genius of Dorothy Whipple, this kind of discussion is merely fitted in, as it is in most people's life, to the interstices of what is most pressing – and this is often quite trivial.

One of the benefits of a redesigned website is that we have been forced to confront a lot of questions that are usually only discussed with customers who wander in off the street wanting to know what is it with all these grey books? Usually Jess or I or Alarys (on Tuesdays) or Lisa (on Saturdays) will launch into an explanation – reprints of women writers, neglected classics, the wonderful Dorothy Whipple if you want a fantastic read for yourself, four cookery books, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day our bestseller and an ideal present, short stories ditto, It's Hard to Be Hip over Thirty for thirty-somethings, Few Eggs brilliant for those who live in Notting Hill... Yet people do sometimes leave the shop looking bewildered, and some may have abandoned the website in equal bewilderment. We hope the relaunch brings with it a new clarity.

This is a quality that is particularly essential for journalists - if they don't straightaway understand what you are trying to get across, you have lost them. But what could be clearer than the imagery of a yellow duster? Something that took up our time in October was our efforts to get journalists to take notice of one of our Christmas books, How to Run Your Home without Help, a 1949 manual by Kay Smallshaw. Fran, who did the publicity for this title, had the inspired idea of sending it out with a yellow duster (how was it that I only recently realised that yellow dusters are softer than any cashmere and that duster-yellow is an incredibly chic colour?). The duster, tied in grey ribbon, certainly seemed to catch people's attention. First Andrew O'Hagan wrote an extremely interesting piece in the Telegraph. Then The Times asked if they could run an extract, and commissioned a journalist to spend a week living the life prescribed in the book; with the result that Carol Midgely stripped her bed every day; soaked her bra for half an hour in lavender-scented water and dried it flat on a towel; started the vegetables for lunch at 12 o'clock; and was grateful to have had half an hour to sit down at the end of the day and then to do the mending. Her article about her week appeared in The Times in late November.

Finally, Val Hennessy wrote a piece about the book in which she said: ‘Dusters ahoy! For a laugh and a half, do read this gripping reprint of Kay Smallshaw's classic advice manual for housewives... To read Smallshaw's fascinating slice of social history is to realise that we women today don't know that we're born.... her book makes you both laugh and marvel and unwittingly offers a fascinatingly detailed picture of the household duties and everyday skills once expected of women.’ Copies are of the book are leaving the office at a great rate and, in Persephone terms, we have a bestseller on our hands.

Nicola Beauman 

30 November 2005

Lamb's Conduit Street, London WC1N