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A parallel in pictures to the world of Persephone Books.

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8th November 2024

Dorothy B Hughes, whose mid-century noir novels rank with those of Raymond Chandler and Patricia Highsmith, grew up in Kansas City but spent most of her adult life in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In The Expendable Man (1963) the reader follows a UCLA medical intern as he drives to Phoenix, Arizona (seen here in the early 1960s) at a time of social tension which is brilliantly evoked in the book.


7th November 2024

Although Elisabeth Sanxay Holding - "the top suspense writer of them all" according to Raymond Chandler - lived in many places with her British diplomat husband, she was born and brought up in New York and later retired there. NYC is also one of the settings for the thriller The Blank Wall (1947) which was filmed by Max Ophuls as The Reckless Moment (1949) with James Mason and Joan Bennett. 

 


6th November 2024

The setting of Heat Lightning (1931) by Helen Hull is based on Albion, Michigan. As the Persephone Perspective says, it features one of literature's finest grandmothers. "When we first catch sight of Madam Westover, she is, in true and undying pioneer spirit, peeling and canning her own peaches – a vivid domestic manifestation of the generation divide" because her daughter buys her canned produce. The photo is of a multi-generation family canning peaches in 1934. The post was written last weekend. Little did we imagine we would be uploading it on Wednesday morning through a mist of tears.


5th November 2024

Dorothy Canfield Fisher was born in Lawrence, Kansas, but is most closely associated with Vermont. This is a very attractive room in her house near Arlington (c1933) where "the Fishers managed to combine plain country living with a rather constant involvement in the world’s affairs". 


4th November 2024

This, the week of the US election, is a good moment to look at the books we publish by American authors which are set in different parts of the country. Emmeline was written in 1980 but is about the hardscrabble life of the mill girls - some as young as 13 - in the 1840s in Lowell, Massachusetts. (They had earlier made history when they went on strike in 1834 and created the first union of working women in America.)

 

 


1st November 2024

The exhibition is a chance to see the marvellous and only recently rediscovered 'Famous Women Dinner Service' (1932-34, Charleston) which Vanessa Bell created with Duncan Grant (the sole man in the 52-piece set). The commission for a fine dining set came from Kenneth and Jane Clark, but instead they received this service which is a a brilliant celebration of women of strong and often unconventional character. Well worth a trip to Milton Keynes.


31st October 2024

 

One of Vanessa Bell's great achievements was to make domesticity a worthy and valuable subject for painting. Of course, she didn't just paint her homes, she also filled them with decorated furniture, textiles, and ceramics. The catalogue calls her style 'domestic modernism', something which can be seen in her designs for rugs, cushions, and chair covers. There are several of these in the exhibition, including this 1924 needlepoint stitched by Ethel Grant, Duncan Grant's mother. 

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