The Third Persephone Book of Short Stories

Our first two volumes of short stories have been very successful. They have been devoured by people who like short stories, and they make very good presents because they provide a ‘taster’ of our books and also are so varied that the recipient is bound to like something among the thirty stories. However, we are always conscious that there are people who do not ‘like’ short stories, and most often the reason given is that if they are enjoying a story they want it to go on and become a novel rather than come to an end. We at Persephone think this is rather like wanting a Chopin mazurka to turn into a full-blown piano concerto. But each to her own etc.

The writer Clare Harman has recently asked the question in her biography of Katherine Mansfield: ‘Why does the short story form appeal to readers, and why has there been a marked resurgence of it in the twenty-first century? Is it to do with changes in the way texts are composed and published? Attention span? Hardware, even? Perhaps the availability in so many people’s pockets of access to limitless texts has helped create a better appreciation of neat, brief fiction and a search for the best practitioners. For it’s certainly not just entertainment that the great short story writers provide, but infinite food for thought, asking the biggest questions in the smallest spaces, producing myriad variations on the human comedy and the peculiarities of human nature…It’s a demanding form; it gives a writer nowhere to hide, for everything in a short story has to have earned its place, even if what you’re reading looks fleeting and insubstantial – perhaps especially then. Shortness is the least important thing about  it and "story" itself is less important than other qualities such as intensity and insight.’

This seems to us an excellent summing up of the joy of a short story: in a very small space (a ten to twenty minutes read) it offers entertainment, food for thought, intensity and insight. Try the thirty stories in PB no. 150 and see if you agree with it.

The Third Persephone Book of Short Stories features two different endpapers reflecting the chronological development of the collection. The front endpaper is ‘Greenfinch’, a block-printed furnishing fabric designed by Lotte Frömel-Fochler in 1911. The back endpaper is an early 1990s cotton print designed by Furphy Simpson.