Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

PREFACE BY HENRIETTA TWYCROSS-MARTIN
256pp
ISBN 9781903155103

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is about a down-on-her-luck, middle-aged governess who is sent by an employment agency to the wrong address: instead of a household of unruly children, she encounters a glamorous night-club singer named Miss LaFosse. Over a period of twenty-four hours her life is changed - forever. 

Miss Pettigrew has been a Persephone bestseller ever since we first published it in 2000. It came to our attention when a customer, Henrietta Twycross-Martin, brought an ancient, battered copy of it into the bookshop and told us it was her mother's favourite book. 

The Guardian asked: 'Why has it taken more than half a century for this wonderful flight of humour to be rediscovered? Pure Cinderella fantasy farce with beaus, bounders, negligées and nightclubs - Miss Pettigrew's blossoming is a delight to observe.' The Daily Mail liked the book's message - 'that everyone, no matter how poor or prim or neglected, has a second chance to blossom in the world,' while in The Shops India Knight described Miss Pettigrew as 'the sweetest grown-up book in the world'.

In 2008 Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day was made into an excellent film starring Frances McDormand and Amy Adams. 

Also available as a Persephone Classic, a Persephone e-book and a Persephone Audiobook read by Frances McDormand. 

Endpaper

The endpaper is a 1938 furnishing fabric designed, like the ones for Saplings and The Squire, by Marion Dorn; it is an elegant and light-hearted repeat pattern of a woman's hand holding a bouquet of sheaves of corn and red flowers, with yellow ribbons swirling among them.