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Elizabeth Myers


Elizabeth Myers, author of A Well Full of Leaves

Elizabeth Myers, of Irish descent, was born in 1912 and brought up in Ancoats, the industrial suburb of Manchester; her father was a violent alcoholic, her mother brave and kind. At Notre Dame High School in Manchester, to which she won a scholarship, she was encouraged to write. But her father made her leave school and begin working as a secretary; she also attended university lectures on literature. In 1931 she and her mother and sister moved to London, here she worked as a secretary in Fleet Street and wrote two (rejected) novels. Diagnosed with tuberculosis, she spent 1938 in a sanatorium. That year a short story she wrote led to friendship with Eleanor Farjeon, who lived in Hampstead, and in 1940 ‘Betty’, and her mother and sister, settled in a flat nearby. But in 1943 she met and married the scholar and schoolmaster Littleton Powys and went to live in Sherborne. This was the year A Well Full of Leaves was published, to both rapturous and critical reviews; it sold well and was reprinted several times, in 1947 as a Penguin. Elizabeth Myers died of tuberculosis aged 35.


 

Titles by Elizabeth Myers

Hop, Step and Jump

Despised and Rejected (Classic edition)

The Persephone Pin

The Fortnight in September (audiobook)

Crooked Cross (audiobook)

Family Life in Persephone Books

Our Favourite Persephone Books

The Expendable Man (Classic edition)

Crooked Cross

High Wages (audiobook)

Little Boy Lost (audiobook)

High Wages (Classic edition)

Mrs Miniver

They Were Sisters (audiobook)

William - An Englishman (audiobook)

Diary of a Provincial Bookshop

William – an Englishman (Classic edition)

The Third Persephone Book of Short Stories

The Gentle Art of Domesticity

Sofia Petrovna

Out of the Window

One Afternoon

Two Cheers for Democracy

The Other Day

The Waters under the Earth

As It Was

A Well Full of Leaves

Miss Buncle’s Book (Classic edition)

They Were Sisters (Classic edition)

The Deepening Stream

The Rector's Daughter

The Making of a Marchioness (audiobook)

Someone at a Distance (audiobook)

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (audiobook)

Midsummer Night in the Workhouse (audiobook)

Good Evening, Mrs. Craven (audiobook)

The Other Elizabeth Taylor

Cheerful Weather for the Wedding (audiobook)

Random Commentary

The New Magdalen

The Persephone Box Set

English Climate: Wartime Stories

The Oppermanns

One Woman's Year

A Room of One's Own

Expiation

The Persephone Catalogue

The Second Persephone Book of Short Stories

Milton Place

National Provincial

The Call

Tory Heaven

Young Anne

Despised and Rejected

The Fortnight in September (Classic edition)

Guard Your Daughters

The Journey Home and Other Stories

Emmeline

The Persephone Napkin

Earth and High Heaven

Effi Briest

Madame Solario

Long Live Great Bardfield

Every Good Deed and Other Stories

The Godwits Fly

A Lady and Her Husband

Maman, What Are We Called Now?

Gardeners’ Choice

Greengates

Vain Shadow

London War Notes

The World that was Ours (Classic edition)

The Making of a Marchioness (Classic edition)

Cheerful Weather for the Wedding (Classic edition)

Little Boy Lost (Classic edition)

Kitchen Essays (Classic edition)

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (Classic edition)

Saplings (Classic edition)

Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes (Classic edition)

The Home-Maker (Classic edition)

Someone at a Distance (Classic edition)

The Persephone Book Token

The Persephone Bag

Mariana (Classic edition)

Because of the Lockwoods

The Country Life Cookery Book

The Happy Tree

Wilfred and Eileen

Into the Whirlwind

Diary of a Provincial Lady

The Two Mrs Abbotts

The Squire

The Persephone Notebook

On the Other Side: Letters to my Children from Germany 1940–46

The World that was Ours

To Bed With Grand Music

High Wages

Dimanche and Other Stories

A New System of Domestic Cookery

Making Conversation

Still Missing

The Mystery of Mrs Blencarrow

Amours de Voyage

Miss Buncle’s Book

The Country Housewife’s Book

Round About a Pound a Week

The Winds of Heaven

A Very Great Profession

Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting

Miss Buncle Married

The Crowded Street

Midsummer Night in the Workhouse

The Closed Door and Other Stories

The Young Pretenders

The Sack of Bath

House-Bound

No Surrender

The Shuttle

Plats du Jour

Greenbanks

Journal

Dinners for Beginners

The Expendable Man

The Fortnight in September

Harriet

Gardener’s Nightcap

Alas, Poor Lady

The Woman Novelist and Other Stories

Princes in the Land

How To Run Your Home Without Help

A London Child of the 1870s

Doreen

There Were No Windows

Hetty Dorval

The Hopkins Manuscript

They Were Sisters

Flush

They Can’t Ration These

Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary

The Village

Operation Heartbreak

Bricks and Mortar

The Casino

The New House

Miss Ranskill Comes Home

Good Food on the Aga

Tea with Mr Rochester

The Wise Virgins

The Blank Wall

Hostages to Fortune

The Priory

Manja

Cheerful Weather for the Wedding

The Runaway

Lettice Delmer

Greenery Street

Minnie’s Room: The Peacetime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes

A Writer’s Diary

Patience

The Far Cry

The Carlyles at Home

A House in the Country

Kitchen Essays

The Making of a Marchioness

Little Boy Lost

The Children who Lived in a Barn

Brook Evans

The Montana Stories

Family Roundabout

Reuben Sachs

Consider the Years

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

A Woman’s Place: 1910–75

They Knew Mr Knight

Every Eye

Marjory Fleming

Saplings

Tell It to a Stranger

Farewell Leicester Square

Consequences

It’s Hard to Be Hip Over Thirty

Julian Grenfell

Good Things in England

Few Eggs and No Oranges

Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes

The Home-Maker

The Persephone Book of Short Stories

Heat Lightning

The Exiles Return

The Victorian Chaise-longue

An Interrupted Life: The Diaries and Letters of Etty Hillesum 1941–43

Fidelity

Someone at a Distance

Mariana

William – an Englishman

Persephone Book Subscription

Hayden Thorpe in concert

‘Crooked Cross’ Rehearsed Reading at the Ustinov Studio

Miss Pettigrew postcard: 'my hair is mouse coloured'

Miss Pettigrew postcard: 'such ardent kisses'

Shared Reading session: 'The Home-Maker'

Shared Reading session: 'Someone at a Distance'

Shared Reading session: 'Little Boy Lost'

Salon Music Concert: Nathaniel Mander

Film screening: ‘They Were Sisters’

Talk: 'At Home: the Domestic Arts in Persephone books'

Persephone Day Book Group: 'The Expendable Man'

Endpapers Workshop

Persephone Day Welcome Drinks

Emily's Walking Book Club: ‘Little Boy Lost'

‘Crooked Cross’ Rehearsed Reading

'Crooked Cross' Launch Event

The Persephone Pamphlet

Persephone Endpapers

The Persephone Apron

Persephone Books Supper Club

February 8th concert

Persephone Book Envelope

Salon Music Concert: Trio Paradis

Film screening: ‘The Home-Maker’

Closing Event: From ‘William’ to ‘Sofia’, What Is A Persephone Book?

Our Favourite Persephone Books

A Literary Walk Around Bath

Launch Event: Two New Persephone Audiobooks

Focus: ‘High Wages’, ‘The Deepening Stream’, ‘No Surrender’

‘Elevenses with Fran’ Live

Emily's Walking Book Club: ‘Someone at a Distance’

‘You're Booked!’ Live

Endpapers Workshop

Salon Music Concert: Maya Irgalina

Nicola Beauman in conversation with Elizabeth Day

Our Favourite Persephone Books

Film Screening: ‘Cheerful Weather for the Wedding’

The Domestic in Art and Literature

History Through the Pages of Persephone Books

Buried Treasures: Virginia Woolf In and Out of the Archive

Celebrating Persephone's Endpapers

Single Women in Persephone Books

Our Favourite Persephone Books

Cooking with Persephone Books: Anna Jones in conversation

The Decorative Arts and Persephone Books

Working Women in ‘The Home-Maker’

How to Make a Persephone Book

Breakfast Book Group: ‘Sofia Petrovna’

Breakfast Book Group: ‘Miss Buncle's Book’

Salon Music Concert: Limáni Trio

‘The Victorian Chaise-Longue’ re-imagined by Max Porter

Film screening: ‘Little Boy Lost’

Is Publishing Political?

Inspired by Persephone Books: Jacqueline Wilson in conversation

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