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Thank you for visiting the Persephone Books website. If you don’t see the answer to your question here, please e-mail us at info@persephonebooks.co.uk, call us at 01225 425050 (outside the UK +44 1225 425050) or write to us at Persephone Books, 8 Edgar Buildings, Bath, BA1 2EE.

Where can I buy a Persephone book?

Persephone books are available to buy from our website, our Bath shop or your local bookshop. You can also contact us directly to place an order.

How much does a Persephone book cost?

The Grey editions are £15 each or £40 for three. The sixteen Classic editions are £12 each.

What is the difference between a Grey edition and a Classic edition?

We have re-issued sixteen of our bestsellers in more 'bookshop-friendly' editions i.e. with pictures on the front. The text and paper is identical to that used in the 151 grey Persephone books, but because the Classics do not have the full-colour endpapers, they retail at £12 instead of £15. All sixteen Classics are available here.

Can I buy Persephone books from abroad?

Yes: we send books all over the world. Please order via the website.

For customers in Europe, we charge £24 for a grey book, £19 for a Classic; for customers in the Rest of the World (the US, Canada, Australia, etc), we charge £27 for a grey book, £21 for a Classic. This includes the cost of international shipping, although for heavier books we add a surcharge - see below regarding postage.

We are aware that the price of sending a book outside the UK is high and we are very sad about this, but like all small business in the UK the combination of hugely increased postage costs and the Brexit-induced form-filling means we have had to make serious adjustments. We hope you understand.

For information about customs charges, click here.

How much is postage?

In the UK, postage costs £3 per book.

For overseas customers, the books themselves cost more but postage is generally free, although there are some exceptions: in recent years the cost of international shipping increased enormously and as a result, when we send books to the Rest of the World (US, Canada, Australia, etc), we have had to add a surcharge of £10 per book for those that weigh over 500g (about 325 pages), which is currently 63 titles out of a total of 151.

All books are sent out in separate envelopes, unless you order 6 books or more in which case they are sent together in a box by courier.

Can I buy Persephone books from my local bookshop?

Yes, you can ask your local bookshop to place an order with us. We are also stocked by a number of wonderful bookshops including Daunt Books, Foyles, Hatchards and John Sandoe (in London), The Book Hive (in Norfolk), Cogito Books (in Hexham), Kemp's (in Malton), the Hare and Hawthorn bookshop (in Hastings), Reading Lasses (in Wigtown), Beacon Hill Books (in Boston, Mass.), etc.

Do you have a catalogue?

Yes. It is available on the website. You also can look at the complete list of all our books on the website.

How much does it cost to be a Persephone subscriber?

To have one book a month arriving through your (or someone else’s) letterbox every month for 12 months costs £206 (including postage) or £108 (including postage) for six months in the UK. Order a six or twelve month gift subscription.

How long will my books take to arrive?

Within the UK we send out the books by Royal Mail second class, so they should arrive within four working days – but often they arrive the next day. Of course, during busy periods such as November/December they take longer and we ask you to allow a week. We send them out in individual cardboard envelopes (no plastic packaging here at Persephone Books) that fit through a standard letter-box, thereby avoiding the dreaded ‘while you were out’ note from the post office – unless you order 6 books or more, in which case they are sent by courier in a box. 

Postage overseas usually takes about five days to Europe and ten days to the rest of world; more than six books are sent together in a box and usually take about a week.

We can also rush deliver books the same day or overnight for an additional charge; please contact us for details.

Do you have a wrapping service for presents?

Yes – this costs an extra £2 per book for tissue paper, £3 per book for Cambridge Imprint patterned wrapping paper, or £8 per book for reusable fabric gift wrapping (pictured below).

 

A card saying ‘Best Wishes’, ‘Happy Birthday’, ‘Thank You’ or a blank card, is included in the price. When ordering, please say in the ‘message’ box which card you would like. If required, the envelope can also have a ‘Do not open before…’ sticker.

Do you sell your own book tokens?

Yes, we sell a Persephone Book Token. They cost £18 for one book including U.K. postage, or £49 for three, and are sent out with a copy of the Persephone Biannually, along with a note telling them who has given them the book token. These are not available overseas, however; instead we recommend the Persephone Digital Book Token.

Why the name Persephone?

The name Persephone was chosen as a symbol of female creativity, as well as of new beginnings (the daughter of Zeus is associated with spring).

How do you choose your books?

Here at Persephone Books we are often asked how we choose our books. Well….

1. Persephone Books arose out of years of being at home with small children: so much time to rediscover C20th women writers, and to buy books for 20p or go to the London Library, and come home with an armful of forgotten books. Once the children were older there was time to read in the British Museum reading room and browse in secondhand bookshops. Now there’s the Internet.

2. We have to completely and utterly love every book. It is a cliche of publishing that a book will not sell unless someone is passionately behind it. Each must have a special quality to justify the expense / commitment of its re-publication.

3. Quite a few of our titles are written about in Nicola Beauman’s 1983 book A Very Great Profession: The Woman's Novel, 1914-1938. A mixture of literary criticism and social history, this book influenced our choice of titles in other ways, for example its focus on women’s everyday lives: what we think of as ‘domestic feminism’. Our books are linked by the idea of 'home', though of course that doesn't preclude their characters having a career or flying an aeroplane.

4. Our books mostly date from the mid-C20th, though some appeared earlier (A New System of Domestic Cookery is our earliest: 1806) and some later (Emmeline and Still Missing were both first published in the early 1980s). Why this focus on the 1930s and 1940s? A quick answer is that women simply wrote so well then! But also many were well educated, yet society was not yet ready to allow them to work outside the home: writing was a good compromise.

5. Ideally ‘the novel tells a story’ (EM Forster). In other words, we prefer books that are page-turners and a guaranteed good read. They must, for example, have a proper plot.

6. People kindly suggest books: Henrietta Twycross-Martin told us that Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day was her mother’s favourite; the late Neville Braybrooke sent us his wife Isobel English’s novel Every Eye. Sometimes we realise that a book of classic quality is unaccountably not in print (MarianaLittle Boy Lost, The Expendable Man)

7. Finally, we occasionally find books in rather odd ways. Lettice Delmer was ‘puffed’ by TS Eliot on the flap of another book; Fidelity —a superb book —was advertised on the back of Elizabeth Jenkins's Virginia Water, which is not so good; the author of A Happy Tree was mentioned intriguingly in Virginia Woolf’s Diary; we read an obituary of the author of One Afternoon in the Guardian, etc.

And thus, just like the goddess Persephone emerged back into the light, so do our books.

Who prints your books?

Our books are printed by GGP in Germany. Here is a short film about the process.


Do you have any jobs available? Or work experience opportunities? 

We do occasionally have jobs available working in the bookshop, yes. Please e-mail us at info@persephonebooks.co.uk with your CV and also telling us a little about your favourite Persephone book. We are too small, however, to offer work experience - sorry.

Would you like to publish my book?

No, thank you. We only do reprints.

Would you like to publish my grandmother’s book?

Maybe. We are always delighted to hear recommendations from our readers, so do get in touch

Do you really all stop for tea and cake every day at 4 o’clock? 

Yes, certainly.

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