“And yet she had done exactly what the books on child training assured mothers would ward off trouble on a stormy day. She had copied off the list of raw materials recommended by the author of ’The Happy Child is the Active Child’: coloured paper, blunt scissors, paste, pencils, crayons, plasticine - she had bought them all, well ahead of time, and had brought them out this morning after breakfast, when the rain settled down with that all-day pour. But, unlike the children in the books, Caroline and Freddy and little Priscilla had not received those treasures open-mouthed with pleasure. Nor had they quietly and happily exercised their creative instinct, leaving their mother free to get on with her work. Perhaps her children hadn’t as much of that instinct as other people’s. At least, after a little listless fingering of coloured paper Freddy turned away. ’Say, Mother; I want to put on my brown suit,’ he said. Little did she dream then what the brown suit was to cost her.”

So opens the 1937 short story 'The Rainy Day, The Good Mother and the Brown Suit’ by Dorothy Canfield Fisher in The Persephone Book of Short Stories. Persephone Books is pleased to offer its very own umbrella in (of course) Persephone grey to "ward off trouble on a stormy day".

The umbrella is made of polyester material in order to make it good value and has a wooden handle, wooden shaft and metal ribs. The Persephone logo is printed on it in white on two opposite panels. Size-wise, it has a radius of 59cm; the total length when closed is 89cm. The day it arrived from the manufacturer it happened to pour with rain in Bath so we were able to give it a trial run: we were glad to discover that it turned out to be very comfortable to hold and somehow amazingly protective from all sorts of horrid weather.

The Persephone umbrella costs £25 in the shop or £35 if you would like it posted within the UK. It is very expensive to ship it overseas, but if you’re really keen get in touch and we will see what we can do. We can't gift-wrap it, sorry - too fiddly!