Persephone Books
Nicola Beauman founded Persephone Books in 1998 under the strict mission statement to “print mainly neglected fiction and non-fiction by women, for women and about women.” Bookseller by day, biographer at night, Nicola has written extensively on the woman’s novel, E.M. Forster and, most recently, Elizabeth Taylor. She will be returning to Port Eliot with the popular Persephone Books stall in the Walled Garden.
Nicola’s first book A Very Great Profession: The Woman’s Novel 1914-39 was published by Virago in 1983; it was reprinted in 1989 and again 1995. Cynthia Asquith, a biography of the novelist and confidant to J.M. Barrie, was published in 1987 followed by Morgan: A Biography of E.M. Forster in 1993. She has most recently completed a life of the, now little-known, novelist Elizabeth Taylor, entitled The Other Elizabeth Taylor, which was published in April 2009.
She founded Persephone Books in 1998 followed by two shops; one located in the Forster’s old stomping ground Bloomsbury and another in Notting Hill. Created to appeal to busy women with no time to browse the polished shelves of ever-larger bookshops, Nicola set out to handpick a list of books designed to be neither too literary nor too commercial – without forfeiting quality. With over ten years under its lilac-coloured belt, Persephone Books are always readable, thought-provoking and impossible to forget.
Links:
- Nicola Beauman interview with the Guardian.co.uk
- Nicola Beauman interview with The Telegraph
