NEGLECTED AUTHORS
Back on the shelf
Nicola Beauman has been rescuing and republishing ‘lost’ books from forgotten authors for 25 years and has now acquired a list of 149 titles – and a cult following, too
by ROSE SHEPHERD
Aged54, and with a small inheritance from her father, the writer Nicola Beauman decided to launch a business.
It would be called Persephone, after the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, symbol of female creativity. She would republish books by neglected authors, mainly women, from the mid-20th century, packaged in elegant, understated, dovegrey dust jackets, and sell them by mail order.
Unfashionable authors? Understated dust jackets? Books to covet and cherish in an increasingly throwaway society? How could she possibly succeed? If I’d been her friend, I’d have counselled against it. I would have been so wrong.
Now 25 years old, Persephone Books is thriving. It operates from a Grade II-listed Georgian terrace in Bath, having relocated from London three years ago. A doorbell tinkles as I step into the shop, and Gilbert the fluffy white Havanese office dog trots up to greet me.
The ambience is refreshingly informal: cut flowers, rugs, posters, the iconic books stacked on pale blond shelves alongside some tasteful merchandise. At the rear, Nicola occupies a cramped corner, hemmed in by boxes.
Asked how she came to launch Persephone, she says, ‘I was fed up with suggesting books to people and them saying, “No, we don’t think these are good”, so one morning I thought, “I’m going to do it myself”.’ By ‘people’ she means, I guess, Virago, who published her first book, written while she brought up her five children from her marriages to architect Nicholas Lacey and later economist Christopher Beauman.