Inside the design of a Persephone book

‘In the world of algorithms and AI, taste is all we have,’ says Francesca Beauman, MD at Persephone Books, an independent publisher with a focus on neglected fiction and non-fiction, mostly by women writers from the mid-twentieth century. ‘Taste is our power. Persephone Books will say, this is a good read. These grey covers are a guarantee of a good read. We promise you that.’

You will recognise the distinctive dove-grey cover of a Persephone book, a reassuringly calming sign of quality that stands out in a colourful and crowded marketplace. ‘It was about 1998, and we were in a deli, Dean & DeLuca, in central Manhattan. Their takeaway paper coffee cups are this exact colour of dove grey – we borrowed it from them. It’s the loveliest colour, serious without being sombre, and very chic.’

It was an auspicious beginning for the family business begun in 1999 by Beauman’s mother, Nicola Beauman, from a basement office in Clerkenwell. Naming her venture after Persephone, the mythical Greek goddess linked to female creativity, set the tone for the publishers which revisits out-of-print books written by women in the interwar years, bringing them to life for a new audience. It has been a successful strategy - after three years in Clerkenwell, the business moved to Bloomsbury, before settling three years ago in Bath. They have since published 153 books.

In the early days, Persephone were publishing twelve books a year, a number now reduced to two in a conscious decision to ensure each revisited author is properly celebrated. ‘It felt like we were neglecting all the previous books we had published,’ says Beauman. ‘I said we need to publish fewer books, so that we can really give each one the attention, and - crucially - keep doing so, otherwise we are back where we started, neglecting books and authors that don't deserve it.’

While each book comes clothed in the ubiquitous grey, the endpapers are individual to the author, and are inspired by some element of the story inside. Each endpaper is taken from the same place and date when the author originally published, and is often by a neglected female textile designer. ‘Textile is such a part of our everyday lives, but you don't see it celebrated in many other places,’ says Beauman. ‘I always think that with all the end papers, if they were framed and put up on the wall, they'd be taken as seriously as all this art by men, but because they're on a sofa or a dress, or some curtains, and done by women, they're not.

‘Reproducing these textiles here was a way of both celebrating them, but also bringing the book to life with a very domestic spin. Each end paper - all 154 - has got a story of why thematically they evoke what the book is about. That's a really fun part of what we do.’

The endpapers are sourced everywhere from the V&A archives to vintage dresses they own (The Closed Door and Every Good Deed are both from Beauman’s dresses) and once, from a jacquard scarf brought into the shop by a reader, which was scanned and became the endpaper for To Bed With Grand Music.

‘The endpaper for The Oppermanns by Lion Feuchtwanger is taken from a rug that was at the very bottom of my mum's laundry basket,’ says Beauman. ‘She thinks that when her parents fled Berlin in 1933 they brought it with them, and it had been sitting in the bottom of the laundry basket. The book is about a Jewish family in Berlin in the 1930s, so obviously it was very appropriate. It was scanned straight into the scanner. If you look at it closely, you can clearly see that it is a rug. Sometimes in the end papers you will see a funny, little dark patch that's definitely a stain, on a vintage dress or somewhere.’

Sometimes they look elsewhere for the design – for the upcoming October release, the 1926 American novel Her Son's Wife by Dorothy Canfield Fisher, they have found a dress fabric called Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, designed in America in the 1920s. For the book Sofia Petrovna, the end paper dates from the 1930s Soviet textile age. ‘It is one of my favourite end papers. We were wondering which way it should go in the book. And then eventually I came back from lunch one day and saw it at a different angle, and realised that, clearly, the design is a very abstract view of a factory with smoke coming out the top. Every time I look at that book, I think, oh my goodness, thank God we worked that out.’

The endpapers are a colourful foil for the covers themselves, which resist easy judgement when spotted on the shelf. ‘What I really appreciate about Persephone books is that you can't judge a book by its cover. It's treating the reader with respect. I'm not saying to you, this is a romance, or a thriller, or for men or for women. It confidently says that this is a really good read, whatever that may mean. And then you as the reader get to open the first page and make up your own mind. Treating the reader like a grown up is quite a rare and wonderful thing these days.’

persephonebooks.co.uk