My Persephone Reading List

Many years ago when I first started book blogging, I joined The Classics Club in order to try to read more classics. Lately I've been thinking about rejoining, but I actually don't have many classics left that I'm really keen to read, so I decided that a better use of my time would be to try to read all of the books published by Persephone!

If you're not familiar, Persephone Books are an independent publisher based in Bath who publish mostly forgotten women writers mostly from the inter war period, with some exceptions. They publish books of all genres, and I've never read a Persephone I didn't love.

I'll share the list of their books here, with updates on which I've read and which I own, and I'd love anyone who wants to to join in as well. * = books I own, bold is books that I've read.

List of Persephone Books

• 1: William – an Englishman by Cicely Hamilton *
• 2: Mariana by Monica Dickens
• 3: Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple
• 4: Fidelity by Susan Glaspell
• 5: An Interrupted Life: The Diaries and Letters of Etty Hillesum 1941–43 by Etty Hillesum
• 6: The Victorian Chaise-longue by Marghanita Laski
• 7: The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher *
• 8: Good Evening, Mrs Craven: The Wartime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes by Mollie Panter-Downes
• 9: Few Eggs and No Oranges by Vere Hodgson
• 10: Good Things in England by Florence White
• 11: Julian Grenfell by Nicholas Mosley
• 12: It’s Hard to Be Hip Over Thirty by Judith Viorst
• 13: Consequences by E M Delafield *
• 14: Farewell Leicester Square by Betty Miller *
• 15: Tell It to a Stranger by Elizabeth Berridge
• 16: Saplings by Noel Streatfeild
• 17: Marjory Fleming by Oriel Malet
• 18: Every Eye by Isobel English
• 19: They Knew Mr Knight by Dorothy Whipple
• 20: A Woman’s Place: 1910–75 by Ruth Adam
• 21: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson
• 22: Consider the Years by Virginia Graham
• 23: Reuben Sachs by Amy Levy
• 24: Family Roundabout by Richmal Crompton
• 25: The Montana Stories by Katherine Mansfield
• 26: Brook Evans by Susan Glaspell
• 27: The Children who Lived in a Barn by Eleanor Graham
• 28: Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski
• 29: The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Hodgson Burnett
• 30: Kitchen Essays by Agnes Jekyll
• 31: A House in the Country by Jocelyn Playfair *
• 32: The Carlyles at Home by Thea Holme
• 33: The Far Cry by Emma Smith
• 34: Minnie’s Room: The Peacetime Stories of Mollie Panter-Downes by Mollie Panter-Downes
• 35: Greenery Street by Denis Mackail
• 36: Lettice Delmer by Susan Miles
• 37: The Runaway by Elizabeth Anna Hart
• 38: Cheerful Weather for the Wedding by Julia Strachey *
• 39: Manja by Anna Gmeyner
• 40: The Priory by Dorothy Whipple *
• 41: Hostages to Fortune by Elizabeth Cambridge
• 42: The Blank Wall by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding *
• 43: The Wise Virgins by Leonard Woolf
• 44: Tea with Mr Rochester by Frances Towers *
• 45: Good Food on the Aga by Ambrose Heath
• 46: Miss Ranskill Comes Home by Barbara Euphan Todd *
• 47: The New House by Lettice Cooper
• 48: The Casino by Margaret Bonham
• 49: Bricks and Mortar by Helen Ashton
• 50: The World that was Ours by Hilda Bernstein
• 51: Operation Heartbreak by Duff Cooper
• 52: The Village by Marghanita Laski
• 53: Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary by Ruby Ferguson
• 54: They Can’t Ration These by Vicomte de Mauduit
• 55: Flush by Virginia Woolf *
• 56: They Were Sisters by Dorothy Whipple
• 57: The Hopkins Manuscript by RC Sherriff
• 58: Hetty Dorval by Ethel Wilson
• 59: There Were No Windows by Norah Hoult
• 60: Doreen by Barbara Noble
• 61: A London Child of the 1870s by Molly Hughes
• 62: How To Run Your Home Without Help by Kay Smallshaw
• 63: Princes in the Land by Joanna Cannan
• 64: The Woman Novelist and Other Stories by Diana Gardner
• 65: Alas, Poor Lady by Rachel Ferguson
• 66: Gardener’s Nightcap by Muriel Stuart
• 67: The Fortnight in September by RC Sherriff
• 68: The Expendable Man by Dorothy B Hughes
• 69: Journal by Katherine Mansfield
• 70: Plats du Jour by Patience Gray
• 71: The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett
• 72: House-Bound by Winifred Peck
• 73: The Young Pretenders by Edith Henrietta Fowler
• 74: The Closed Door and Other Stories by Dorothy Whipple
• 75: On the Other Side: Letters to my Children from Germany 1940–46 by Mathilde Wolff-Mönckeberg
• 76: The Crowded Street by Winifred Holtby
• 77: Daddy’s Gone A-Hunting by Penelope Mortimer
• 78: A Very Great Profession by Nicola Beauman
• 79: Round About a Pound a Week by Maud Pember Reeves
• 80: The Country Housewife’s Book by Lucy H Yates
• 81: Miss Buncle’s Book by DE Stevenson
• 82: Amours de Voyage by Arthur Hugh Clough
• 83: Making Conversation by Christine Longford *
• 84: A New System of Domestic Cookery by Mrs Rundell
• 85: High Wages by Dorothy Whipple
• 86: To Bed With Grand Music by Marghanita Laski
• 87: Dimanche and Other Stories by Irène Némirovsky
• 88: Still Missing by Beth Gutcheon *
• 89: The Mystery of Mrs Blencarrow by Mrs Oliphant
• 90: The Winds of Heaven by Monica Dickens
• 91: Miss Buncle Married by DE Stevenson *
• 92: Midsummer Night in the Workhouse by Diana Athill
• 93: The Sack of Bath by Adam Fergusson
• 94: No Surrender by Constance Maud
• 95: Greenbanks by Dorothy Whipple *
• 96: Dinners for Beginners by Rachel and Margaret Ryan
• 97: Harriet by Elizabeth Jenkins
• 98: A Writer’s Diary by Virginia Woolf
• 99: Patience by John Coates
• 100: The Persephone Book of Short Stories by Persephone Books
• 101: Heat Lightning by Helen Hull
• 102: The Exiles Return by Elisabeth de Waal *
• 103: The Squire by Enid Bagnold
• 104: The Two Mrs Abbotts by DE Stevenson
• 105: Diary of a Provincial Lady by E M Delafield
• 106: Into the Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg
• 107: Wilfred and Eileen by Jonathan Smith
• 108: The Happy Tree by Rosalind Murray
• 109: The Country Life Cookery Book by Ambrose Heath
• 110: Because of the Lockwoods by Dorothy Whipple
• 111: London War Notes by Mollie Panter-Downes
• 112: Vain Shadow by Jane Hervey
• 113: Greengates by RC Sherriff
• 114: Gardeners’ Choice by Evelyn Dunbar and Charles Mahoney
• 115: Maman, What Are We Called Now? by Jacqueline Mesnil-Amar
• 116: A Lady and Her Husband by Amber Reeves
• 117: The Godwits Fly by Robin Hyde
• 118: Every Good Deed and Other Stories by Dorothy Whipple
• 119: Long Live Great Bardfield by Tirzah Garwood
• 120: Madame Solario by Gladys Huntington
• 121: Effi Briest by Theodor Fontane
• 122: Earth and High Heaven by Gwethalyn Graham
• 123: Emmeline by Judith Rossner
• 124: The Journey Home and Other Stories by Malachi Whitaker
• 125: Guard Your Daughters by Diana Tutton
• 126: Despised and Rejected by Rose Allatini
• 127: Young Anne by Dorothy Whipple *
• 128: Tory Heaven by Marghanita Laski
• 129: The Call by Edith Ayrton Zangwill
• 130: National Provincial by Lettice Cooper
• 131: Milton Place by Elisabeth de Waal
• 132: The Second Persephone Book of Short Stories by Persephone Books
• 133: Expiation by Elizabeth von Arnim
• 134: A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf
• 135: One Woman's Year by Stella Martin Currey
• 136: The Oppermanns by Lion Feuchtwanger *
• 137: English Climate: Wartime Stories by Sylvia Townsend Warner
• 138: The New Magdalen by Wilkie Collins
• 139: Random Commentary by Dorothy Whipple *
• 140: The Rector's Daughter by F M Mayor
• 141: The Deepening Stream by Dorothy Canfield Fisher
• 142: As It Was by Helen Thomas
• 143: A Well Full of Leaves by Elizabeth Myers
• 144: The Other Day by Dorothy Whipple
• 145: The Waters under the Earth by John Moore
• 146: Two Cheers for Democracy: a Selection by E M Forster
• 147: One Afternoon by Siân James

As you can see, I've got a lot still to do for this challenge! If you have thoughts on what I should read next, I'd love to hear them so please leave me a comment.