Miss Buncle is an aging old maid in a boring town in the suburbia of London, 1930s. When she finds herself in need of funds, she decides to earn some money by writing a novel. Miss Buncle’s book causes waves in the careful social fabric of the small town because she has written about the

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In honor of my 31st birthday on Sunday, I thought I’d find a Persephone book with a title that made me laugh: It’s Hard to be Hip Over Thirty and Other Tragedies of Married Life by Judith Viorst. Being in the USA, however, I only found the non-Persephone edition, the original 1968 publication of Viorst’s

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Reading Round about a Pound a Week gave me a new perspective on the inequality that comes from poverty. As the title indicates, the book is a description of a 1909-1913 study of 42 families in the Lambeth neighborhood in England that live on about a £1 a week. It is no easy task getting

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Although I have a different review waiting in the wings, yesterday afternoon I finished my next Persephone book, and I can’t help posting this review now because the ideas are so fresh and I just loved it. Besides being an interesting look at 1920s gender roles in raising a family, The Home-maker by Dorothy Canfield

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Little Boy Lost by Marghanita Laski is about taking chances: daring to love again after having lost all. Although as a post-war novel it captures one man’s search for himself in the form of looking for his lost son, Little Boy Lost remains relevant to all men and women as they search for their own

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This first week of May is Persephone Reading Week, which means bloggers around the blogosphere are reading books by the British publisher Persephone. I do not typically search out books based on publisher. Yet, Claire and Verity have such an (I think it’s fair to say) obsession with this publisher that it certainly caught my

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