Persephone Books is Keeping Twentieth Century Women's Stories Alive

Take a train two hours southwest of London and you arrive in Bath, a charmed English town with meandering cobblestone streets lined by creamy white buildings. Even with the rush of modern traffic and technology, there is something about the stillness and the grandeur of the buildings that creates space for pause. And at the heart of it all, in a bookshop painted dove-grey, are stories found with no other publisher, preserving the historical experiences of women past: Persephone Books. 

Based on the Greek myth of Persephone, this bookstore focuses on bringing previously hidden stories back into the light—aligning with Persephone’s own experience emerging from the Underworld and bringing about spring. The books published by this shop are all centered on the theme of “domestic feminism,” a form of feminism that focuses on reclaiming home spaces and honoring the work of care and reproductive labor that women across cultures partake in. The stories that the publishing team at Persephone Books selects seek to show a tenderness to feminist resistance, the everyday nature of gendered politics, and the ways in which women participate in acts of defiance—both big and small—in standing against patriarchy. 

Each of the texts that the shop sells is handpicked as a stage upon which women wrestle with faith, class, identity, and history. And while many writers covet publication status with their press, Persephone Books exclusively deals with historical works, primarily those from the mid-20th century, that offer new lenses through which to view the modern era. This makes the shop a place not just of stories but also of salvation and preservation, where voices of women from past eras are rescued from oblivion and given new opportunities to inspire and speak with new readers. 

When I first visited this bookstore, I was fascinated by its operating principles, in a large part because of the many intersections it has with Judaism. Across Reform and Orthodox communities, storytelling and the preservation of history are core religious tenets. Perhaps nowhere else is storytelling embodied as strongly as it is at the Seder table, when the Haggadah calls us to recount the experiences of our ancestors as slaves under the rule of the Pharaoh. The Seder and our communal storytelling remind us not to forget, and to carry with us the experiences—mundane and extraordinary—of those who came before us. 

Persephone Books, in this way, plays a similar role in communal memory and legacy. Where the Seder calls us to the dinner table to recount and relive our past, Persephone calls us to the world of literature through its curation, preparation, and production of books that feature women’s everyday domesticities. There is also a strong presence of Jewish books and perspectives of Jewish women within Persephone’s collection. 

Amy Levy’s Reuben Sachs transports readers back to the 19th century, in an Anglo-Jewish community in West London. From parlors to Seder tables, the women of this family-focused book negotiate societal expectations and grapple with questions of love, marriage, and obligation through a quiet wit. Dimanche and Other Stories (Irène Némirovsky) explores themes and questions of assimilation, anti-Semitism, and displacement through a series of ten short stories. 

Persephone’s also carries stories of hardship from the Holocaust, including three historical accounts of experiences, one through letters exchanged between a mother and her daughter (On the Other Side: Letters to my Children from Germany 1940–46, Mathilde Wolff-Mönckeberg), one in a memoir-style reflection of Jewish life in France under German Occupation (Maman, What Are We Called Now?, Jacqueline Mesnil-Amar), and one through the diary of a young Jewish woman, who, like Anne Frank, journalled through the Nazi invasion and occupation of Amsterdam (An Interrupted Life, Etty Hillesum).  

As these voices of historical Jewish women live on through publication with Persephone Books, they offer insights for us as modern Jewish women and lessons about preserving our histories. Reading these pieces of history, I wonder what future generations will take from us, from our era of Judaism, and the way in which we live our lives. Publications are a way of preserving and capturing our current history, maintaining our threads as we move forward, and weaving together experiences into a tapestry of experience. And you, as a reader, are a critical part of that. Consider what stories you carry with you, both from you and others, and how they shape your life. What do you wish people would take away from the story this time?