Persephone recommendations?

I received a 6 month Persephone books subscription for Christmas and I get to pick the 6 books I would like. I only own The Making of a Marchioness and The Home-Maker.

Does anyone have any favorite Persephone titles they would like to recommend? I'm a little overwhelmed by their catalog. Thank you!

I love The Hopkins Manuscript! And I think most of us would probably say that Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is one of their best - a marvellous, feel-good book! 😁

Any Whipples, Miss Pettigrew, one or both of the short story collections would be a good intro to more of those.

What a great present!

If you like nineteenth century, The Carlyles at Home was one I really enjoyed, although I can't seem to find my copy anymore.

Good Evening Mrs Craven is another favourite by a longtime London correspondent to The New Yorker

Emmeline is high on my wishlist and I think avaland gave it a good review.

Maybe you could start at #1 and work your way through! On a more serious note, some of the Persephone books are available in other editions, so I think I might check that a particular book was only readily available in Persephone to make the most of their selections.

>4 SassyLassy: that’s a good point re other editions - I know for example you can get The Hopkins Manuscript in a Penguin.

Wow - everyone liked something different, so that tells you how good they are, right? My faves are Little Boy Lost, The Carlyles at Home , A House in the Country, Manja, The Expendable Man, The Squire, and Into the Whirlwind. No particular order because they were all great for different reasons.

And all of the Whipples… except for They Knew Mr. Knight. I would also check your library and buy what's not available there.

What a lovely gift. I love my collection of Persephone. I would recommend the Persephone short stories vol 1 and 2,great introduction to many fantastic Persephone writers. Also the Whipples, Miss Buncle books and Miss Pettigrew lives for a day for cosy feel good reads. Manja and ÷The Expendable Man are fantastic, as are The Fortnight in September and Princes in the Land . Non fiction, I would recommend Long Live Great Bardfield and Into the Whirlwind .
I am sure you will have lots of fun choosing.

Thank you for all of the suggestions! I’m going to spend some time today going through the catalog.

>9 japaul22: Happy hunting and let us all know what you selected!

Just to add some more complexity, my favourites are Guard Your Daughters, London War Notes, Hostages to Fortune, and anything by R.C. Sherriff.

>11 Stuck-in-a-Book: Thank you! I have my catalog all marked up with everyone's suggestions!

I can only pick 6, so for now I think I'm going with:

40 The Priory by Dorothy Whipple
86 To bed with Grand Music by Marghanita Laski
50 The World that was Ours by Hilda Bernstein
71 The Shuttle by Frances Hodgson Burnett
120 Madame Solario by Gladys Huntington
133 Expiation by Elizabeth von Arnim

I'll think about it for a few more days before I email my choices.

Also, I just finished a Persephone book The Home-Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher and absolutely loved it!

>12 japaul22: If you read e-books you can find The Shuttle for free at Project Gutenberg. Also worth noting is that Persephone's edition is slightly abridged for technical reasons (I believe it would have been too long for standard printing otherwise) but in this particular case I don't object, it could have used a better editor from the beginning and I doubt that the slight abridgement harmed it.

>13 alvaret: very interesting, thank you!

I’m still considering an alternate idea that someone on litsy gave me to just give Persephone a lost of 20 or so titles that I’m interested in and then let them pick.

I've read an awful lot of Persephones and I've only read one of these six - To Bed With Grand Music, which is great. I'm looking forward to hearing about the others!

I loved the The Shuttle and really loved To Bed With Grand Music with its shady 'heroine'. I also really liked The Priory. The Bernstein book, not so much. I was a member of the Anti-Apartheid Movement for almost 30 years and there was nothing new in that book for me. The other two I have not read. Have you read Heaven Ali's reviews on this site? She's read almost all of the Persephones and I have always been guided by her reviews.

>16 romain: Thanks! I'm familiar with Heaven Ali's posts but I didn't think to go back and read them this time. Thanks for the tip!