Gripping yarns - Nicola Beauman interview

Published on Friday 13 June 2008 14:45

Nicola Beauman has no time for modern fiction. LEE RANDALL meets the publisher with a passion for older, plot-fuelled books

WHAT BOOK LOVER HASN'T dreamed of opening a shop selling books as beautiful to hold as they are to read? Nicola Beauman is the founder, proprietor and publisher of Persephone Books, a hand-picked list of titles – 78 to date, with three more set for Christmas release – mostly by female authors and mainly written in the middle of the last century. Until recently, the imprint primarily sold via mail order from shops in Bloomsbury and latterly Notting Hill. But their loyal core following is destined to grow, now that select titles (dubbed Persephone Classics)are being distributed via "ordinary" bookshops.

A film version of one of the first trio of classics, Winifred Watson's Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, has already grossed more than $12 million in America. While it is deliciously entertaining (I devoured it greedily, in a night), Beauman points out that she has 77 other books to nurture – and she's a passionate advocate for each and every one.

She started the imprint in 1999, frustrated by books that failed to grab her in the first paragraph and those bereft of plot. "I very rarely read a modern book where, when I get to the end, anything is different from the beginning. Give me an example of a modern book with a plot," she demands, and because she's that little bit stern and decidedly adamant in her preferences, I stutter instead of rising to the occasion.

"I don't count activity as plot," she continues. "Plot is something which keeps you engaged and changes you. What is the point of reading a novel? It's to be taken out of yourself, to be engaged, to want to spend an evening lying on the sofa reading instead of all the other things you can do. If you're not gripped, there's no point. Something like Dorothy Whipple. When you get to the end of Someone at a Distance, you are a different person, and also you haven't been able to put it down."

If, rightly or wrongly, "Bridget Jones" has become shorthand for today's woman, what's the comparable piece of fiction from her favourite era? "Which book exemplifies these kinds of books best? For me it would be Elizabeth Taylor's At Mrs Lippincote's, which is a novel of genius. She wrote 12 novels and I think if she'd written six, she might have been seen as one of the greats. She wrote too much. If I could pick one of ours, I think it would be Someone at a Distance or Marghanita Laski's Little Boy Lost, which will be in our next set of classics." There's Whipple again: Beauman hands me the book, asking that I read the first paragraph. It's gripping.

"It's not fine writing but it's like Mrs Gaskell in that it tells you everything you want to know. And then this picture is built up of a very happily married couple … and then a French girl seduces him.

Then, halfway through, there's a scene where he's being seduced and the wife, who never paints her nails, never wears high heels, comes in through the French doors with their young daughter and sees them on the sofa. I think it's one of the great scenes in literature – you cannot read it without crying, because it's the destruction of a life in that scene. To me it's her most brilliant book.

"It had no reviews at all in 1953 when it came out, and when Whipple died she was depressed and sad because she thought she was completely forgotten. It's all in the marketing, whether the author is sexy or married to the right person. Dorothy Whipple was wise but she's got a ridiculous name which makes people laugh. It's all to do with hype and branding."

For the Whipples of the literary world, Beauman and Persephone offer some consolation. They may be gone, but as long as she's around to champion them, they won't be forgotten.

&#149 For more information, visit www.persephonebooks.co.uk