Francesca Beauman is the editorial director and daughter of the founder

SOME of literature’s forgotten women are about to find a new home in Fitzrovia, where an iconic bookshop dedicated to overlooked writers is opening its doors.

Persephone Books, the independent publisher known for bringing neglected women writers back into print, has opened a new bookshop in Scala Street. The Georgian townhouse, dating back to 1767, was the former home of Pollock’s Toy Museum, which closed in 2023.

Francesca Beauman, editorial director at Persephone Books and daughter of its founder Nicola Beauman, said: “The work we are doing is establishing a new literary canon, smashing up the existing literary canon and making a new one based on domestic narratives.

“I think there is a real demand for a different kind of reading, a different kind of book, one that has not just been sent to you by the algorithm.

“It’s the opposite in many ways of AI. It’s the experience in real life of coming into a bookshop, of browsing the books, feeling the books, grey-bound Persephone books.

“Also to find a community there – a community of people who love these neglected women writers. That’s really meaningful to people – I think everyone is bored of their phones and looking for something else.

“In a world of algorithms, what else do we have but taste?”

Ms Beauman said her mother, Nicola, who is from Hampstead, created a life’s work in researching and writing about neglected women writers. She would spend hours scouring second-hand bookshops and the British Library for forgotten works that were no longer in print and could not be found in your average Waterstones.

The old Pollocks Toy Museum

Determined to bring these novels back, she founded Persephone in 1999. The business was originally run from an office in Great Sutton Street, Clerkenwell, before spending 25 years in Lamb’s Conduit Street.

In 2021, the publisher moved its operations to Bath. Ms Beauman took over the running of the publisher in 2024.

“For a long time there has been a very fixed and established literary canon, the same old books and the same old writers, but it turns out there is a whole world out there of books and authors,” she said.

“That’s what we are doing, trying to give a voice to these women writers that we haven’t heard for a long time. It’s finding the ones that deserve to be republished. Do they have value today, which is a very subjective decision.

“A book has to have the passion of the publisher behind it and our hope is that if you love one of the grey books, you’ll love all of the grey books.”

The books themselves are recognisable with grey jackets and colourful patterned end papers.

Among the publisher’s bestselling rediscovered writers are Sally Carson, author of the Crooked Cross, Dorothy Whipple and Monica Dickens.

Persephone Books opened its new shop at 1 Scala Street yesterday (Wednesday).