{"id":47433,"date":"2026-10-08T08:00:42","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T07:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thebusinessdesk.com\/south-west\/?p=47433"},"modified":"2026-10-08T08:00:42","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T07:00:42","slug":"bath-publisher-to-open-london-bookshop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebusinessdesk.com\/south-west\/news\/47433-bath-publisher-to-open-london-bookshop","title":{"rendered":"Bath publisher to open London bookshop"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Persephone Books, the cult imprint behind the grey-jacketed reprints of forgotten women writers, is returning to the capital five years after leaving it.<\/p>\n<p>The publisher, which swapped London for Bath in 2021, is to open a bookshop in Fitzrovia.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/PersephoneBooks\/?locale=en_GB\">It announced the move on social media<\/a>, revealing the new shop would be in a Georgian townhouse that was once home to Pollock\u2019s Toy Museum.<\/p>\n<p>Persephone was founded in 1999 by Nicola Beauman and is now led by managing director Francesca Beauman. It reprints largely mid-20th-century fiction and non-fiction, mostly by women, and sells mainly through its website. The Observer once called it \u201cthe nearest thing British publishing has to a cult\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>The company spent 20 years on Lamb\u2019s Conduit Street in Bloomsbury before relocating in May 2021 to Edgar Buildings in Bath, a Grade II-listed building dating from 1761.<\/p>\n<p>In its social media posts, the company said: \u201cWe had not actually been planning this. But by chance we heard about a 1767 four-storey house behind Tottenham Court Road that had become available.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It\u2019s in Fitzrovia, which is a fascinating area of London, as fascinating in its way as Bloomsbury, its neighbour. Many well-known artists and painters lived there over the centuries; the Omega Workshop, the source of several of our endpapers and much aesthetic inspiration, was nearby on Fitzroy Square, which was Virginia Woolf\u2019s home for a few years too; in 1925 Marie Stopes opened the first ever birth control clinic round the corner; and the suffrage play \u2018A Pageant of Great Women&#8217; by Cicely Hamilton, author of PB no. 1 WILLIAM &#8211; AN ENGLISHMAN, premiered at the Scala Theatre next door in 1909.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;All in all, we felt that Persephone Books would fit in rather well.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>It is aiming to open at the beginning of November, and will initially be open for three or four days a week at first.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Nothing will change in Bath,&#8221; it added. &#8220;The publishing and mail order will still happen there and the bookshop will remain the same.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Book specialist plans sequel after opportunity 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