The Persephone Book of Short Stories by Susan Glaspell

The Persephone Book of Short Stories Reviews

• 
  Roman Clodia

  An excellent anthology of women's short stories which also serves as a taster of Persephone authors. The tales are organised in chronological order through the twentieth century with mini biographies at the back, and authors include 'big' names like Shirley Jackson, Dorothy Parker and Edith Wharton to undeservedly less well-known writers like Dorothy Whipple and Mollie Panter-Downes. I might have chosen slightly different selections: Jackson's 'The Lottery' is excessively well-known; and Wharton's 'Roman Fever' is both well anthologised and uncharacteristically unsubtle in its vengeful ending. But there are some little gems here: E.M. Delafield's 'Holiday Group', Katherine Mansfield's 'Black Cap', Dorothy Whipple's brilliant, aching 'A Lovely Time'.
  
  What the stories share is a concern with the small movements in women's lives: some are about the burdens of domesticity; others about moments of crisis between mothers and children, husbands and wives. Generally, the writing tends to the plain and unobtrusive rather than stylistically flamboyant or innovative, though that might be a choice by the editors to keep this accessible.
• 
  Lottie Clark

  I admire Persephone Press and, right now, I am having a short story moment so this book, borrowed from the library, seemed a natural choice. As you would expect, it is a fairly mixed bag. All the stories are well written and highly readable but some shine out more brightly than others.
  A few stories ring as true now as they did when first committed to paper. Penelope Mortmer's account of a family's attempts to spoil there mother on her birthday, 'What a Lovely Surprise', have laugh out loud moments as mum is not allowed any say in her own special day but treated to presents she doesn't want, interminable children's plays and enforced idleness. Needless to say, each year she dreads the day and is thoroughly relieved when it's over for another year, as is her husband and probably the children, too.
  Other stories make you grateful that times have changed, such as the quietly devastating story 'Wednesday' by Dorothy Whipple portraying the alienation and increasing distance between a divorced wife and her children. For a well-crafted story with a twist, Edith Wharton's 'Roman Fever' should fit the bill.
  Anyway, there are 30 well-chosen stories so bound to be something by which the casual reader can be soothed, diverted or stimulated!
• 
  Kirsty

  To celebrate Persephone Books’ one hundredth publication, the publishing house issued a new volume of short stories, all of which have been written by female authors between 1909 and 1986.
  
  Of the included stories, ten are taken from volumes already published by Persephone, ten have been previously featured in their Biannually Magazine, and ten have been ‘selected especially for this collection’. Each tale is ‘presented in the order they are known, or assumed, to have been written’, and the year has been printed after the title and author of every story, which is a rather useful touch. In fact, the entire volume has been very well laid out, with an accessible author biographies section and a well-spaced contents page.
  
  The collection is a wonderfully varied one and features authors from all walks of life. There are many British and American authors, as well as others from further afield – New Zealand-born Katherine Mansfield, Pauline Smith, who spent her childhood in South Africa, Irene Nemirovsky who grew up in Kiev and spent many years in Paris, and Frances Towers, who was born in Calcutta. The Persephone Book of Short Stories begins with Susan Glaspell’s 1909 story ‘From A to Z’ and finishes with Georgina Hammick’s 1986 offering, entitled ‘A Few Problems in the Day Case Unit’.
  
  The stories woven into the collection are as varied as the authors who wrote them. They encompass every aspect of life in their perfectly crafted portraits. There are first jobs, first loves, marriages, affairs, illnesses and death, and these are merely the more obvious themes which float upon the surface.
  
  The protagonist in the beautifully written vignette ‘From A to Z’ by Susan Glaspell is a young girl named Edna Willard, who spent her senior university year ‘hugging to her mind that idea of getting a position in a publishing house’, and is then discontent when this dream is realised. In Pauline Smith’s tale ‘The Pain’, we meet a South African couple who have been married for fifty years, brave in the face of the wife Deltje’s illness. Smith describes the way in which Deltje has ‘a quiet, never-failing cheerfulness of spirit in spite of her pain’, and the story is beautifully and sensitively realised. In E.M. Delafield’s ‘Holiday Group’, we meet a kindly and rather patient reverend, who struggles to take his young and rather demanding family – his wife Julia ‘had gone on being blissfully irresponsible until she was quite grown up’ and has a particularly selfish streak – to the seaside.
  
  Some of the authors in The Persephone Book of Short Stories are more well-known than others, but all share common ground in the way in which they all deserve to be read on a wider scale than they currently are. The balance of longer and shorter stories works incredibly well, as do the differing narrative styles, which range from the third person omniscient perspective to interesting streams of consciousness. Hopefully, this lovely volume of short stories will inspire readers to seek out other novels and short story collections by the authors which they enjoy in this collection. Each story in The Persephone Book of Short Stories is like a small but perfectly formed work of art, and the book is sure to delight a wealth of readers.
• 
  Romily

  This excellent collection of short stories brought out to celebrate Persephone Books 100th book presents a striking picture of women's domestic lives in the twentieth century. Spanning the years 1909 to 1986, these well-chosen stories explore relationships, disappointments and achievements which are remarkably similar despite the very different social contexts. As well as well-known writers such as Katherine Mansfield and Penelope Fitzgerald I was pleased to discover many new British and American authors who publishers like Persephone have republished and rescued from neglect. The final story by Georgina Hammick - A Few Problems in the Day-Case Unit - is worth the purchase price on its own.
• 
  Rosemary

  Wonderful stories by and about women. There are 30 stories here with original publication dates of 1909 to 1986, arranged in chronological order so you have snapshots of society spanning over 80 years. Some of the authors are well known (Dorothy Parker, Edith Wharton, Katherine Mansfield, Penelope Mortimer, Irene Nemirovsky), others not so much.
  
  I thought it would take me a long time to read them all – I was thinking one or two a day - but I just zipped through them! It was just as hard to stop after one story as it is to stop after one chapter of a novel :)
  
• 
  Karen Mace

  From 1909 to 1986, this collection of 30 short stories featuring a variety of subjects from the more day to day sides of life, was a captivating read which was so easy to pick up and dip in and out of.
  
  I loved the feel of the stories with their simplicity and with so many different women writers it was easy for it to feel fresh with each new perspective on subjects as diverse as motherhood, marriage, driving tests, being the other woman and schools.
• 
  Alexa

  A really great chunky book of short stories all written by women. Ordered chronologically it was interesting to see how their time affected their themes and style. My favourites were The Photograph by Phyllis Bentley, The Test by Angela Gibbs and A Few Problems in the Day Case Unit by Georgian Hammick. What a great birthday present, thank you Alice!
• 
  Sandra

  It is the first time I have ever read a collection of short stories like I was reading a novel. Just got stuck in and found it hard to put down. Lovely range of stories with wonderful writers like Dorothy Whipple and Edith Wharton to name but two. Some sobering accounts of women's lack of power in the early part of the 20th century - Whipple's Wednesdays for example. Others show a wicked sense of humour and while there are some better than others, overall a compelling collection.
• 
  Noits

  There are some absolute gems in this collection, one or two rough diamonds, and also the odd fossilised turd... such is the nature of short story collections. However, the former far outweighs the latter. An enjoyable read from some wonderful writers, who not being male, never quite made it into the canon.
• 
  Beulah

  A great collection of short stories, spanning from late-19th century to late-20th century. Consider it a potted history to women's fiction writing, which we all need as most of these authors would be lauded as greats if they'd been writing under a male name.
• 
  Bryan

  Pure perfection.
• 
  Story Circle Book Reviews

  The Persephone Book of Short Stories was published to celebrate the 100th title in the Persephone Press canon. An independent publisher, Persephone Press specializes in re-printing the largely forgotten and neglected fiction and non-fiction works of women who wrote through the middle 20th century years. Perceived and marketed as "middlebrow" fiction, each book in the series is carefully chosen to offer a fresh and new perspective on themes of particular interest to women readers. Their books are neither so "high-brow" as to be deemed "literary," nor are they what might be termed "commercial" writing, a sometimes pejorative label applied accusingly to books deemed to belong to the "chick lit" or similar category.
  
  The Persephone Book of Short Stories covers a wider range of writing stretching from the year 1909 up as far as 1986. This handsome volume comprises thirty short stories, including the works of well-known authors such as Katherine Mansfield, Irene Nemirovsky, Dorothy Parker, Edith Wharton, and Penelope Fitzgerald. A works of a host of other lesser known women writers are also to be found within its pages, beautifully bound in Persephone's distinctive dove grey jackets, the "fabric" end papers taken from roller-printed and screen printed cottons representative of the decades marking the earliest and latest stories in the volume.
  
  These stories all share something in common—they focus on the quiet, quotidian lives and events which mark a woman's life. Essentially each of these writers describes a very ordinary life, steeped in domesticity and so-called normal daily living, the details of which are mostly forgotten. But not by these authors. Perhaps their greatest achievement is just this: to recall to mind and imagination features of times past, whose circumstances still resonate in the lives of contemporary women, albeit in the tones of the times when they were first written.
  
  In fact, what struck this reader was the surprising relevance of many of these tales to modern life. From wearied and harassed mothers to fed-up wives and abandoned lovers, this volume covers the gamut of female relationships. Indeed, the cohesive threads which binds and gathers these stories together are the very relationships which, even now in the 21st century, still tend to demarcate much of the lived experiences particular to women. As a woman, I could identify with the humiliating and demeaning ordeal the author Georgina Hammick described in her story "A Few Problems in the Day Case Unit" (1986), when her ankles were strapped up, and her legs stretched outwards, like a crucified figure hanging upside down, her most private parts open to the scrutiny of a bevy of male medical students.
  
  Following the publisher, Nicola Beaumam's, advice to "compare and contrast," I next turned to Susan Glaspell's "From A to Z" (1909), a penetrating glimpse into the nature of altruistic love, a chastened and chastening emotion which evokes a kind of tender pain leading in time to a "blind, passionate desire" to watch over the beloved's well-being. Previous interests and minor dalliances can be as nothing when held up against a canvas such as this love greater than all loves. Our hearts ache for the heroine as she watches "a panting human soul sobbingly fluttering down into something from which it had spent all its force in trying to rise....a mist which she could neither account for nor banish was dimming the clear hazel of her eyes." Unanswered questions are scattered through this tale, musings mostly about what it means to love, to not love, to live a life chosen for oneself, or subjected to the will of another.
  
  But not all the stories describe scenes from a daily life. Some, even after so many years, still send shock waves through the reader. Take, for instance, Norah Hoult's "Nine Years is a Long Time" (1938), a tale of prostitution with a twist. Or, even more shocking, try Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" (1948) for size, and see whether you don't need to sit a while to recover before stumbling through the rest of your day. Short stories can serve as thunderbolts from the blue, blasting pre-conceived ideas and most especially, nostalgic reminiscences viewed through rose-tinted lens, into smithereens at the reader's feet. They seem so small, innocuous, innocent almost, when first you pick them up, unaware that this might be the grenade which alters forever how you look back upon times past. Beauman is to be applauded for including these subversive stories in her collection as a reminder that in so many ways, we 21st century readers are not so different after all, from our former female compatriots.
  
  As a publisher of books written "by women, for women and about women" (from their website) Persephone Books shares much in common with Story Circle Network. Indeed many of the books in their canon are memoirs and non-fiction titles. As portals into the lives of women living in England from early to late 20th century, these books are an invaluable resource for those of us interested in finding out more about how our foremothers lived, what our fore-sisters thought, and the dreams and desires our fore-grandmothers yearned to behold, not just for themselves alone, but for their daughters and granddaughters too. I cannot imagine a more pleasant way of whiling away an afternoon than sitting in a sofa curled up with a collection of women writers such as are found within the pages of The Persephone Book of Short Stories.
  
  by Edith O'Nuallain
  for Story Circle Book Reviews
  reviewing books by, for, and about women
• 
  cardulelia carduelis

  What an utterly devastating collection of stories.
  
  I had the rare pleasure of being London recently and so got to walk around Persephone first hand. This was one of three books I bought and it's the first to be read: short stories to take a tour through Persephone's best known and discovered authors.
  
  And I want to be upfront about this, I already knew that this sort of story was not for me. I have very little interest in the domestic life or Steinbeck-esque character studies of the everyday. I expected to be bored, a little resentful. I did not expect to be so engrossed, these 463 pages just flew by.
  
  But I was engrossed, for the most part, by disbelief and indignation and anger. If these stories are an accurate portrayal of life in the 30-40's, women had it pretty rough and it's their treatment that makes this such a gripping read. There is curiosity and fascination that comes from reading about such casual cruelty - and it's a familiar cruelty too which is what makes it so devastating: who hasn't passed a cruel judgment on their mother or a female friend or taken their partner's sacrifices for granted?
  
  The running theme through the collection then, is women and servitude. Both as parent and wife, but also as a domesticated servant; many of the stories in this book show us the life and times of the last hired help in the UK.
  It's an interesting contrast, both parties sacrificing the better part of their waking lives in service of another - the difference being of course that for the hired help they can walk away at any time.
  
  Not all the stories were note-worthy and some had me flipping pages but the standout stories for me were:
  
  The Pain by Pauline Smith: reminiscent of The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro and follows an elderly couple leaving their earthern huts and small community to deal with the wife's pain...
  
  Roman Fever has this fantastic closing line. I actually whooped. Also, listen to this whilst you read it:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcII6z4EQoU
  
  The photograph puts a mirror up to the aging, albeit talented woman and tells her: 'You cannot be good anymore, you are no longer worth looking at'.
  
  The Test is a powerful look at how easily casual racism can totally f**k with someone's entire existence. It's one of the shortest stories in the book and one of the most powerful.
  
  It all begins again was heartbreakingly real.
  
  The Lottery has to be here. Shirley Jackson is the only author in this collection whose work I'd already seen and whilst this doesn't have quite the impact that We Have Always Lived In the Castle did, it's a standout in the collection and a short break from the misery afflicted only on the women(!).
  
  The Woman Novelist & What a Lovely Surprise show the true potential for your life not being your own in mundane domesticity and the horror that ensues.
  
  And the last story, just in case you thought things got better in the 80's...
  
  Horrifying, harrowing, perfect for a reading group. Maybe not the best Mother's day gift :0
  
  
• 
  Cathy

  I have read this book gradually over the past several weeks, enjoying each story. Some I have read previously, (as they are also included in story collections by the authors, published by Persephone).
  
  There are some favourites here. I especially liked Sylvia Warner Townsend's story and have now got a collection 'winter in the air' (notably not published by Persephone but by Faber) to add to my current reading. I am drawn to stories that are set in the between wars years but was interested by the later ones too. The final story is quite a radical one, comparatively, but very well written.
  
  This collection has been a pleasure to read. I hope it is the first and not the only anthology collection Persephone will publish. A Persephone Book of Short Stories II would be very welcome. As someone who enjoys the short story form, perhaps more so than the novel, I am grateful to Persephone for putting this collection together and helping me discover writers that will keep me entertained and give me much thoughtful pleasure. For after all, that is why I like Persephone books.
• 
  Caroline Taggart

  It’s difficult to give five stars to an anthology of stories by 30 different authors, because there are inevitably going to be some you like more than others. That said, most of these are terrific. They date from between 1909 and 1986 but have many timeless themes. Edith Wharton’s ‘Roman Fever’ conveys the unspoken envy between two middle-aged women who had very different husbands and now have very different daughters. Dorothy Parker’s ‘Here We Are’, about a newly married (and as yet unconsummated) couple who fall out over every little thing, made me laugh out loud but was still very poignant: as with so much of Dorothy Parker, you knew it was going to end in tears. ‘A View of Exmoor’ by Sylvia Townsend Warner was another funny one, about a caged bird that has escaped from a family car. And Dorothy Whipple’s ‘Wednesday’, about a divorced woman allowed only a weekly visit with her children, was positively tragic.
  
  A great book to dip in and out of, and to laugh and cry with. Full marks to the wonderful Persephone Books for putting this collection together and sharing it with us.
• 
  Ally

  As a celebration to commemorate their 100th published book, THE PERSEPHONE BOOK OF SHORT STORIES is a great "sampler" of the works that Persephone Books publishes throughout their range. In total, there are 30 individual stories from 28 authors - Dorothy Whipple and Mollie Panter-Downes each have two stories included in this collection. Many of these short stories are available in Persephone Books-published collected works by the individual authors, and this gives the first-time Persephone reader an idea of particular authors from which she/he might be inclined to read more.
• 
  Gowri N.

  A stunning collection of stories by women authors between 1900 and 1990. There are pieces by known names like Katherine Mansfield, Dorothy Whipple, Edith Wharton, Dorothy Parker and Mollie Panter-Downes, but also many by authors I hadn't heard of: E. M. Delafield, Irene Nemirovsky, Phyllis Bentley, Betty Miller, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, and many more.
  
  I'm looking forward to a pleasurable few months exploring the works of these newly discovered authors, most of whom (thankfully!) seem to have been prolific writers.
• 
  Rachel

  Some of these I really really enjoyed, and thought the writing was great in most. Would recommend just to increase exposure to great female writers of that era, and of the ones I liked I've definitely been encouraged to investigate those authors further.
• 
  Anne Stevens

  I loved this book. So many wonderful and varied stories. And it proves that family holidays and the trials of being a mother were the same in the 1920s and 1930s as they are today!
• 
  Maya

  slowly ticked each story off & it was very calm and contained.
• 
  Yasmien

  4,5
• 
  Jemima

  3.5
• 
  Debbie

  A good solid set of short stories set mostly in the mid twentieth century.
• 
  Paakhi

  This book was a birthday gift from two of my friends and I just finished reading it over a second time (it's one of those books you can easily keep re-reading). I thoroughly enjoyed every single short story in this anthology, especially that way in which each story reflected the condition of women through various periods of the twentieth century.
  
  As someone who doesn't normally read short stories, this was a great way to punctuate some of my heavier reads.