Nicola Beauman (née Mann, born 20 June 1944) is a British biographer and journalist, and the founder of

Persephone Books ''Persephone Books'' is an independent publisher based in Bath, England. Founded in 1999 by Nicola Beauman, Persephone Books reprints works largely by women writers of the late 19th and 20th century, though a few books by men are included. Th ...

, an independent book publisher based in

Bath Bath may refer to: * Bathing, immersion in a fluid ** Bathtub, a large open container for water, in which a person may wash their body ** Public bathing, a public place where people bathe * Thermae, ancient Roman public bathing facilities Plac ...

Early life

Beauman was born in London. She attended

St Paul's Girls' School St Paul's Girls' School is an independent day school for girls, aged 11 to 18, located in Brook Green, Hammersmith, in West London, England. History St Paul's Girls' School was founded by the Worshipful Company of Mercers in 1904, using part o ...

and

Newnham College, Cambridge Newnham College is a women's Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1871 by a group organising Lectures for Ladies, members of which included philosopher Henry Sid ...

Career

Beauman brought attention to middle-class women writers with her 1983 survey ''A Very Great Profession: The Woman's Novel, 1914–39''. Her research showed how literary representations of female domesticity could challenge those social assumptions. Much of Beauman's later writing has been

literary biography When studying literature, biography and its relationship to literature is often a subject of literary criticism, and is treated in several different forms. Two scholarly approaches use biography or biographical approaches to the past as a tool for i ...

Persephone Books

Beauman's Persephone Books is a publishing house that mainly publishes female authors. It was founded in 1998 as a mail-order publisher, and sales are mostly made online. In May 2021 the company's retail shop moved from

Bloomsbury Bloomsbury is a district in the West End of London. It is considered a fashionable residential area, and is the location of numerous cultural, intellectual, and educational institutions. Bloomsbury is home of the British Museum, the largest mus ...

in London to Bath. According to ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'', Beauman founded Persephone Books to publish 'forgotten' novels by women, many of which she had written about in, ''A Very Great Profession: The Woman's Novel 1914-39'', originally published by

Virago A virago is a woman who demonstrates abundant masculine virtues. The word comes from the Latin word ''virāgō'' ( genitive virāginis) meaning vigorous' from ''vir'' meaning "man" or "man-like" (cf. virile and virtue) to which the suffix ''-ā ...

in 1983 and reissued in 2008 by Persephone Books. The books all come in a uniform grey cover, which Beauman sees as 'a guarantee of a good read', and contain

endpapers The endpapers or end-papers of a book (also known as the endsheets) are the pages that consist of a double-size sheet folded, with one half pasted against an inside cover (the pastedown), and the other serving as the first free page (the free end ...

that use patterns or prints from the year the book was first published. In an interview with journalist Leonie Cooper, Beauman said that when she first started the press things were hard: "We had a lot of books piling up in the warehouse, but then we got a bestseller, which was phenomenally lucky." That bestseller was ''

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day ''Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day'' is a 2008 romantic comedy film directed by Bharat Nalluri, starring Frances McDormand and Amy Adams. The screenplay by David Magee and Simon Beaufoy is based on the 1938 novel of the same name by Winifred Wat ...

'' by

Winifred Watson Winifred Eileen Watson (20 October 1906 – 5 August 2002) was an English writer. She is best known for her 1938 novel, ''Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day'', which was adapted into a 2008 film of the same name. Biography Winifred Watson was born ...

, which Persephone Books published in 2000. Since then Persephone Books has continued to publish several books a year, and currently has 139 titles in print, including novels by

Dorothy Whipple Dorothy Whipple (née Stirrup) (26 February 1893 – 14 September 1966) was an English writer of popular fiction and children's books. Her work gained popularity between the world wars and again in the 2000s. Personal life Dorothy Stirrup was ...

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born i ...

R. C. Sherriff Robert Cedric Sherriff, FSA, FRSL (6 June 1896 – 13 November 1975) was an English writer best known for his play '' Journey's End'', which was based on his experiences as an army officer in the First World War. He wrote several plays, many nov ...

Katherine Mansfield Kathleen Mansfield Murry (née Beauchamp; 14 October 1888 – 9 January 1923) was a New Zealand writer, essayist and journalist, widely considered one of the most influential and important authors of the modernist movement. Her works are celebra ...

, and

E. M. Delafield Edmée Elizabeth Monica Dashwood, née de la Pasture (9 June 1890 – 2 December 1943), commonly known as E. M. Delafield, was a prolific English literature, English author. She is best known for her largely autobiographical ''Diary of a Pr ...

Publications

* ''A Very Great Profession: The Woman's Novel, 1914–39'', Virago (London), 1983. * ''Cynthia Asquith'' (biography), Hamilton (London), 1987. * ''Morgan: A Biography of the Novelist E. M. Forster'', Hodder and Stoughton (London), 1993, Knopf (New York), 1994. * ''The Other Elizabeth Taylor'', Persephone (London, England), 1993.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Beauman, Nicola 1944 births British women writers Living people British biographers Women biographers