Monday 24 October 2011

Persephone Books



In their latest biannual newsletter Persephone Books have chosen to illuminate their pages with two images drawn from Brighton & Hove's art collection. On the cover is the locally well-known "Alice in Wonderland", c.1879, by George Leslie Dunlop, and depicting his daughter Alice. GLD was part of the St. John's Wood (London) clique of painters who favoured light-hearted, domestic genre paintings. He became an RA in 1876. The popularity of GLD's work has survived to this day, his "Daughters of Eve" fetching £170,000 in 2000.







On the inside pages is "The Coat of Many Colours" c.1926, by local artist Louis Ginnett. Louis was a member of the famous circus family, he attended Brighton, Hove & Sussex Grammar School, became a teacher at Brighton College of Art and in 1913 was commissioned to produce an extraordinary series of murals for the Grammar School hall. These he worked on, on and off, until their completion in 1939, and they are still to be seen to this day.

School Hall, BHASVIC
Persephone Books, of Lambs Conduit Street, London, prints mainly neglected fiction and non-fiction by women, for women and about women. With their distinctive plain grey jackets and cream 'labels' for the title wording, all their books look the same from the outside. Inside, each is different, with the endpapers chosen especially to match the date and mood of the book.

3 comments:

  1. Inconsequential footnote:- The lady in GLD's painting, possibly modelled by his wife, seems to be a dead ringer for British actress, Susan Wooldridge.

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  2. Ever more inconsequential: I can definitely see the likeness to Susan Wooldridge in Dunlop's painting, but my initial reaction was that the figure looks just like one of the lovely cashiers in Lewes Road Sainsburys... I wasn't familiar with Louis Ginnett's "The Coat of Many Colours" - it looks stunning. Nice post.

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  3. :) I will have to get back to you on that. I do go to that Sainsburys occasionally.

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