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"  You can&amp;#039;t tell a book by its cover, the saying goes. The\u00A0saying, I believe, dates from the time when all books, by and large, had much the same covers \u2013\u00A0you had to look inside to know what you were getting.\u00A0It always amuses me that the saying applies now that almost every book published has a different cover: it&amp;#039;s still best to dive right into the pages if you want to know what you&amp;#039;re in for. You&amp;#039;ll notice, however, that I say almost every book. A rather lovely exception are the publications of Persephone Books, which set out some years ago to reprint &amp;quot;neglected fiction and non-fiction by mid-twentieth century (mostly) women writers&amp;quot;, as they say on their website. They&amp;#039;ve put out 117 books now, and every single one of them has an elegant grey cover. No pictures. No girls on trains. Not even any jagged typefaces. On the matte grey paper sits a neat white square, title and author in\u00A0fine serif letters. Look inside and you&amp;#039;ll always find beautiful endpapers, however: Persephone Books are worth acquiring whether you read or not \u2013\u00A0if you care about elegance, well, these are the books to pull out of your Birkin bag. (If you&amp;#039;re wondering why grey, rather than any other colour: &amp;quot;We really like grey,&amp;quot; is the straightforward explanation.) But quiet elegance can sometimes fly in under the radar; so I&amp;#039;m always glad to be reminded how much I love Persephone&amp;#039;s productions. The latest to reach my shelves is The Godwits Fly, by Robin Hyde; perhaps, secretly, one of the other things I love about Persephone is that I feel I can I always forgive myself if I&amp;#039;ve never heard of the authors of their books. But Hyde \u2013\u00A0born Iris Wilkinson in 1906 \u2013\u00A0is another treasure unearthed by the keen eye of Nicola Beauman and her team. Perhaps one day Hyde will be as acclaimed as her fellow New Zealander, Katherine Mansfield; I wouldn&amp;#039;t be surprised. This is a rich, engaging novel of a girl growing up in the suburbs of Wellington in the years after the First World War; Ann Thwaite&amp;#039;s introduction tells us that it is very much an autobiographical tale, of a girl who, like many New Zealanders of the time, felt English,\u00A0but was not. &amp;quot;It took time to realise that England was far away. And you were brought up on bluebells and primroses and daffodils and robins in the snow. One day, with a little shock of anger, you realised there were no robins and no snow, and you felt cheated.&amp;quot; You won&amp;#039;t feel cheated by this novel, that&amp;#039;s for sure \u2013\u00A0nor by any of the delights hidden between those luxuriant grey spines. Go on: share my secret, and then whisper the news along.\u00A0 *** MORE BOOKS How to choose your next book  The best independent book shops Why we need to protect our libraries  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.harpersbazaar.co.uk/culture/staying-in/news/a37101/bazaar-on-books-introducing-persephone-books/>