Persephone Books opens a shop at Scala Street

A new bookshop has opened today on the corner of Scala Street and Whitfield Street in Fitzrovia.

Persephone Books’ managing director Francesca Beauman was on hand to welcome visitors into the little shop which will initially be open four days a week.

“It will be open from 10am to 6pm Wednesday to Friday and 11am to 5pm on Saturdays, with the proviso that this is very much a ‘soft’ opening, a bit like a pop-up, i.e. we won’t have had permission by then to change the shop’s exterior and we might not have everything in stock. So there may be a slight air of chaos. But please visit if you can,” said the official announcement.

As reported last month, Persephone Books is a small, niche business which sells books by 20th century women writers.

The opening marks a return to London as they previously had a shop at Lamb’s Conduit Street in Holborn. The main business continues to be run from a shop in Bath.

The Fitzrovia News understands that Persephone has bought the whole building at 1 Scala Street and has plans to renovate it.

“This amazingly unwrecked eighteenth-century building does need a lot of work but what fun it will be restoring it,” they say.

The building was until 2022 one half of Pollocks Toy Museum.

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