My work space: Nicola Beauman's curiosity shop in Lamb's Conduit Street, London

My work space: Nicola Beauman's curiosity shop in Lamb's Conduit Street, London

Nicola Beauman's Persephone office has quite a history. "I love being in this building," she says. "I love the fact that people have been sitting here since the early 1700s. I feel really lucky.

"The basement was originally the kitchen and would have been two rooms. At some point in the early Victorian era this became a shop and they did a knock-through and stored everything down there. This was a grocer's shop. Virginia and Leonard Woolf might have come here to buy groceries if they didn't send a maid out. The pillar box outside is mentioned in one of her novels."

She adds: "I found this building through the Guardian. It was in Space. They used to do a street every week and one week, four years ago, they did this street as a secret street. This place was to let. We started in a very very cheap basement for £10,000 a year. Then we doubled to £20,000 a year which is what we pay now. Sceptics said 'how can you afford that?', but we do actually pay the rent from passing trade."

The Persephone window always has props from the period of the most recently reprinted book. They Were Sisters, by domestic novelist Dorothy Whipple, was written in 1943 and currently, a vintage dress belonging to Nicola, a hat and a writing box are in the window.

"People often ask if the props are for sale. We've got three old typewriters and a first world war nurse's uniform. We change the window display every three months."

Nicola has made herself.....continued below

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at home in her shop and her office. Best and Lloyd desk lamps on furniture from the Criterion auction house on the Essex Road in north London and fresh flowers make the space feel domestic. She loves Charleston bentwood chairs and you could say that her work space reflects fiction in that one of the most recent reprints is Flush by Virginia Woolf. Published in 1933, it's a biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's spaniel. Nicola isn't sure whether Flush was a cocker spaniel or whether he was a Cavalier King Charles like Sasha, her own dog, who is also the resident shop and office dog.

Each book has a different endpaper which is a textile design from the same period as the novel. Nicola is a regular visitor to the V&A and the Museum of Domestic Architecture where she searches for designs.

"And every book has a different decorative rule. Something like Winifred Watson's Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is facsimile but most of the books are reset. In 50 years a Phd student will be writing about why each particular decorative rule was chosen for each book."

The books were mainly written between 1900-1950 and Nicola organises Persephone events that are open to anyone who is keen to revisit or learn more about this era and the authors.

Madeira and cheese straws are provided to get people in the mood. Future events include lunch at Mollie Panter-Downes's house in Haslemere and a weekend of talks and films at Newnham College, Cambridge. In the Lamb's Conduit Street shop there will be an evening, Possibly Persephone? When readers are invited to bring a book which they would like to recommend as a Persephone title.

"Although when you're in business you have to follow your passion," says Nicola. "Which is why I only ever publish books that I love myself."

· Persephone Books: persephonebooks.co.uk ; 59 Lamb's Conduit Street, London WC1, tel 020-7242 9292.

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