We chose to publish Mariana because we wanted a novel like Dusty Answer, I Capture the Castle or The Pursuit of Love, about a young woman encountering life and love, which is also funny, readable and perceptive; it is a 'hot-water bottle' novel, one to curl up with on the sofa on a wet Sunday afternoon. 'Mariana is one of my favourite books', Jilly Cooper told us. 'I adored it when I was young and am enchanted that this fantastic love story is now available to a new legion of readers.' Monica Dickens was the great-granddaughter of Charles Dickens. Mariana was her second book and was published in 1940. We meet Mary in the 1930s at school in Kensington and on holiday in Somerset, then follow her attempt at drama school; her year in Paris learning dressmaking and getting engaged to the wrong man; her time as a secretary and companion; and her romance with Sam. But it is also more than this. As Harriet Lane observes in her Preface: 'It is Mariana's artlessness, its enthusiasm, its attention to tiny, telling domestic detail that makes it so appealing to modern readers.' Mariana is part of the Persephone Audiobook Collection produced in partnership with Macmillan Collector's Library. Also available as a Persephone Grey, a Persephone Classic and a Persephone eBook. Available wherever you usually get your audiobooks.
