For fifty years Mollie Panter-Downes' name was associated with "The New Yorker", for which she wrote a regular "Letter from London", book reviews and over thirty short stories; of the twenty one in "Good Evening, Mrs Craven", written between 1939 and 1944, only two had ever been reprinted - these very English stories have, until now, been unavailable to English readers. Exploring most aspects of English domestic life during the war, they are about separation, sewing parties, fear, evacuees sent to the country, obsession with food, the social revolutions of wartime. In the "Daily Mail" Angela Huth called "Good Evening, Mrs Craven" 'my especial find' and Ruth Gorb in the "Ham & High" contrasted the humor of some of the stories with the desolation of others: 'The mistress, unlike the wife, has to worry and mourn in secret for her man; a middle-aged spinster finds herself alone again when the camaraderie of the air-raids is over...'

My Husband Simon tells the story of the married life of Nevis Falconer, a young woman novelist, and Simon Quinn. Temperamentally unsuited, they are only kept together by a mutual physical attraction, in spite of innumerable quarrels. They live this superficial existence for three years, until one day Nevis meets Marcus Chard, her American publisher, who has just arrived in London. Soon friendship develops into love. Inevitably the problem faces her. Wife or mistress? Nevis finds herself caught in a whirl of circumstances over which she has no control. Published in 1931 in the immediate aftermath of D H Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover controversy, Mollie Panter-Downes's book explores the different echelons of the increasingly self-conscious middle class and the ways in which the tensions and nuances of vocabulary, dress, occupation, politics, taste and, ultimately, the literary world contribute to the incompatibility of a marriage.

"Boldly published, beautifully designed, dazzlingly written. . . . Profound as Katherine Mansfield, restrained as Jane Austen, sharp as Dorothy Parker."--Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, "The Independent"

For fifty years, Mollie Panter-Downes' name was associated with "The New Yorker." She wrote a regular column ("Letter from London"), book reviews, and over thirty short stories about English domestic life during World War Two. Twenty-one of these stories are included in "Good Evening Mrs Craven"--the first collected volume of her work.

Mollie Panter-Downes writes about those coping on the periphery of the war who attend sewing parties, host evacuees sent to the country, and obsess over food and rationing. She captures the quiet moments of fear and courage. Here we find "the mistress, unlike the wife, who has to worry and mourn in secret for her man" and a "middle-aged spinster finds herself alone again when the camaraderie of the air-raids is over."

""Don't think I'm being stupid and morbid," she said, "but supposing anything happens. . . . You might be wounded or ill and I wouldn't know." She tried to laugh. "The War Office doesn't have a service for sending telegrams to mistresses, does it?""

Mollie Panter-Downes (1906-1997) published her first novel, "The Shoreless Sea," when she was seventeen, which became a bestseller. She wrote three more popular novels as well as articles, short stories, and the very popular column "Letters from London" for "The New Yorker."

This companion volume to Persephone Book No. 8, "Good Evening, Mrs Craven", contains ten stories describing aspects of British life in the years after the war. "Minnie's Room" itself is about a family who are unable to believe that their maid wants to leave them to live in a room of her own. An elderly couple emigrates because of 'the dragon out to gobble their modest, honourable incomes.' The sisters in "Beside the Still Waters" grumble because 'Everything is so terribly difficult nowadays.'Mollie Panter - Downes, said the Spectator, 'is discomfortingly good at anatomising the crudities and subtleties of snobbery - but she is never unkind.'