So the dilemma has been whether to publish this as being 'by a lady' (as above) or by Mrs Rundell or by Maria Rundell; because 'she was the original domestic goddess' (Guardian), long before Mrs Beeton,  and because of the synergy with Miss Pettigrew, Miss Ranskill and Miss Buncle, we have opted for the rather stately Mrs Rundell. (Alas, the edition we are using lacks this illustration.)

An early nineteenth century blue and white transferware plate, seen on every British kitchen dresser for the last two hundred years.  This would have been a staple item for users of Mrs Rundell's  A New System of Domestic Cookery (1806) which we publish in October (in the 1816 edition).

The archaeologist Dorothy Garrod (1892-1968) became the first woman professor at Cambridge in 1939. Ten years after her appointment women were finally allowed to take degrees.

This portrait, one of the magnificent paintings by Sir Joshua Reynolds at Port Eliot, is of Jemima, Marchioness Cornwallis in 1770. Her son Charles was added in 1778 when he was four. She died a year later. When her son married he had five daughters, one of whom was called Jemima and married the 3rd Earl of St Germans; which is why her portrait hangs at Port Eliot © Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery/the Earl of St Germans.

We have just come back from the literary festival at Port Eliot (in Cornwall). It is still exactly the same as in this eighteenth century etching except, where there were cows, imagine a forest of tents (and Lydia and Laura's tipi), several marquees, and the Persephone Books gazebo in the walled garden.  And thousands of people enjoying the music and the talks and Port Eliot itself.

A Venetian Window 1926 Vanessa Bell  © The Bridgeman Art Library/Leamington Spa Art Gallery and Museum

Rosa Parks (1913-2005) who refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, 1955. Cf. The Expendable Man.

A coloured engraving c.1775 of The Foundling Hospital, established in 1739 by Thomas Coram for the care of abandoned children.  On either side of the curved walls in the foreground are small buildings with high windows: on the deep ledges of these, women would leave their babies.  Those buildings are still standing but the main one was demolished in the 1920s and the residents moved to the countryside for healthier air.

Philip Wilson Steer (1860-1942) oil on canvas A Girl at her Toilet c. 1892-3 © Tate Britain/ Williamson Museum and Art Gallery, Birkenhead.

Virginia Woolf's passport. On 27 March 1923 Leonard and Virginia Woolf crossed the channel for the first time since 1912 and went to Spain to stay with Gerald Brenan, whom they had met the year before chez Dora Carrington at Tidmarsh. Cf. Volume II of The Diary of Virginia Woolf.

'Sunday Afternoon in Christchurch Hill, Hampstead' by Vincent Yorke 1991. In a private collection.

The British Museum Reading Room in 2006, after renovation. It is now the museum's main exhibition space.

The British Museum Reading Room by Sir Muirhead Bone (1876-1953);  a 1907 pencil and chalk drawing showing the construction of the famous domed room 1854-7. 

We have had a tidy-up since this picture was taken... But it shows the Miss Pettigrew poster rather well. And actually the shop does not look very different even now.

A painting by Otto Dix (1891-1969) of Dr Fritz Glaser and family, 1925. Dr Glaser was a lawyer in Dresden, Germany.

The Eames chair, first made for Billy Wilder in 1956. 

A self-portrait by Denton Welch (1915-48) which he painted in 1942. Here are some extracts from his work.

Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1878-1958) wrote The Home-Maker in 1924. It is one of our ten most popular books - we counted recently because 'when we have time' we plan to put lists on the website of, for example, most popular books/books set in the country/books for mothers/books for the convalescent.  (Although cf. The Perfect Present on our Home Page.)  Some of Dorothy Canfield Fisher's books are on Project Gutenberg; but our next favourite after The Home-Maker is The Deepening Stream, available from abe.

From the Illustrated London News 23 October 1926. This picture might reappear when we publish Dorothy Whipple's High Wages (1930) in October, which is about a girl running a dress shop.

The Brontë sisters c. 1835

There was a time when all the best books had this sticker.

Southwold in Suffolk: it's very hot in England at the moment and everyone wishes they were beside the seaside. 

The Chinese Coat 1908  by John Duncan Fergusson, one of the Scottish Colourists on show at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester until 1st November this year © The Bridgeman Art Library/Private Collection