Christine de Pizan writing in her study © British Library. The painting is amazing, the dog unforgettable, prompting a rereading of Flush. And Virginia Woolf has been much on our minds: on Monday it was seventy years since she died.

On 6th October last year the Post had a c. 1923 photograph of the young man who, many years in the future, would enable Persephone Books to be set up. Here now is a c. 1915 photograph of the girl (she is on the left, it's her younger sister on the right) who, one day, would be equally crucial; like the young man she was born in 1907 so in this picture she is about eight. She too would leave Germany and come to England in 1933.

Eric Ravilious died in 1942 but his designs continued to be used, for example for the 1953 coronation mug: this Garden Implements textile was printed by Edinburgh Weavers in 1958. Meg Andrews, the London textile historian and dealer, called it 'very rare' when she sold it, which indeed it is. The material is white cotton printed with black and would have been perfect for Gardener's Nightcap – except that Margaret Calkin James's Fritillary could not really be improved on (and we sell it by the metre in the shop).

The next two weeks of the Persephone Post will be totally random: pictures chosen a) because we love them b) because they are a 'parallel' to the world of Persephone Books (even if this sometimes seems a little tenuous, there always is one). Northumberland House was at Charing Cross and was painted by Canaletto in 1752; it was demolished in 1873 to make way for Northumberland Avenue. The detail in Canaletto's picture is extraordinary, and it would fit well into this picture-essay about Bricks and Mortar; in any case it's architecture month at Persephone because of the imminent publication of The Sack of Bath.

Here is a plate decorated by Dod Procter in 1934. And here is a blog which has a very interesting post about Dod and her husband and their friend Filson Young. There is so much more that could be written about Dod (and more would be except that the writer of the Post is in Los Angeles on granny duty and jet lag is something of a constraint). And there is a whole book to be written on the painter friends of Newlyn, especially Harold and Laura Knight and Harold Harvey, both of whom have featured on the Persephone Post several times in the past. However, there is a fantastic novel about the Newlyn painters by Jonathan Smith, it's called Summer in February.

Aunt Lilla 1943 at Penlee House Gallery.

The Little Girl was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1928, the year after the success of Morning (when Dod Procter returned from the opening of the Summer Exhibition to Newlyn where she lived, flags were hung in celebration and she was led home from the station by a silver band: dnb). This is not her daughter since her only child was a son, Bill, born in 1913 but is presumably a neighbouring Newlyn child.

It is this painting by Dod Procter that made her famous. Morning was in the 1927 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, was voted Picture of the Year and was bought for the nation by the Daily Mail for the Tate (which is impressive – does the Daily Mail still buy paintings for the nation?).

There are five paintings by Dod Procter (1890-1972) at the Penlee House Gallery, Penzance: on this page it says that after she was at the Forbes' School 'she went on to become perhaps the most famous artist of her day'. And it's true, although most people are not familiar with her work nowadays, she was once very well known (more on this tomorrow), and in this respect is the Charles Morgan of the art world: he was a very fashionable and popular novelist whom 'everyone' read but is now almost forgotten (although in fact Capuchin Classics have reprinted The Voyage). This is an undated self-portrait at Penlee House, on loan from a private collection.

William Maxwell was Elizabeth's editor at the New Yorker, which published her stories (thirty-four of them) between 1949 and 1969; but by the mid-1960s it was rejecting most of them – only two in Elizabeth's fine, possibly finest, story collection The Devastating Boys (1972) had appeared there. One day someone can do a PhD comparing the trajectory of Barbara Pym's rejection, which also began in the mid-1960s, with Elizabeth's rejection by the New Yorker; and why Elizabeth's novels continued to be published but Barbara Pym's were not. Someone else can do a PhD on the development of writers' handwritings: this envelope is exactly thirty years after the Virginia Woolf letter.

It still is her finest novel (although some would dispute this eg. preferring Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont). Selling everywhere is a rather odd phrase we should perhaps revive: 'Persephone Books, selling everywhere.'

The Boots Booklovers Library in High Wycombe, where Elizabeth Taylor worked from the summer of 1934 until February 1936. Her acute ear for dialogue must have been greatly developed during her time there: the shop scenes in A Game of Hide and Seek (1951) were based on her Boots experiences.

Elizabeth wrote to Virginia Woolf on October 15th 1932. The first page of the letter is reproduced in the 2009 biography published by Persephone Books, The Other Elizabeth Taylor, and begins 'May I tell you how grateful I am to you for 'The Waves'. The second page, reproduced here © the Society of Authors and the University of Sussex, has a mistake in the fourth line ('and' is crossed out) which is revealing about Elizabeth's character: most people writing to one of England's most famous living novelists would have copied the letter out again. Elizabeth knew that it was the being valued that would matter to Virginia Woolf, not a scratched out word.

This week's Persephone posts will be about the novelist Elizabeth Taylor (1912-75), whom the comic writer and performer David Baddiel recently (quite rightly) dubbed 'the missing link between Jane Austen and John Updike' here and here. Angus McBean took this photograph in 1947 © National Portrait Gallery/The President and Fellows of Harvard College (that would have made her laugh).

Stoking the Fire c. 1900 by Henry T0nks, is available for £950 here. But it's tiny: as the author of the forthcoming biography (and also the source of the wonderful Bookchecks) wrote and told us, the drawing is merely 'a fragment, torn out of a letter'.

Kitchen Scene 1940 (sold) by Daphne Rowles. This is not a great painting but it's full of fascinating detail - the grandmother swishing back the curtain, the child sitting eating breakfast who presumably has to be got off to school (satchel at the ready), the mother's apron, the father (in what looks like a track suit but can't have been) coming swiftly downstairs, the blue and white tiles, the very bare dresser. There are two other paintings by Daphne Rowles here and here, the garden one is so incredibly, well, English.

An antidote (actually slightly needed) to International Women's Day: In the Pub 1936, an oil painting by George Galsworthy Palmer (1913-72) available here for an impressive £5800.

Today is the centenary of International Women's Day and 'representatives' ie one of us will be at Swiss Cottage library talking about Persephone Books. Ethelbert White – cf. the Post for the week of 18th December 2010 – did this drawing in c. 1916: although his wife looks rather downtrodden, readers of that week's posts will know that actually they were a good partnership. The drawing is tiny, 8 x 7 cm, and was done on the back of a cigarette packet while Ethelbert (who was a conscientious objector) and Betty were living and working on a farm in Devon. It was for sale at Paul Liss but is now reserved.

This is a mid-1930s oil painting ('unstretched', 'unrestored', unframed) of the pianist Rosamond Ley (1882-1969) by her nephew John Moody. It is for sale at Liss Fine Art for £400. Rosamond Ley was obviously rather fascinating and her life would make an excellent work of faction (cross between a novel and a biography). All her papers are in the British Library and letters to her from Busoni (whose letters she translated), Egon Petri (her teacher) and many other well-known figures of the C20th are here and here: these incredibly clear scans are like being able to look through a whole archive without leaving home. (Incidentally, they also show that Rosamond Ley lived in Lansdowne Walk, very close to Vere Hodgson and we can imagine them nodding to each other as they walked to Notting Hill Gate to buy – eggs and oranges.)

Laurence Whistler also wrote an amazing book called The Initials in the Heart. It is about his intensely happy relationship with his wife Jill Furse whom he married in Salisbury Cathedral in 1939 and who died just after the birth of their second child in 1944. It is one of the greatest love stories ever written and that's saying something. This slate engraving is next to an engraved glass prism in a revolving glass case in Salisbury Cathedral. (The photographs this week are © here and here and here.)

Laurence Whistler also did this window at Stowe. Again, the green at the bottom is the lawn outside the window. Whistler was at school at Stowe and wrote a booklet about the gardens. Nb there are twelve windows at Moreton, which is originally C15th but was last rebuilt in 1776. The stained glass windows were destroyed in 1940 when a bomb fell on the grass (cf. yesterday). Ten years later Laurence Whistler starting designing replacements, and these were installed gradually over the next few decades.

And here is St Nicholas from a distance.

Here is the top left hand part of yesterday's window in close up from the outside.