UK publisher Persephone Books are continuing to reintroduce “lost” 20th century novels by women to the 21st century, featuring what they term “domestic feminism”.

Coined by Persephone founder Nicola Beauman, domestic feminism acknowledges how significant the home is to human life while rejecting the assumption that it “justified a woman’s whole existence”.

In her 1983 book A Very Great Profession: The Woman’s Novel 1914-39, Beauman wrote about how these novels often chronicle “the drama of the undramatic” and “the steadfast dailiness of a life that brings its own rewards”. Persephone’s latest publication is no exception.

Her Son’s Wife by Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1926; republished 2026) tells the story of Mrs Mary Bascomb, a hardworking widow whose life is turned upside down when her son, Ralph, unexpectedly returns home from college with a new wife, Lottie. As the young couple move into Mary’s home and take over the careful domestic sphere she has kept clean and ordered for years, she struggles to defend her space from the changes.

Canfield Fisher was a bestselling and well reviewed American author in the first half of the 20th century. In fact, Her Son’s Wife was tipped to win the Pulitzer prize when it was first published in 1926.

Today, she is no longer a household name and her novels are mostly out of print. In recent years, however, the work of a few publishers has seen some of her books resurfaced. Persephone, for........

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