The Mermaid Collection
Hello!
And welcome to the hub for everything related to the new Mermaid Collection from Penguin Michael Joseph. Our vision was to curate a list of ‘vintage commercial’ titles featuring unjustly neglected works of popular mid-to-late-twentieth-century novels written by women who address issues that remain relevant today. Discovering and championing female voices is at the heart of Penguin Michael Joseph, from Jojo Moyes to Sue Townsend to Marian Keyes, so it’s an absolute joy to be rediscovering authors who have been under celebrated for too long.
Each Mermaid is introduced by a contemporary writer, reflecting on the author and book’s importance to the world in which it was published and its continued relevance today, how the author excels on character and plot, and why the book still feels like a fresh read in 2025. The books are beautifully curated paperbacks with flaps and gorgeous inside cover printing ensuring they are as covetable and collectable as they are brilliant reads.
Each of the first four books in the collection has something unique to offer, but what they all have in common is the quality of the story, plot, characterisation and page turnability – everything you want in a great read.
So, make room on your bookshelf for this stunning new collection, we guarantee you’re going to want them all.
Meet the mermaids
Fay Weldon, author of Mermaid No. 1, is most famously known for the 1980s TV hit, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (ask your mum/grandma). Fay was often looked down on by the literati but her ferocious intelligence, acerbic wit and total fearlessness as a writer demanded that she be noticed. All these skills are on show in Down Among the Women whose freshness of prose feels like it could have been written yesterday.
We first meet Lucy Carmichael, heroine and namesake of Mermaid No.2 by Margaret Kennedy, in an unforgettably disastrous scene where she is jilted at the altar. Lucy Carmichael's recovery from this calamity forms the substance of the story that follows as she takes a job in the rural Lincolnshire village of Ravonsbridge. This employment will come to offer Lucy a second chance at romance, but it also brings her unexpectedly into contact with a host of remarkable characters who will influence how she sees the world. And I’d wager that the ending will melt even the hardest of hearts.
Mermaid No. 3 is the American writer Helen McCloy’s Through a Glass, Darkly. Often referenced alongside Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers,McCloy distinguished herself as possessing her own unique blend of intriguing plots and literary flair, exploring concepts such as the doppelgänger phenomena and split personalities. In creating these unsettling and intriguing narratives, many featuring her popular recurring character, psychologist and sleuth, Dr Basil Willing, she was recognised as one of the pioneers of psychological suspense.
Fenny, Mermaid No. 4, was hailed as one of Lettice Cooper’s best novels. Set almost entirely in Italy, the novel is split into four parts as we dip in and out of episodes of Fenny’s life as she starts work as a governess for the summer. Despite being published in 1953, Cooper skillfully brings a relatability to the novel through its unexpectedly fresh and contemporary outlook, particularly in the romantic, platonic and familial relationships Fenny is navigating.
The authors
Photo credit: Josh Pulmore
Born in 1931 in Birmingham, but raised in New Zealand, Fay Weldon returned to the UK aged 15 just after the Second World War. She studied at St Andrews and moved to London in the early 1950s, working for the Foreign Office and then in advertising. She began writing for radio and television in 1963 when she fell pregnant with her first child, writing over 70 scripts for ITV and the BBC, including the original Upstairs Downstairs and an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Her first novel was published in 1967 and was followed by over 30 others, including The Lives and Loves of a She-Devil which became a beloved BBC series. She died in Northampton, England on 4 January 2023, at the age of 91.
Margaret Kennedy was born in London in 1896 and read History at Somerville College, Oxford in 1915 where she began writing. In 1924, Kennedy’s second novel The Constant Nymph became a worldwide bestseller which she adapted into a hit West End play starring Noel Coward (three different star-studded film versions followed). Described as ‘superb’ by Elizabeth Bowen, Kennedy wrote fifteen further prize-winning novels including The Feast in 1950, as well as literary criticism and a biography of Jane Austen. She died in 1967.
Photo credit: Smithsonian Institution Archives
Photo credit: the Helen McCloy estate
Helen McCloy was born in New York City in 1904, daughter of a writer and a newspaper editor. Having read Sherlock Holmes as a young girl, McCloy retained an interest in mysteries and began to write them in the 1930s, after a career in journalism. Her first novel, Dance of Death, was published in 1933 and featured psychologist sleuth Dr Basil Willing, who appeared in twelve of her novels and several short stories. In 1950 she became the first woman to serve as president of Mystery Writers of America. In 1953 she received an Edgar from the same organization for her critiques. Her last book – featuring Dr Basil Willing – was published in 1980 and she died in 1994.
Lettice Cooper was born in 1897 and grew up in Leeds, where her father ran an engineering firm. After reading classics at Oxford, she worked in the family business while writing her first book, The Lighted Room. After a short period at the feminist weekly Time and Tide, she worked at the Ministry of Food during the war. Over the course of her life, she wrote some twenty novels, many of which convey her deep socialist convictions and a loyalty to her Yorkshire roots. Lettice Cooper was devoted to Italy, especially Tuscany, and used it as the setting for several novels, including Fenny. She lived contentedly with her staunchly Tory sister in a London flat, was a great encourager of young writers, and helped to establish Public Lending Right.
The foreword writers
Gillian McAllister is the Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author of nine stand-alone novels. Her books have been selected for the Radio 2 Book Club, Reese's Book Club and the Richard & Judy Book Club. Her previous novel, Wrong Place Wrong Time, was a Waterstones Thriller of the Month and was shortlisted for The British Book Awards Crime & Thriller Book of the Year and the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. Gillian's books are published in thirty-eight languages.
Photo credit: Sam Braithwaite
Lucy Mangan is the TV critic for The Guardian, and a columnist, features writer and reviewer for Stylist magazine, The Telegraph and many other publications. She broadcasts frequently on radio and occasionally on television, and is the author of Bookish, Bookworm, My Family and Other Disasters, The Reluctant Bride, Hopscotch and Handbags and Inside Charlie’s Chocolate Factory.
Photo credit: Stylist Magazine
Jennie Godfrey was raised in West Yorkshire and her debut novel, The List of Suspicious Things which was a #1 Sunday Times bestseller, is inspired by her childhood there in the 1970s. Jennie is from a mill-working family, but as the first of the generation born after the mills closed, she went to university and built a career in the corporate world. In 2020 she left and began to write. She is now a writer and part-time Waterstones bookseller and lives in the Somerset countryside.
Photo credit: Esme Mai
Jenny Colgan is the author of numerous Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling novels and has won various awards for her writing, including the Melissa Nathan Award for Comedy Romance, the RNA Romantic Novel of the Year Award and the RNA Romantic Comedy Novel of the Year Award. Her books have sold more than fifteen million copies worldwide and have been published in 36 territories, and in 2015 she was inducted into the Love Stories Hall of Fame. Jenny is married with three children and lives in Scotland.
Photo credit: Kasja Goeransson
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