ABOUT VIRAGO PRESS
VIRAGO PRESS: 1973 - NOW
'A tempting change' boasted one of Virago's first posters. Now, Virago can look back with pride on over thirty years of success – in both tempting and changing the world – and, with confidence look forward to a new era of publishing books that speak volumes about the lives of girls and women.
One of the most vigorous, stylish and successful British publishing imprints, Virago is the outstanding international publisher of women's literature. It is the largest women's imprint in the world and has made commercial success of publishing books of quality and originality.
A SHORT HISTORY
'The sense of limitless freedom that I, as as woman, sometime feel is that of a new kind of being. Because I simply could not have existed, as I am, in any other preceding time or place' Angela Carter in the early 1980s
'The truest advantage of being a women writer now is that never before, perhaps, have women had so much to say and so great a hope of speaking to some effect' Margaret Drabble in the early 1980s
Virginia Woolf's well known cri de coeur from A Room of One's Own, 'if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly as we think...' was truly realised in the 1970s. The rise of the Women's Liberation Movement was causing seismic shifts in the march of the world's events; women's creativity and political consciousness was soon to change the face of publishing and literature.
1973 – Virago's first official board meeting takes place on 21st June with Carmen Callil, Rosie Boycott and Marsha Rowe (the latter two had founded Spare Rib magazine exactly a year before) in attendance. Virago was conceived the year before by Carmen Callil as 'the first mass-market publisher for 52% of the population – women. An exciting new imprint for both sexes in a changing world'.
In September, Virago's first book, Fenwomen by Mary Chamberlain, is published in association with Quartet Books. Nine further books were published under this arrangement.
1973 – 1975 Virago is run as an independently owned editorial imprint by Carmen Callil, Ursula Owen (who became a director in 1974) and Harriet Spicer. Carmen Callil, Ltd, the publicity company, provided much of the money for the publishing during this time.
Virago 1973: (left to right) Harriet Spicer, Carmen Callil, Ursula Owen
1976 – Virago becomes self-financing and independent with capital of just £1,500 and a loan of £10,000. On page two of every book was printed:
Virago is a feminist publishing company: 'It is only when women start to organise in large numbers that we become a political force, and begin to move towards the possiblity of a truly democratic society in which every human being can be brave, responsible, thinking and diligent in the struggle to live at once freely and unselfishly' Sheila Rowbotham, Women, Resistance and Revolution
1977 – Inspired by, among other things, Sheila Rowbotham's Hidden from History, Virago began the Virago Reprint Library which fed an eager new audience's desire for women's history. The first book from the fully independent company was Life as We Have Known It by Co-operative Working Women. The first in the influential Virago Reprint Library, which later included Round About a Pound a Week by the Fabian Women's Group, Maternity and Working-Class Wives.
1978 – The first of the Virago Modern Classics, Frost in May by Antonia White, is published. It launched a list dedicated to the celebration of women writers and to the rediscovery and reprinting of their works, hugely guided by the influential A Literature of Their Own by Elaine Showalter. Its aim is to demonstrate the existence of a female literary tradition and to broaden the sometimes narrow definition of a classic. Published with new introductions by some of today's best writers, the list encompasses such diverse writers as George Eliot, Grace Paley, Elizabeth von Arnim, Pat Barker, Edith Wharton, Mae West, Angela Carter, Willa Cather and Molly Keane. It becomes one of Virago's most famous hallmarks.
'The Virago Modern Classics have reshaped literary history and enriched the reading of us all. No library is complete without them' Margaret Drabble
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain is rediscovered by Virago. It goes on to become a major television drama and a set text on courses throughout the UK.
1979 – Margaret Atwood's Surfacing is published. Virago enjoys a special relationship with Margaret Atwood, who has been one of its greatest supporters and bestsellers. Virago have published 16 works of fiction and 3 collections of poetry and sold well over a million copies of her books.
Virago remains committed to representing Black and Asian British women's writing. Finding a Voice: Asian Women in Britain by Amrit Wilson wins the Martin Luther King Award.
Angela Carter's first nonfiction work, The Sadeian Woman, is published. Five of her novels are published as Virago Modern Classics. She finished her second collection of The Virago Book of Fairy Tales before her death in 1992.
'Angela Carter's imagination was one of the most dazzling of this century' Marina Warner
THROUGHOUT THE 70S AND 80S
Virago publish some of the major feminist thinkers including Kate Millett, Adrienne Rich, Eva Figes, Angela Carter, Juliet Mitchell, Lynne Segal, Sheila Rowbotham, and Elaine Showalter.
Virago 1981: Katrina Webster, Kate Griffin, Lennie Goodings, Alexandra Pringle, Carmen Callil, Harriet Spicer, Ursula Owen, Lynn Knight (left to right)
1980 – The Virago Modern Classics publishes the new man – all Georges and all deceased: George Gissing, George Bernard Shaw, George Meredith, and H.G. Wells – and all writing about the new woman of the late 1800s.
1981 – The Art of Starvation: Anorexia Observed by Sheila MacLeod wins the Mind Book of the Year Award.
1982 – Virago becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chatto, Virago, Bodley Head and Cape Group.
Virago 1986: (left to right standing) Lorna Stevens, Katrina Webster, Alexandra Pringle, Lynn Knight, Ruthie Petrie, Serena Maude, Pauline, Harriet Spicer, Christine, (left to right sitting) Deirdre Clark, Lennie Goodings, Carmen Callil, Ursula Owen
The Virago Travellers series is launched with A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella Bird and Travels in West Africa by Mary Kingsley. A highly successful series, it reprinted the extraordinary stories of the journeys of some of the greatest travellers including Gertrude Bell, Emily Eden, Lucie Duff Gordon, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.
1982 – Union Street by Pat Barker wins the First Fawcett Society Prize.
1983 – Virago publish the first feminist saga, Stand We At Last by Zoe Fairbairns.
APRIL 1983 – In April a string of celebrities and authors stage a rally
organised around Over Our Dead Bodies: Women against the Bomb edited by Dorothy Thompson. Held in Central Hall, Westminster, 2000 people attend. Proceeds from the event go to the peace movement.
Eve and the New Jerusalem by Barbara Taylor wins the Isaac Deutcher Memorial Award.
The Tidy House by Carolyn Steedman wins the Fawcett Society Prize.
1984 – Beatrix Campbell retraces Orwell's steps in Wigan Pier Revisted.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is published for the first time in the UK and Maya Angelou danced, sang and laughed her way straight into the hearts of the British people. She brought Virago many bestsellers (her books in the Virago editions alone have sold over one million copies) but more than that, she brought us all a reminder of the human need for dignity, grace – and style.
1985 – I'm Not a Feminist But..., a volume of cartoons by Christine Roche, puts its finger on the pulse of '80s politics. Is the Future Female – Troubled Thoughts on Contemporary Feminism by Lynne Segal challenged many of the current feminist orthodoxies.
The Heart of the Race: Black Women's Lives in Britain by Beverley Bryan, Stella Dadzie and Suzanne Scafe wins the Martin Luther King Award.
Virago 1988: (left to right) Harriet Spicer, Ursula Owen, Lennie Goodings, Alexandra Pringle, Carmen Callil (by Susan Greenhill)
1987 – Five years and many books later, the company regains its independence when Carmen Callil, Lennie Goodings, Ursula Owen, Alexandra Pringle and Harriet Spicer complete a management buy-out from CVBC, then owned by Random House USA. Finance for the buy-out is provided by Rothschild Ventures and Robert Gavron. Random House UK retain a 10% stake in the company and continue to handle sales and distribution.
1988 – The famous feminist and sociologist Ann Oakley turns to fiction with The Men's Room, which goes on to become a major TV drama series.
Sweet Desserts by Lucy Ellmann wins the Guardian Fiction Prize.
1990 – Jill Liddington's The Long Road to Greenham wins The Fawcett Soceity Prize.
1991 – Deborah Tannen's You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men Talking becomes an instant bestseller.
1992 – The Haunting of Sylvia Plath by Jacqueline Rose wins the Fawcett Society Prize.
1993 – Michèle Roberts wins the prestigious W.H. Smith Literary Award for Daughters of the House, shortlisted in 1992 for the Booker Prize.
In June Virago celebrates its 20th birthday! The list has grown from eleven books a year to nearly 100, the staff from three women to nineteen, including a team of many long-standing directors: Harriet Spicer as M.D., Lennie Goodings as Publisher, Carmen Callil as Chairwoman and Ursula Owen as Non-executive Director. Rothschild Ventures realise their investment in the company, selling their shares which are bought by the directors and by Robert Gavron, who becomes the largest single shareholder. The following year, responding to a downturn in business, the size of the publishing programme and the company is sadly reduced. Just over fifty books a year are published by nine full-time and four part-time members of staff.
1995 – In December the board decides to sell the (profitable) company. Little, Brown, where Philippa Harrison is M.D., wins the vote.
1996 – From January Virago operates as an imprint of Little, Brown with Lennie Goodings as Publisher and Sally Abbey as Senior Editor.
Virago 1997: (left to right) Sally Abbey, Philippa Harrison, Lennie Goodings
1997 – The imprint bounces back to achieve its highest trade turnover fuelled in part by the spectacular success of Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace.
The Virago Vs are born. Controversial, feisty, provocative and stylish, catering for a new generation with rather different reading tastes, the list is broadly aimed at the 20-35 year-old age group. It is sometimes frivolous, sometimes deeply serious, but the main requirement for the list is the quality of writing. Launched with Sarah Waters's epic bawdy tale of Victorian lesbian London, Tipping the Velvet, it has published the now infamous German bestseller In Search of an Impotent Man by Gaby Hauptmann as well as more serious books including Marilee Strong's ground-breaking study of self-mutilation, A Bright Red Scream.
Marilyn French's The Women's Room becomes a Virago Modern Classic.
1999 – In May, the Virago Modern Classics celebrate their 21st birthday. With some 200 titles currently in print, the list continues to showcase in its handsome new livery the best in classic literature by women, including The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty, New York Mosaic by Isabel Bolton, Solstice and Expensive People by Joyce Carol Oates, Kinflicks by Lisa Alther, and Dusty Answer and The Echoing Grove by Rosamond Lehmann (Virago now publish her complete works).
Sarah Waters wins a Betty Trask Award for Tipping the Velvet.
Virago 2003: (left to right) Sarah Rustin, Lennie Goodings, Jill Foulston, Antonia Hodgson, Elise Dillsworth
2000 – The Virago website is launched.
2003 - Having won the Somerset Maugham Prize for Affinity in 2000 and been named the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year, Sarah Waters was shortlisted for both the Orange Prize and the Man Booker Prize in 2002. In 2003 she was chosen as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists.
Also this year:
Virago celebrates thirty years of publishing the best of women's writing, as commemorated in this poem by Margaret Atwood:
Back then, to Soho's seedier nooks
Came a band of lasses keen on books.
They stormed the land of spangles and garters -
one room on King William they hired, for starters.
Up dimly-lit stairways they bravely groped,
While men in macintoshes leered and hoped.
They had leather satchels and sensible shoosies,
though some mistook them for upmarket floozies.
And though there WAS the odd bit of fighting,
they took on the task of - women's writing!
(A notion THEN some set great store on
was that women's writing was an oxymoron.)
But though doubters pointed and quipped and jeered,
they rolled up their sleeves and perservered.
Their revenues were often less than slender,
But on writers they lavished care so tender
And readers too were deeply grateful
For Virago's high-heaped female plateful.
Though their first author tours were do-it-yourself trips,
Soon they were into dumpbins and shelf strips.
They stopped re-boiling the coffee grounds,
And they grew by leaps, and they grew by bounds.
To-night we've put on our shirts and dresses
to toast Virago's many successes -
So raise a glass to the half-gnawed fruit
of knowledge -- and clap and stomp and hoot,
And cheer an appropriately rowdy cheer -
Hooray for Virago's thirtieth year!
Margaret Atwood on the occasion of Virago's 30th Birthday May 23 2003
Chelsea Physic Gardens, London
Virago 2007: (left to right) Lennie Goodings (Publisher), Elise Dillsworth (Commissioning Editor), Donna Coonan (Commissioning Editor/Website Manager), Rowan Cope (Junior Editor), Victoria Pepe (Editorial Assistant), Simon Sheffield (Online Marketing Manager)
Today's Virago has kept the loyalty of the readers who first thrilled to the shelves of green-backed books and captured the new, edgy and provocative spirit of the young. We are proud of our past and look forward to an exciting future.
'Virago has made itself into a noun. In publishing this is very rare. So is Virago, in the 1483 sense of the word – "remarkably good and fine"'
Margaret Atwood
During the Renaissance a learned woman was called a Virago, a title which was perfectly complimentary ... at that time a virago was a woman, who by her courage, understanding and attainments, raised herself above the masses of her sex.
from Lucrezia Borgia by Ferdinand Gregorovius, 1948
Like virtue, virago originates from the Latin vir meaning male person. The word first appeared in English as a direct adoption from the Latin Vulgate version of the Bible where it was the name given by Adam to Eve in Genesis 2:23.
This version of the creation of woman influenced a late 14th-century meaning of virago, applied to a woman, as the other face of Eve: 'a man-like, vigorous, and heroic woman: a female warrior; an amazon' (OED). Another late 14th-century meaning of virago – wicked woman and later a termagant, scold or shrew – demonstrates the extent to which a female warrior was seen as inherently unsettling to the social order.
Most recently virago is used to designate a noisy, domineering woman. The founders of the British feminist publishing house in the early 1970s named their company Virago, not without a little irony.
From Womanwords by Jane Mills
... the solid substance of their list and the very feel of their books has all but changed the connotation of the word. Say Virago to me now and I visualise an industrious and intelligent lady.
Fay Weldon in The Times Literary Supplement, 1978
'The publishing firm of Virago achieved more for women's literature than any other.'
Anna Ford, for her contribution to the National Portrait Gallery's Faces of the Century in 1999.
Shrew, vixen, virago, dragon, scold, spitfire, fury.
Roget's Thesaurus
