It was the early 70s, and in a tiny flat above a synagogue in Chelsea, London, decorated with lime-green paint, red tiles and an alternative cover for Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch on the wall, a group of women sat talking around a dining table.
The attic bedsit soon became the first office of the feminist publisher Virago, which turns 50 this month. It has published more than 4,000 titles and over 1,000 authors, including Sarah Waters, Pat Barker and Monica Ali, and brought the likes of Margaret Atwood and Maya Angelou to British readers.
“When I hunt out all those apple logos on my shelves, I’m struck by the diversity of those voices,” says Ali.
“From Elizabeth Taylor to Attia Hosain, the unifying feature is the centrality of women’s experience, which even today is always in danger of being belittled, downgraded, regarded as ‘domestic’ and therefore less important,” she adds.
Virago was the brainchild of Carmen Callil, who had been inspired by Spare Rib, a feminist countercultural magazine for which she had done some publicity. In a 2008 essay, Callil, who died last year, recalled 1960s dinners at which men discussed “serious matters” and women sat, quietly, “like decorated lumps of sugar”. She wanted to start a feminist publisher to “break that silence”, and enlisted Marsha Rowe and Rosie Boycott, who had founded Spare Rib, to help. The initial meetings were held in a Soho pub, before migrating to the Chelsea flat.
“The whole universe seemed to be geared to the idea that women would eventually be housewives, and that was a smothering blanket that we were poking holes in,” says Rowe. Originally called Spare Rib Books in 1972, the publisher became Virago, meaning warrior-like woman, in June 1973. It initially published jointly with Quartet Books, releasing its first title, Fenwoman: A Portrait of Women in an English Village by Mary Chamberlain – intended as a feminist counterpart to Ronald Blythe’s Akenfield – in 1975. Chamberlain recalls having very little experience in publishing before Callil accepted her pitch. “It was a huge punt for her”, the writer says.
Virago raised enough money to become fully independent in 1976, and it moved into its first proper office, on Wardour Street, the following year. Soon after, Virago Modern Classics was launched with the aim of rediscovering forgotten female authors of the early 20th century. This series, with its distinctive green spine, put the publisher “on the map”, according to Chamberlain. The complete Classics collection now includes 718 titles, with authors ranging from Daphne du Maurier to Zora Neale Hurston – and some men who have published work on feminist themes, such as HG Wells’s Ann Veronica.
“As was the case for so many readers in the 1980s, my knowledge and understanding of women’s writing as I was growing up was hugely influenced by Virago Modern Classics,” says Natasha Walter, whose book Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism is being published as a special edition for Virago’s anniversary, along with four other titles representing each decade of the publisher’s history. Virago successfully challenged the “unquestioned” male canon, Walter adds.
“It was a revolution in the head for young feminists to understand that women’s liberation had a history, a backstory,” says Linda Grant, winner of the 2000 Women’s prize for fiction (then called the Orange prize). “And feminism was not just rights and equality but women’s voices and women’s experiences, that the male psyche was not the general and women’s psyche the particular.”
V, formerly known as Eve Ensler, says she is “forever grateful” to Virago for publishing her play The Vagina Monologues at a time when “many publishers were terrified to come near it”.
Virago has at times faced resistance. In the 1980s, when former publisher and current chair of Virago Lennie Goodings visited a major bookstore in Belfast, the buyer was adamant that he didn’t want any Virago titles because there were “no feminists” in the city. There was a feeling that “the definition of feminism was anti-men,” says Goodings. “Meanwhile, we were trying to say the patriarchy was serving nobody.”
Pulitzer prize winner Marilynne Robinson says: “Feminism is very often thought of as adversarial, but Virago, despite the ferocity of the name, is instead suffused with discovery and celebration.”
Virago is often asked whether it is still “necessary”, says its publisher Sarah Savitt. “It seems to me a question that particularly haunts feminist interventions (the Women’s prize is similarly questioned annually) or any political actions that seek to increase inclusion.”
Boycott, who set up Virago with Callil, says that she lives “in a state of permanent shock” at the quality of childcare and “the levels of trolling and hate” directed at women in public life in the UK. There’s “still a whole world of people who do not want women to succeed, or to be equal. And quite honestly, while that is true, you need Virago.”
In recent years, Virago has also published books by writers of underrepresented genders, such as CN Lester’s Trans Like Me. “There has been a lot of necessary discussion and reckoning recently about who was overlooked or even excluded by second wave feminism – the time when Virago was born,” says Savitt. “Of course, we have our own blind spots now, despite all best feminist efforts.”
Virago has undergone a number of ownership changes. From 1982 to 1987, it was a subsidiary of the Chatto, Virago, Bodley Head and Cape Group, which was later bought by Random House. In 1995, facing a market downturn, the Virago board sold the company to its current owner Little, Brown, which is now part of Hachette, one of the “big five” publishing houses.
Goodings believes the publisher has survived because it has continued to influence “the politics of the day”. But she hopes for more change. “There’s still an idea that a book, a novel written by a woman is mainly for a woman audience,” she says. “In some ways that’s the last bastion of patriarchy.
“Change is awkward, and it can be bloody,” she adds. “But the society moves forward with each revolution.”
***
Three Virago books everyone should read
Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters
Waters’ debut novel, set in Victorian England, follows a young woman from Whitstable, Nan Astley, who becomes infatuated with male impersonator Kitty Butler. Nan follows her crush to London, where she finds various jobs to support herself and begins to discover her sexual identity. Dubbed by one reviewer as a “sapphic Moll Flanders”, the coming-of-age tale received critical acclaim upon its publication in 1998, and has remained popular with readers ever since, adapted for TV in 2002 and for the stage in 2015. Ten British publishers initially rejected the novel – including Virago, which thankfully went back on its decision and has been the UK publisher of all of Waters’ works.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
The first of the US writer and activist’s seven volumes of autobiography looks at her childhood and adolescence, taking in themes of race, identity, family and sex work. The book quickly became popular, its paperback edition remaining on the New York Times bestseller list for two years after its publication in 1969. James Baldwin said it “liberates the reader into life simply because Maya Angelou confronts her own life with such a moving wonder, such a luminous dignity”. Virago will be issuing new editions of Angelou’s seven-volume set this November.
Frost in May by Antonia White
First published in 1933, White’s novel was reissued by Virago in 1978 as the first ever Virago Modern Classic. The now iconic series set out to bring new readers to neglected female authors, and White’s novel, described as a “small masterpiece” by Tessa Hadley, was an excellent place to start. Frost in May is a captivating study of power, via a young protagonist, Fernanda, who is sent to a Roman Catholic convent school. The school is a tightly controlled, cruel environment, and the book is thought to be based on White’s own childhood suffering at the hands of punitive teachers and a bullying father.
Explore the Five Gold Reads collection, celebrating the 50th anniversary of Virago Press. Visit guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
