Virago Press gives women writers a voice: from the archive, 26 January 1981

Carmen Callil’s publishing company has set about proving that there are many excellent but neglected women writers well worth publishing and reprintingMore women than men buy books; more women read books and more women write books, especially novels, and they always have. Yet women writers are more often than not consigned to some kind of weird ghetto called women writers. Whoever talked about men writers? Women writers are more likely to go out of print than male writers of the same reputation and calibre. Male writers are more likely to enter the canon of English literature and English school syllabuses than women writers who are equally good, or in many cases better. One English A level syllabus has no woman writer on it at all. In the last few years Virago Press has set about proving that there are many excellent but neglected women writers well worth publishing and reprinting. This year’s new catalogue appeared last week, listing 46 new books for 1981 — a remarkable success for a small feminist publishing collective which has been in business on its own for only five years. Carmen Callil first started the idea of a feminist press ten years ago. “I was in publicity for a large publishers. That’s traditional women’s work in publishing,” she says. She had founded her own publicity firm and was handling Ink, that alternative magazine of the late sixties and early seventies that flourished briefly and brightly and then perished with the flower children. Virago came out of... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

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