This week's cultural event was a talk by Lennie Goodings on the publishing house of which she is chair: Virago. As one of the most influential and recognisable British presses, it was fascinating to hear a behind-the-scenes story of the company, and Goodings' passion for Virago's over 40-year-long championing of female writers was inspiring to us all.
Goodings reflected fondly on the publisher's humble conditions when she joined in 1978, having moved to London from her native Canada. She described how, back then, Virago consisted of three people and a whirring printer in a cramped Soho office, and how it was up to these few employees to do everything: from packing books and sorting out the voluminous mail and submissions to cleaning and maintaining the office itself. Virago, taking its name from a late-night thesaurus-scouring session in which the three founders - Carmen Callil, Rosie Boycott and Marsha Rowe - came across the word, meaning a 'female warrior' or 'heroic woman', and thus it was chosen and launched in 1973. She also talked of the atmosphere at the time when Virago was in its infancy; how there was a climate of subversion and a hotbed of new ideas, radical presses and magazines - Callil, for example, had previously done publicity work for the prominent feminist magazine Spare Rib - recalling one point when she asked Callil why she founded Virago, to which she replied: 'To change the world, darling'.
The writers and books published by Virago span some of the most important literature not just since the publisher's foundation but also from the past thanks to the enduringly popular Virago Modern Classics. This scheme greatly revived interest in countless writers whose gender rendered them glossed over previously in the traditional literary canon, which shows the real, immediate effect a small publisher can have on society. At the time, such greats as Angela Carter, Maya Angelou and Margaret Atwood (who wrote a poem for Virago in celebration of their 30th anniversary) became essentially 'Virago authors' for their loyalty to the publisher, and more recently such eminent authors as Sarah Dunant, Sarah Waters and Sandi Toksvig publish through Virago, which is still going strong even now, something which Goodings almost seemed surprised about given past financial difficulties.
Aside from the actual story of Virago, though, Goodings' talk also taught us a highly relevant lesson in our consideration of literature, highlighting how long-established prejudices have led to 'gendered reads', in the sense that women will generally read books by men and women alike yet men continue to read far more literature penned by a male hand than by a female. It is exactly this type of inequality that Virago tries to address, which I believe is an extremely important endeavour in a world where sexism is not only rife but is often legitimised through its prevalence among people of power and authority. Goodings thus showed Virago to be entirely worthy of its mission of publishing books to change the world, and long may this mission continue.
Goodings reflected fondly on the publisher's humble conditions when she joined in 1978, having moved to London from her native Canada. She described how, back then, Virago consisted of three people and a whirring printer in a cramped Soho office, and how it was up to these few employees to do everything: from packing books and sorting out the voluminous mail and submissions to cleaning and maintaining the office itself. Virago, taking its name from a late-night thesaurus-scouring session in which the three founders - Carmen Callil, Rosie Boycott and Marsha Rowe - came across the word, meaning a 'female warrior' or 'heroic woman', and thus it was chosen and launched in 1973. She also talked of the atmosphere at the time when Virago was in its infancy; how there was a climate of subversion and a hotbed of new ideas, radical presses and magazines - Callil, for example, had previously done publicity work for the prominent feminist magazine Spare Rib - recalling one point when she asked Callil why she founded Virago, to which she replied: 'To change the world, darling'.
The writers and books published by Virago span some of the most important literature not just since the publisher's foundation but also from the past thanks to the enduringly popular Virago Modern Classics. This scheme greatly revived interest in countless writers whose gender rendered them glossed over previously in the traditional literary canon, which shows the real, immediate effect a small publisher can have on society. At the time, such greats as Angela Carter, Maya Angelou and Margaret Atwood (who wrote a poem for Virago in celebration of their 30th anniversary) became essentially 'Virago authors' for their loyalty to the publisher, and more recently such eminent authors as Sarah Dunant, Sarah Waters and Sandi Toksvig publish through Virago, which is still going strong even now, something which Goodings almost seemed surprised about given past financial difficulties.
Aside from the actual story of Virago, though, Goodings' talk also taught us a highly relevant lesson in our consideration of literature, highlighting how long-established prejudices have led to 'gendered reads', in the sense that women will generally read books by men and women alike yet men continue to read far more literature penned by a male hand than by a female. It is exactly this type of inequality that Virago tries to address, which I believe is an extremely important endeavour in a world where sexism is not only rife but is often legitimised through its prevalence among people of power and authority. Goodings thus showed Virago to be entirely worthy of its mission of publishing books to change the world, and long may this mission continue.
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