The Women's Press

The Women's Press was a feminist publishing company established in London in 1977. Throughout the late 1970s and the 1980s the Women's Press was a highly visible presence, publishing feminist literature.

Founding

In 1977 Stephanie Dowrick cofounded the Women's Press with publishing entrepreneur Naim Attallah. Attallah owned Quartet Books, which had previously partnered with Virago Press, and Virago's success helped Dowrick convince Attallah that "there was space for a new feminist list that would reflect one of the most exciting political currents in society and make commercial sense."[1] As Attallah recalled,

It was set up with a hundred £1 shares, with me holding fifty-three percent and Stephanie the balance of forty-seven per cent [...] to begin with Stephanie was the only full-time employee and the whole operation was started in her living-room in her house in Bow.[1]

The logo of the Women's Press was a clothes iron, a symbol of domestic labour associated with women,[2] with black and white strips running down the books' spine to represent an iron's electric cord. Dowrick was soon joined by Sibyl Grundberg, and in February 1978 the Women's Press issued its first book, a reprint of Jane Austen's Love and Freindship.[1] Other reprints in the 1978 list included Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh and Kate Chopin's The Awakening.[3] As with Virago, the Woman's Press published a mix of classic and contemporary work, understood itself as raising consciousness, and operated with an advisory group of feminist academics and media workers. [4]

1980s

In 1981 Ros de Lanerolle became managing director. Under her leadership The Women's Press differentiated itself from Virago by emphasising contemporary political concerns, under the slogan "Live Authors, Live Issues". It also made an effort to publish black and Third World women's writing. In 1983 the Press had commercial success with the British publication of Alice Walker's best-seller The Color Purple, and it also published Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions (1988) and Pauline Melville's Shape-Shifter (1990). From 1985 to 1991 the Press also had a feminist science fiction list.[5]

However, a publishing recession in the late 1980s and early 1990s left the Women's Press making losses. Though de Lanerolle argued that the cause was a general recession, and that the company was recovering, Attallah blamed the attention paid to Third World women writers. In late 1990 Attallah appointed Mary Hemming as deputy managing director, and in early 1991 rejected an attempted buyout offer of £500,000 by de Lanerolle. De Lanerolle was forced to resign and accept a redundancy payout, and five other staff resigned in solidarity with her. Attallah appointed himself the firm's interim managing director and briefly recalled Dowrick before appointing Kathy Gale as managing director.[3] Twenty-three Women's Press authors, including Merle Collins, Michèle Roberts, Gillian Slovo and Sheila Jeffreys, wrote to The Guardian to distance themselves from Attallah's actions.[6]

References
  1. Catherine Riley (2018). The Virago Story: Assessing the Impact of a Feminist Publishing Phenomenon. Berghahn Books. pp. 24–25. ISBN 978-1-78533-809-0.
  2. Joseph Brooker (2012). Literature of the 1980s: After the Watershed. Edinburgh University Press. p. 190. ISBN 978-0-7486-6904-2.
  3. Simone Murray (1998). "Books of Integrity': The Women's Press, Kitchen Table Press and Dilemmas of Feminist Publishing". The European Journal of Women's Studies. 5: 171–193.
  4. Gail Low; Emma Parker (2016). "Publishing and Prizes". In Mary Eagleton (ed.). The History of British Women's Writing, 1970-Present: Volume Ten. Springer. pp. 84–6. ISBN 978-1-137-29481-4.
  5. Joan Haran, "Re-Visioning Feminist Futures: Literature as Social Theory", PhD thesis, University of Warwick, 2003, pp. 16–17. Accessed 1 September 2020.
  6. Rukhsana Ahmad, "What's Happening to the Women's Presses?", Spare Rib, May 1991, pp. 10–13.
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