The Silver Moon Bookshop was a
feminist bookstore
Feminist bookstores sell material relating to women's issues, gender, and sexuality. These stores served as some of the earliest open spaces for feminist community building and organizing.
Prior to the spread of feminist bookstores, bookselling ...
on
Charing Cross Road
Charing Cross Road is a street in central London running immediately north of St Martin-in-the-Fields to St Giles Circus (the intersection with Oxford Street) and then becomes Tottenham Court Road. It leads from the north in the direction of ...
in
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
founded in 1984 by Jane Cholmeley and
Sue Butterworth,
[Redclift and Sinclair (1991) p. vii,] its name derived from the two symbols of womanhood from a poem by
Sappho
Sappho (; el, Σαπφώ ''Sapphō'' ; Aeolic Greek ''Psápphō''; c. 630 – c. 570 BC) was an Archaic Greek poet from Eresos or Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. Sappho is known for her Greek lyric, lyric poetry, written to be sung while ...
.
In 1989 Silver Moon Bookshop won the
Pandora Award for "contributing most to promoting the status of women in publishing and related trades".
[ In 1990 Cholmeley and Butterworth established an associated publishing business, Silver Moon Books.][ After 17 years, rising rents from the Soho Housing Association forced the shop to close on November 18, 2001. It was then incorporated into ]Foyles
W & G Foyle Ltd. (usually called simply Foyles) is a bookseller with a chain of seven stores in England. It is best known for its flagship store in Charing Cross Road, London. Foyles was once listed in the ''Guinness Book of Records'' as the ...
bookshop,
See also
*Independent bookstore
An independent bookstore is a retail bookstore which is independently owned. Usually, independent stores consist of only a single actual store (although there are some multi-store independents). They may be structured as sole proprietorships, cl ...
*Gay's the Word (bookshop)
Gay's the Word is an independent bookshop in central London, and the oldest LGBT bookshop in the United Kingdom. Inspired by the emergence and growth of lesbian and gay bookstores in the United States, a small group of people from Gay Icebrea ...
* Sisterwrite
References
*
Bookshops in London
Feminist bookstores
Feminism in England
Independent bookshops of the United Kingdom
Buildings and structures in the City of Westminster
Bookstores established in the 20th century
Retail companies established in 1984
Retail companies disestablished in 2001
Feminist organisations in the United Kingdom
Women in London
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