The Women's Press was a feminist publishing company established in
London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
in 1977. Throughout the late 1970s and the 1980s, The Women's Press was a highly visible presence, publishing
feminist literature
Feminist literature is fiction, nonfiction, drama, or poetry, which supports the Feminism, feminist goals of defining, establishing, and defending equal Civil and political rights, civil, political, economic, and social rights for women. It often ...
.
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
Virago is a British publisher of women's writing and books on feminist topics. Started and run by women in the 1970s and bolstered by the success of the Women's Liberation Movement (WLM), Virago has been credited as one of several British femin ...
, and Virago's success inspired Attallah to collaborate with Dowrick and her conviction that "There was space for a new feminist publishing house that would reflect one of the most exciting political currents in society and make commercial sense." As Attallah recalled,
The logo of The Women's Press was a
clothes iron
A clothes iron (also flatiron, smoothing iron, dry iron, steam iron or simply iron) is a small appliance that, when heated, is used to press Clothing, clothes to remove Wrinkle, wrinkles and unwanted creases. Domestic irons generally range in o ...
, a witty play on the symbol of domestic labour associated with women, 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 five books, including '' Lolly Willowes'' by Sylvia Townsend Warner and a reprint of
Jane Austen
Jane Austen ( ; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for #List of works, her six novels, which implicitly interpret, critique, and comment on the English landed gentry at the end of the 18th century ...
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (née Moulton-Barrett; 6 March 1806 – 29 June 1861) was an English poet of the Victorian era, popular in Britain and the United States during her lifetime and frequently anthologised after her death. Her work receiv ...
Kate Chopin
Kate Chopin (, also ; born Katherine O'Flaherty; February 8, 1850 – August 22, 1904) was an American author of short stories and novels based in Louisiana. She is considered by scholars to have been a forerunner of American 20th-century feminis ...
's '' The Awakening''. Unlike Virago, The Women's Press emphasised contemporary works over classics and understood itself as raising consciousness and making effective contributions to sexual politics over a range of areas, including peace politics, psychoanalysis, art history, ecology, and race as well as gender politics. They operated with an informal advisory group of feminist academics and media workers.
1980s
In 1982, Ros de Lanerolle became managing director of the company. Under Dowrick's leadership The Women's Press had differentiated itself from Virago by emphasising contemporary political concerns, using the slogan "Live Authors, Live Issues". Dowrick had published many of the leading radical feminist writers of the day, including
Andrea Dworkin
Andrea Rita Dworkin (September 26, 1946 – April 9, 2005) was an American radical feminist writer and activist best known for her analysis of pornography. Her feminist writings, beginning in 1974, span 30 years. They are found in a dozen sol ...
,
Phyllis Chesler
Phyllis Chesler (born October 1, 1940) is an American writer, psychotherapist, and professor emerita of psychology and women's studies at the College of Staten Island (CUNY). She is a renowned second-wave feminist psychologist and the author of ...
,
Shulamith Firestone
Shulamith Bath Shmuel Ben Ari Firestone (born Feuerstein; January 7, 1945 – August 28, 2012) was a Canadian-American radical feminist writer and activist. She was a prominent figure in the early development of radical feminism and second-wave ...
, Louise Berkinow,
Susan Griffin
Susan Griffin (born January 26, 1943) is a radical feminist philosopher, essayist and playwright particularly known for her innovative, hybrid-form ecofeminist works.
Life
Griffin was born in Los Angeles, California, on January 26, 1943, and h ...
, as well as Canadian writers including
Alice Munro
Alice Ann Munro ( ; ; 10 July 1931 – 13 May 2024) was a Canadian short story writer who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. Her work tends to move forward and backward in time, with integrated short story cycles.
Munro's ...
and Joan Barfoot. Their early fiction writers included
Janet Frame
Janet Paterson Frame (28 August 1924 – 29 January 2004) was a New Zealand author. She is internationally renowned for her work, which includes novels, short stories, poetry, juvenile fiction, and an autobiography, and received numerous award ...
(NZ), Lisa Alther (USA), Joyce Kornblatt (USA) and Michèle Roberts (UK). They published a number of books in collaboration with Frauenoffensive,
Munich
Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...
, and Sara,
Amsterdam
Amsterdam ( , ; ; ) is the capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, largest city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the City Re ...
. Early commissioned writers included Joanna Ryan, Lucy Goodison and Sheila Ernst. De Lanerolle continued the Press's effort to publish Black and Third World women's writing. Among early African-American writers to be published were
Toni Cade Bambara
Toni Cade Bambara, born Miltona Mirkin Cade (March 25, 1939 – December 9, 1995), was an African-American author, documentary film-maker, social activist and college professor.
Early life and education
Miltona Mirkin Cade was born in Harlem, ...
and
Alice Walker
Alice Malsenior Tallulah-Kate Walker (born February 9, 1944) is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist. In 1982, she became the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which she was awa ...
, as well as Maori writer Patricia Grace (NZ). In 1983, the Press had commercial success with the British publication of Alice Walker's bestseller ''
The Color Purple
''The Color Purple'' is a 1982 epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker that won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction.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
Feminist science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction (abbreviated "SF") focused on such feminist themes as: gender inequality, sexuality, race, economics, reproduction, and environment. Feminist SF is political because of its tendency to ...
list.
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 his is arguable. As a Palestinian, Attallah had given great emphasis in his own publishing to marginalised Middle Eastern 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 from Australia, before they together appointed Kathy Gale as managing director. Twenty-three Women's Press authors, including Merle Collins, Michèle Roberts,
Gillian Slovo
Gillian Slovo (born 15 March 1952) is a South African-born writer who lives in the UK. She was a recipient of the Golden PEN Award.
Early life and education
Gillian Slovo was born on 15 March 1952 in Johannesburg, South Africa, a daughter of Jo ...
and
Sheila Jeffreys
Sheila Jeffreys (born 13 May 1948) is a former professor of political science at the University of Melbourne, born in England. A lesbian feminist scholar, she analyses the history and politics of human sexuality.
Jeffreys' argument that the " ...
, wrote to ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...
'' to distance themselves from Attallah's actions.Rukhsana Ahmad, "What's Happening to the Women's Presses?", ''
Spare Rib
''Spare Rib'' was a second-wave feminist magazine, founded in 1972 in the United Kingdom, that emerged from the counterculture of the late 1960s as a consequence of meetings involving, among others, Rosie Boycott and Marsha Rowe. ''Spare Rib'' ...
'', May 1991, pp. 10–13. Stephanie Dowrick was appointed chair and continued in that role for many years.
Internet Speculative Fiction Database
The Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB) is a database of bibliographic information on genres considered speculative fiction, including science fiction and related genres such as fantasy, alternate history, and horror fiction. The ISFDB ...