A Bite of the Apple

by Lennie Goodings

  Thrilled, proud, scared, determined, we moved to a warehouse in up-and-coming (but still a long way from being up) Mandela Street in Camden Town. Jeremy Dawson of Rothschild’s, who had been appointed to oversee their investment, came to see us in our new home and to meet the rest of the staff. Afterwards he clapped his hand theatrically to his forehead: ‘I’ve bought a company that runs on tummy waters!’ ‘What?’ we said. He’d asked editors how they took decisions, how they decided what books to publish, and had been told ‘it was a gut decision’. Just like others from outside our industry, he was often frustrated by the capriciousness of publishing, the precariousness of the decision-making, and the unpredictability of readers’ tastes. At the same time as he’d been working with us, he’d been conducting a management buy-out of a pork-pie factory and he would compare us to them, seemingly longing for more straightforward people, product, and process. But he grew to love Virago, and publishing too, even suggesting books and ideas for us to publish. I believe the pork-pie management buy-out went bust.

  Our offices were one floor below MTV (which was then a new concept: a twenty-four-hour music channel) and they’d outfitted their offices with neon lights, purple carpets, and flash studios. We’d occasionally see young music stars in big cars in the narrow street outside. When we first moved in, the front door of the building was just a large wooden building-site door; we had an industrial lift and poorly lit concrete stairs; the street was also dimly lit. It was a scary place after dusk. However, our office had lots of glass partitions and lovely wooden floors; we’d put it together cheaply but it was functional, nice looking, and it was proudly ours. We suddenly had lots of space and set about hiring staff to fill the jobs that CVBC had carried for us: an accountant, a bookkeeper, and a receptionist.

  Our staff had joined the National Union of Journalists when we were part of CVBC. In our independent set-up it now fell to us directors to do the salary negotiating and at these periods a management vs staff division was sharply felt. We’ve never had a steep hierarchy but neither have we ever been a co-operative, and even though we all thought unions were the right thing, it wasn’t at all easy for either side around wage-negotiation time. We tried to be honest and fair, but we directors were not always thought of that way. I wonder if a hierarchal structure can ever be otherwise? I know that Writers and Readers Co-operative didn’t always feel fair either. We got through negotiations and pulled together again.

  We increased our editorial, publicity, and marketing staff, and, excitingly, got a few computers, which were just entering the working world. We had one large desktop computer in my publicity and marketing area of the office—for about five of us to take turns on. I remember Becky Swift, Jane Parkin, Melanie Silgardo, Arzu Tahsin, Julia Hobsbawm, Smita Patel, Jo Tracy, Lucinda Montefiore, Karen Cooper—among so many others—working so hard, but also taking such delight in the enterprise. Surrounded by books and piles of manuscripts, we wrote leaflets, made phone calls, sent postcards, typed pages of editorial notes, designed covers, went to bookshops, conferences, and author events, and publicized and sold our books. We organized roadshows where we would take authors out to bookseller presentations beyond London: Manchester, Bristol, Edinburgh et al. We had great fun.

  In my expanded role as Marketing Director I oversaw a team of publicity people but I had reached the end of my interest in this side of publishing and before we began our management buy-out I had thought seriously of leaving it all behind. However, the chance to own part of my beloved Virago and to learn about that aspect of business was utterly beguiling.

  Now on the other side of the buy-out, I was itching to do more and Ursula suggested that, with Ruthie, I could start editing by launching a new list for young people, which we called the Virago Upstarts. Publicity and marketing prepares one well for editorial choices as, after all, much of publishing is thinking about how best to present a title and author and to be highly aware of the market. We had early experience of this at Virago as Carmen had moved from publicity to editorial, as had the esteemed Liz Calder, who was at this point Publisher of the new independent, Bloomsbury. Both Carmen and I agree (though wouldn’t we?) that coming from publicity is a great background for editorial. As Carmen says, ‘The book is never just about the text, it’s about publishing, marketing, seeing the book as a whole thing.’

  But I had to learn how to edit on the page. I had some great instruction from Ruthie until I was confident to rely on my own instincts and we had some terrific successes on our new list, such as The Young Person’s Guide to Saving the Planet, which sold 50,000 copies in the first two months; I remained Marketing Director, and worked on the Upstarts on the side. But my heart and passion was now in editorial. Then Alexandra was headhunted by Hamish Hamilton to be Editorial Director in 1990 and the next year Ursula left to work for the Labour Party. Harriet, who now became sole Managing Director, suggested that I become Publishing Director. I didn’t think twice.

  Chapter Eight

  Disrupting the Old Stories

  ‘Tell all the truth but tell it slant.’ Emily Dickinson’s line that I love tells me there are many truths, some of which are difficult, some of which are best expressed obliquely, but also that people find it easier to hear and digest truth if you come at it a bit sideways.

  I am impressed with the young women of today who seem to speak out without anxiety of consequence, who feel able to state their truths, their feminism, boldly, in the confidence that they will be taken seriously, that they will find sympathy and consensus—among many men as well as women. I and my generation might have written as angrily, marched as passionately, and argued as strongly, but we were in different times. In the 1980s feminism was a frightening word for many women as well as men. Often feminists would explain that feminism was pro-woman and not necessarily anti-men; that feminism was liberating for all; that it was right and just that over 50 per cent of the population deserved visibility, representation, and equal opportunities. However, there were those who were just downright hostile, believing—as a result of the feminism of the 1970s—that women needed pushing back before they got the upper hand and started to run the world (as if!). Femininity also concerned many women. Can feminists have a good time, shave their legs, wear make-up, and like pretty clothes? The answer is undoubtedly yes, and please, let’s worry about more important things, but these anxieties occupied many then.

  In my view, using traditional means to impart new ideas—such as converting the mainstream to seeing women’s literature and women’s stories as central to human experience—might mean one has a better chance of success. I think, absolutely, that labels matter and that one must always feel able to name oneself, but I am also persuaded that there are many ways of presenting ideas. Zoe Fairbairns, one of Virago’s first writers, tells a wry story about this, though: ‘In the mid-80s, I was once invited to speak at something called a Women’s Activity Day. The organisers explained that they didn’t want to use the word “feminist” as it was too scary for what they called ordinary women. “Ordinary women don’t like extreme, aggressive feminists,” they told me, “so we decided to invite you instead.” I didn’t know whether to be flattered or offended.’

  The idea for a Feminist Book Fair and Booklist began as a way of both subverting and copying some of the ideas used in the trade. Creating a list of best books around a theme had already been done by the Book Marketing Council, run by Desmond Clarke. Following a fairly successful Best of British list in 1981, which included our Rosamond Lehmann and Rebecca West, in 1983 he created the Best of Young British Novelists. When Bill Buford, editor of Granta, produced an issue devoted to the list—Twenty Under Forty—this group of new writers, including Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro, Salman Rushdie, Rose Tremain, and Pat Barker—made headlines, launched careers, and sold thousands of books.

  Both lists were made up of twenty writers and in both cases only six were women. (Also noteworthy: when the Best of Young British Novelists was recreated ten years later it again managed on
ly six women out of the twenty writers chosen.)

  A group of us thought, why not use the same method to promote feminist books? Though, as we were feminists, could we have a hierarchy of best? That taxed us a bit until we came up with a Selected Booklist. Following another more left-wing model, the Radical Book Fair, which for years was held annually in Camden Town Hall, we decided to hold a fair too. We gathered booksellers, publishers, and editors around the table and planned the launch of the First International Feminist Book Fair, to take place from 7 to 15 June 1984. Egged on by one another, we got even more ambitious and decided we’d have Feminist Book Week, with events up and down the country. We got a grant from the Greater London Council and hired Carole Spedding, who had been a co-founder of Sheba, and publisher Gail Chester to work part-time from offices in Room 306, 38 Mount Pleasant, London WC1. Bolstered by very frequent meetings of volunteers, booksellers, and interested publishers, we eventually created not only a huge three-day fair at Jubilee Hall in Covent Garden, but also sixty-five events in fifty-seven towns throughout Britain and Ireland. It was an astonishing feat; it felt like we’d left the margins and were centre stage. Our Booklist booklet announced: ‘It is indicative of the power of the movement that 1984, the most pessimistic of years, sees the First International Feminist Book Fair: an event that has the confidence, strength and audacity to call for a celebration.’

  The emphasis on internationalism and intersectionality, as it would now be called, was particularly strong. When I look at the list of exhibitors I see we had ninety-one publishers, bookshops, collectives, distributors, and magazines from around the world. I list them all to show what effect feminism was having on the printed word.

  From the UK alone came the Anarchist Feminists, Blackwell’s, Battle Axe, Black Women Talk, Bloodaxe Books, Bookmarks, Bookplus, Brilliance, Central Books, Centerprise, Change, Dizzy Heights, Dorling Kindersley, Gollancz, Falling Wall Press, Fontana, Feminist Review, Allen & Unwin, Granada, Harper & Row, Harvester Press, Heinemann Education, Hutchinson Education, Journeyman, Lawrence & Wishart, Letterbox Library, Macmillan, Manchester University Press, Methuen, Nicholas Treadwell Gallery, Norton, Onlywomen, Pandora, Penguin, Pergamon, Pluto, Quartet, Routledge, Sangam Books, Scottish & Northern Book Distribution Cooperative, Settle & Bendall, Sheba, Silver Moon, Sisterwrite, Sphere, Third World Publications, Trevor Brown Associates, Triangle Translations, Virago, The Women’s Press Bookclub, The Women’s Press, Women in Publishing, Workers Educational Association, Writers Guild, Writers & Readers, Zed Books.

  Events all over the country involved not only British writers such as Susie Orbach, Pat Barker, Eva Figes, Michèle Roberts, Michelene Wandor, Sara Maitland, and Zoe Fairbairns. There were also visits and appearances by writers from overseas, including Marge Piercy, Valerie Miner, and Lisa Alther from the USA; Urvashi Butalia from India; Frances Molloy from Ireland; Nawal el Sadaawi from Egypt; Dacia Maraini from Italy; and Manny Shirazi from Iran.

  After our first year the fair was picked up by feminists around the world and continued to occur annually, hosted thereafter in Oslo, Nairobi, Montreal, Barcelona, Amsterdam, and Melbourne, into the early 1990s.

  Urvashi Butalia and Ritu Menon set up India’s first feminist publishing house, Kali, and Urvashi had been very involved in the planning of the London fair. She and Ritu had a stand in the hall. Remembers Ritu: ‘I will never forget the sheer ebullience . . . also the solidarity of women in print. Alice Walker, Toni Cade Bambara and Alifa Rifat, Barbara Smith, Ellen Kuzwayo, Gert Brandenberg, Suniti Namjoshi and Madhu Kishwar—the whole surge and potential of the international women’s movement, it seemed, was there for all of us to see . . . How Covent Garden buzzed with the excitement of hearing these amazing women speaking of things in a way that had never been heard before . . . books that presented not just one woman’s experience, not one particular society’s foibles, not exceptional situations, but a whole new perspective based on a shared history of inequality. I realised then what it meant to be at the centre of opinion-making.’

  Zoe Fairbairns recalls ‘it was about the people who read books getting together with the people who write them’. She goes on to ask and answer the question that invariably raises its head once politics and money meet: ‘Was this a genuinely radical movement, or was it just the mainstream capitalist publishing industry spotting a gap in the market and cashing in? It was both. The feminist organization Women in Publishing were strongly active in running these events, as were feminist booksellers, librarians and writers. But it was a commercial operation too.’

  Of course the feminist, independent, and radical bookshops supported the books and the list, and organized events, but we went further: we managed to get WH Smith to back the promotion with stands of books labelled ‘Feminist Book Week’. That would be a surprising coup even today, to be frank, but in 1984 it was just short of revolutionary. It was almost totally down to Michael Poultney, who was the book buyer of Smith’s, a quietly political man who I knew through work but also as a result of another political publishing group I was in at the time, Book Action for Nuclear Disarmament. That group also organized a promotion and a list the following year, launching Peace Book Week with twenty-four hours of reading on the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square.

  Michael chose a small list of books—mostly novels—and promoted them in the largest shops; the signs in those WH Smith windows proudly proclaimed Feminist Book Week. I remember standing in Kensington High Street amazed by the Smith’s window, and I am still grateful to him. It does show yet again how feminism has always had allies who are prepared to put themselves on the line.

  One could of course say that the larger publishing houses and even WH Smith were not moved by radicalism but saw the commercial potential of feminist books—and that probably is right. However that is to diminish the courage of individuals who felt strongly about feminism and were trying to use their positions within traditional companies to effect change.

  Kate Griffin, Virago Sales Director until 1982, echoes this: ‘I remember the booksellers who became passionate Virago champions, mostly women, recognizing in our books their own stories. These included special fans within the conventional booksellers such as Blackwell’s and Heffers, as well as those within the thriving and hugely supportive radical book trade and included the extraordinary wholesalers Pipeline Books, and Scottish and Northern, who stocked every Virago title. Without such book trade individuals—in the UK and throughout the world—who invested both emotionally and commercially in the enterprise, Virago could not have achieved the success we did.’

  The launch of the fair coincided with the opening of the radical bookshop Silver Moon Bookshop at 68 Charing Cross Road. It wasn’t the first London feminist shop. In north London, at 190 Upper Street in Islington, Sisterwrite Co-op had been going since 1978 alongside their café, Sisterbite. Lynn Alderson, who had been at other important radical bookshops, Housemans in King’s Cross and Compendium in Chalk Farm, before she became part of the collective, recalls that their bookshop was a mecca: ‘If you went looking for the Women’s Liberation Movement, as I had a few years before, you would find it.’

  The location of Silver Moon was significant: a feminist bookshop and café in central London, on the famous Charing Cross Road, the bookshop street. Run by Jane Cholmeley and the late Sue Butterworth, and stocking only books by women, it became another important centre and meeting place for lesbians and feminists but also for women who just wanted to know what this movement was all about. Virago held many an event there over the years, the most famous for us was a signing session for Maya Angelou in the late 1980s, which saw a queue spooling out of the door and down the street.

  We also attempted to get into bookselling ourselves and opened a beautifully designed bookshop on Southampton Street, near Covent Garden, but we closed it before our management buy-out in 1987. Best to leave bookselling to booksellers.

  The First International Feminist Book Fair was, on the whole,
an exhilarating commercial and political success. However, we on the organizing group got two things staggeringly wrong: we weren’t a very diverse committee and we held our fair in a hall that had no disabled access. I write that sentence with some amazement at our naivety and ignorance. It shows how far we have come that it’s highly unlikely that either of those things would ever happen now. Despite the glory of the event, the week that followed, and the subsequent international fairs, I can’t forget three searing moments.

  First: Looking down maybe fifty steps to where a group of women in wheelchairs with placards are gathered at the bottom. The stairs lead up to the hall of the fair. The shame of this is compounded by the fact that our author Adrienne Rich, who suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, had to be carried up those stairs for her attendance. Even now I feel deep mortification for our culpability in her discomfort.

  Secondly: The poet Audre Lorde utterly silencing the marvellous opening-night party of authors, publishers, and booksellers when she broke through the talk and laughter with a long, angry speech about the outrageous lack of many women of colour on the committee. I remember feeling the absolute rightness of her argument and the hot distress of being publicly shamed in equal measure. Later she dubbed the fair ‘a monstrosity of racism’, ‘which distorted and deflected what was good and creative, almost visionary about having such a fair’.

  Third: Standing with Rosa Guy, a Virago author, on a balcony watching two long lines of women come into the London venue where she and other international authors were to speak. One line is all women of colour, the other all white. We were asked to give women of colour priority over white women to hear some of the major writers of colour from around the world. The result of which was that we soon had two separate queues. I remember Rosa, a black American writer and a veteran of the Civil Rights Movement, sighing deeply beside me at what was now segregated lines. ‘I thought I would never see the day again.’ Thankfully, everyone who came that evening got in; there was enough room for all.