A Bite of the Apple

by Lennie Goodings

  On 2 November 1995 Philippa Harrison announced: ‘The Virago list is close to my heart . . . Little, Brown will provide a home which will both honour Virago’s past and bring in a new and different 90s vision . . . With the extraordinary changes in the publishing scene in the last decade, Virago needs the help today that a larger, well-capitalised structure and a really strong sales and marketing force can offer it.’

  We became an imprint of Little, Brown and, contrary to much press speculation, it was not the end of Virago—or feminism, for that matter—but the beginning of a new era.

  I arrived at Little, Brown in January 1996. Unlike the fresh-faced thing I was back in 1978 when I first climbed the stairs at Wardour Street, now I was world-weary and wary too as I passed through the 8-foot-high doors of Brettenham House on Lancaster Place on the north side of Waterloo Bridge. The boardroom battles that had spilled into the Sunday papers and split the board over whose bid we would accept had left deep scars. I knew I wanted to be with Virago, wanted to go on working with our authors, knew that I loved publishing, but I felt as if I had been through a long sickness and now needed some good, constructive, positive air to breathe. Philippa Harrison said she loved nothing better than to help fix broken things; I know that is how she saw Virago—and I dare say to some extent, me. Philippa re-confirmed me as Publisher of Virago. Sarah White and Tamsyn Berryman returned to their jobs as editorial assistants, and we began to integrate. The other Viragos took jobs within Little, Brown. I remember saying to Philippa after a few weeks that coming to Little, Brown was like coming out of a dark and twisted wood to a little clearing where the sun shone through the trees. Once again we were talking about books and not internecine politics. It was such a relief.

  I found out later that Philippa had asked people such as Hilary Hale, the crime editor extraordinaire, to keep an eye on me, to make me welcome, and indeed I was swept up by her and Richard Beswick, then Head of Abacus, who easily could have taken against this upstart younger sister imprint but instead welcomed Virago and the strengthening we brought to literary publishing at Little, Brown. They and others took me to lunch and offered friendship and an inside track of how to function in what was, to me, a very large company. The Sales Director, David Kent, set about a deep learning of the list—an invaluable and important task that almost immediately got Virago’s backlist performing once again—and Charlie Viney, Export Director, improved our sales abroad. Little, Brown was about ninety people and I was the only full-time senior Virago person from the old team. I could feel from the start that Virago was cherished and there was not going to be any sense of asset stripping or changing the fundamental nature of the press.

  But it was very different from being independent. There were so many systems for us to learn: print confirm, low-stock assessment, copy-editing and printing schedules, and new people: cover designers, marketing people, publicists, and all the international staff too. It was head-achingly confusing at times, but I could feel Virago being strengthened and helped—and this was even before we began to add new titles to the lists—with a team who recognized Virago’s reputation, and individuals who loved our books and wanted the list to flourish.

  There was, however, a need to reassure Virago authors that this was the case.

  Letters went out and meetings were convened. I remember particularly one slightly awkward meeting with Philippa, Margaret Atwood and her husband and agent, and me. I remember a long talk I had with Maya Angelou on the phone. There were many such meetings and phone calls with authors and their agents. The message was: Virago was still very much in business. Yes, now an imprint in a large company owned by an American company, yes, that was true, but Virago—now in a new guise with Lennie as Publisher as continuity and a link with the past, and Philippa as passionate fan and Managing Director of Little, Brown—is here to stay.

  Margaret Atwood remained loyal to Virago and the following year we published the paperback of Alias Grace—which turned out to be her most successful novel until her Booker winner, The Blind Assassin. Many more of Maya Angelou’s books followed too. To me it seemed we might have the ideal situation: a continuation of idealistic publishing backed by the might of the conglomerate, helped by people who truly believed in Virago. Of course there is nothing guaranteed in such an arrangement; I know that. But I also knew very well that a business, whether financially underpinned by independence, or by a conglomerate, or by a family-owned group, can never be certain of success. I would define success as continuing to publish what we want, by the authors we admire, and selling lots of books, but I also know that publishing is capricious, dependent on markets, reputation, and people.

  So many other small independent presses have since sold to Little, Brown or its now-parent Hachette: Piatkus, and then Constable & Robinson, with its Corsair list; Quercus, Bookouture, Rising Stars, and Jessica Kingsley.

  Lots of people have helped Virago remain vibrant. Those people—editors such as Sally Abbey, Ursula Doyle, Donna Coonan, Imogen Taylor, Victoria Pepe, Jill Foulston, Ailah Ahmed, and assistant editor David Bamford, and the splendid Virago Publisher Sarah Savitt—and particularly the bosses—Philippa Harrison first, of course, and later David Young, Ursula Mackenzie, David Shelley, and Charlie King—have supported Virago, as well they might, as we are a good thing commercially. But it’s because Virago means something else to them too. Ownership by Time Warner ended, thankfully, when they sold Little, Brown to Hachette in 2006. Things got even better. When I went to my first board meeting with the Hachette CEO, Arnaud Nourry, I introduced myself wondering if he knew that he now presided over a feminist imprint. His eyes lit up and he reached out to shake my hand as he said, in his French accent, ‘Ah, you publish the books that matter.’

  When we began publishing under the auspices of Little, Brown it was right smack in so-called post-feminism. Suddenly it was all about individual empowerment, not women’s rights. And women could look and act exactly as they wanted: this was ‘raunch culture’, as later coined by the feminist Ariel Levy. The word feminism was not fashionable. Irony ruled.

  To work alongside me, holding the reins of the old Virago, the loyalty of the authors, and the knowledge of the list, we needed a younger editor who understood this generation.

  Sally Abbey joined us as Senior Commissioning Editor and in 1997 began a new series: Virago Vs, books that were to ‘avoid political correctness at all costs’. I must admit, I really wasn’t sure about that copy line. However, one of the things that I know about publishing is that you need a range of voices and talents, and that one taste should not dominate publishing choice. A good editor must be given her head. You must trust them. I certainly recognized there was a sea change in how young women viewed feminism, and I loved the style, spirit, and humour of Sally’s list. Though I did feel uncomfortable that Virago was appearing to agree that feminism was boringly, dully politically correct, it did mirror the times; many thought feminism was passé.

  The Virago Vs reflected bold women’s writing and views: Jennifer Belle’s fabulous novel Going Down; Tongue First: Adventures in Physical Culture by Emily Jenkins; Like Being Killed by Ellen Miller; and the wonderfully named In Search of an Impotent Man by Gaby Hauptmann. The Virago V that outlasted the series, and the one that Sally will, correctly, be most proud of discovering, was Sarah Waters’s first novel, the extraordinary, game-changing Tipping the Velvet.

  Fiction had always been at the core of Virago’s publishing—but mainly as Virago Modern Classics. The frontlist fiction, until we came to Little, Brown was not as plentiful. But now we were able to acquire more authors to make us an even better player in fiction publishing: Sarah Waters, Linda Grant, Sarah Dunant, Marilynne Robinson, Rachel Seiffert, and new work by Shirley Hazzard, to join the writers we’d been publishing for years including Gillian Slovo, Michèle Roberts, Nina Bawden, and, of course, Margaret Atwood.

  The Virago Modern Classics underwent yet another revamp. We acted on sales reports that said the green spine was ol
d-fashioned and listened to a bookseller who said ‘they look like you need to have a university degree’ to read them. It was deemed that de-branding would bring in more readers, so we kept the apple logo but took away the green. Twenty-two years later, readers were utterly thrilled to see that as part of the Virago Modern Classics fortieth-anniversary celebrations Donna Coonan ushered in those green spines once again.

  It didn’t take us long to get Virago back on her feet, but there is no gainsaying it: we have this in our story—a failure to stay independent, again, and to keep all our staff. This I have felt keenly, even though as I write this history I can see, more clearly, how many factors beyond us were in play and what we were up against in the publishing, bookselling, and political landscape. It wasn’t the first time we’d left independence for the security of a larger company, but this one feels personal to me.

  I don’t regret our management buy-out for a moment and I am sure the others don’t either. In my view it’s hard, if not almost impossible, to grow an activist press within a corporate publishing house because the aims are just not the same. The activist press, while of course wanting to make a profit in order to survive, does not put profit as the almighty first. It takes time to grow and it will take decisions that are not always based on making money. Sometimes, of course, so do large publishing houses, but not so often. Our management buy-out years gave us time to grow and become an even stronger name to reckon with; it was good to have tried independence again, even if we couldn’t maintain it for a long time. But we picked ourselves up; we very much leaned on others who cherished us; we did some re-inventing. Donna Coonan has been able to work full-time on the Classics, adding a dramatic number of important novels to the list; the larger company gave us national and international might, we had some great bestsellers and I learned how to negotiate the way for a feminist press inside a large company.

  Then, as the world turns—feminism came round again.

  That’s the bigger picture. How one deals with the lows on a personal level is slightly different. It took me a long time to take pride in the Virago that I and so many others at Virago and Little, Brown have built. Blame, from self or others, is not especially helpful when it comes to getting down to finding solutions, but it is natural, particularly around something as precious—and precarious—as a feminist press. We blamed and were blamed—by each other and by the media. We had to fend off the idea that Virago having a downturn meant the end of women’s enterprises and point out again and again that women not agreeing over something we cared deeply about was natural. In the midst of all this noise and bitterness and disloyalty, I am not sure we ever acknowledged the idea that trouble or even failure in business is far more normal than success. We felt we must carry the mantle of feminism and women in business, and because our earlier success was so glorious there was just so much at stake.

  All successful business people talk about having failed in some ways and begun again. Did we think because we were feminists that option wasn’t open to us?

  Turns out, it was.

  Eight years later, in May 2003, we marked our thirtieth birthday with a glorious celebration at the Chelsea Physic Garden. Gratifyingly all the old Viragos—every one of them—came to the party: Carmen, Ursula, Harriet, Alexandra, Ruthie, Lynn, Kate among so many others, including the sadly now late Becky Swift, were there, alongside the people—Philippa Harrison, David Young, Ursula Mackenzie—who had helped get us back on the road. And, of course, our authors and agents.

  Mark Bostridge, biographer of Vera Brittain, interviewed me for the Independent on Sunday under the headline ‘The Apple Bites Back’. He characterized me as having ‘survived a mauling’ but he also told of our success: doubling our turnover to £4 million with 600 titles in print and, pleasingly for me, spoke of my passion for editing: ‘Talk to any of her authors, and one quickly gains an impression of a kind of individual who’s all too rare in modern publishing: the committed editor.’

  That evening I was hopeful but anxious. Though people moved around the party with some wariness, there they all were. The wonderful Sandi Toksvig, who is now a Virago author, raised our spirits (I had asked her to speak because I knew it was going to be important to laugh) and then she and Margaret Atwood lit the candle on the cake. I looked out into the audience of old and new Viragos and breathed a great sigh of relief.

  Margaret took the mic, and with one of her sly grins recited her poem for us:

  Back then, to Soho’s seedier nooks,

  Came a band of lasses keen on books.

  They stormed the land of spangles and garters,

  One room on Wardour Street, they hired for starters.

  Up dimly lit stairways they bravely groped

  While men in mackintoshes leered and hoped.

  They had leather satchels and sensible shoesies,

  Though some mistook them for upmarket floozies.

  And though there was the odd bit of fighting

  They took on the task of—women’s writing!

  (A notion THEN some set great store on

  Was that women’s writing was an oxymoron)

  But though doubters pointed and quipped and jeered,

  They rolled up their sleeves and persevered.

  Their revenues were often less than slender,

  But on writers they lavished care so tender.

  And readers too were deeply grateful

  For Virago’s high-heaped female plateful.

  Though their first author tours were do-it-yourself trips,

  Soon they were into dumpbins and shelf strips.

  They stopped re-boiling the coffee grounds,

  And they grew by leaps and they grew by bounds.

  Tonight we’ve put on our shirts and dresses

  To toast Virago’s many successes—

  So raise a glass to the half-gnawed fruit

  Of knowledge and clap and stamp and hoot.

  And cheer an appropriately rowdy cheer

  Hooray for Virago’s thirtieth year!

  PART Four

  The Power to Publish is a Wonderful Thing

  Chapter Eleven

  The Intimacy of Editing

  The first adult book I edited was Michèle Roberts’s novel Daughters of the House. I took advice from my fellow editors, ‘followed my gut’ and trusted this already most accomplished author. The novel got outstanding reviews and was shortlisted for the 1992 Booker Prize. I was nearing the end of my sixteen-week maternity leave (which is what we got in those days) for my second child, Zak, when I heard the news that Michèle had made the shortlist. I stood in a call box, as we were in Suffolk with no land line, and whooped with delight.

  A few weeks later, now back at work, I struggled to find something glamorous to dress my post-baby body in. On the evening of the Booker dinner I rushed home from the office to breastfeed my son, stuffed breast pads into my already too-tight gown and dashed to the ceremony. Halfway through, I could feel I was leaking everywhere. Sadly we didn’t win—that year, for the first time in history, the prize was split between two authors, Michael Ondaatje and Barry Unsworth. But we were there, and Daughters of the House went on to win the prestigious WH Smith Literary Award, which had previously gone to the likes of Laurie Lee, Jean Rhys, Philip Larkin, Seamus Heaney, and Doris Lessing. Sir Simon Hornby, the chairman of WH Smith Group, wrote in their brochure, ‘It’s a particular pleasure to honour this author . . . I am delighted that by selecting Michèle Roberts they [judges Philip Ziegler, Hermione Lee, and John Carey] have, at the same time, enabled us to give due recognition to Virago Press, which has contributed so much to British publishing over the past two decades.’

  Oh, I thought, through leaky breasts and the tussles of returning to work as the mother of two small children, this editing lark is not so hard. Ha! I quickly learned it was not at all that simple.

  To be honest, Daughters of the House didn’t need much editing: some clarity, signposting, and, in places, a bit more ‘air’ around Mich�
�le’s exquisite sentences to let them breathe. Her creation was beautifully mysterious, and purposely opaque in places. I listened to her as much as she did to me: I was a rookie, while she had already published several novels. And I was hooked.

  To be a midwife—as I like to think of editors—to be at the birth of a creation, can be amazing. Writing—and therefore editing—is tough, close work, exhausting and sometimes bloody, but helping an author as she forges words, ideas, and characters into a shape and then watching as it alchemizes into life: for me, that is a hard-won, deep pleasure.

  There are two aspects of my career that I feel strongly about. The first is the privilege and challenge of being part of a group of women who have created Virago and kept it a vigorous and vibrant imprint; the second is trying to provide authors with an editing and publishing experience of good calibre. Of course, if only that would always happen! I know I fall short at times.

  What is editing? It’s sitting up at the table to read, paying close attention to every line and word, pencil in hand to mark the places where one is bored or confused or excited and engaged. It’s being preternaturally alert to one’s responses to the text. A publisher recently reminded me that when she was a young editor I said, to reassure her, ‘Editing is just reading with your eyes wide open.’ I laughed. After more than two decades of editing, I still think that. It’s being alive to the author’s intentions and trusting one’s instinct. It’s imaginative and emotional immersion in the text, and it’s being present for the long haul, ready and willing to read a manuscript many, many times.

  Editing is an intimate experience. Writing—of fiction or non-fiction—is exposing. Writing tells the reader what the author thinks about, what the author feels, what the author sees, what the author hears, and what the author imagines. Writing also shows the author’s talent, facility, and dexterity with words. Writing well, with clarity, is a technical challenge; writing with an originality that surprises and delights the reader, writing that shows something new, that makes words paint a picture—that is a great art. Even the attempt to reach those heights is revealing of the author’s self.