Coonan to step down from Virago Modern Classics after nearly 20 years

Donna Coonan, the longest-running editor of the Virago Modern Classics list, has announced she will step down in June after nearly 20 years.

During her tenure Coonan has acquired more than 200 books for the list, as well as revitalising core authors such as Elizabeth Taylor, Zora Neale Hurston, Rosamond Lehmann and Nora Ephron. She has published Daphne du Maurier’s oeuvre twice over, leading to a major reappraisal of the writer’s reputation and legacy.

Key classics acquisitions include Patricia Highsmith, Barbara Pym, Ann Petry, Mary Renault, Gayl Jones, Mary McCarthy, Muriel Spark, Janet Frame and Attia Hosain. She also started a children’s list, with highlights including Nina Bawden, Joan Aiken, Rumer Godden and previously unpublished stories by Noel Streatfeild.

Last year, on the frontlist, Coonan published The Fran Lebowitz Reader and two novels by Gayl Jones, which were Pulitzer and National Book Award finalists. Other publications include Wayward by Dana Spiotta and the forthcoming debut Big Girl by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan.

For the list’s 30th anniversary, Coonan launched the covetable hardback designer classics collection, which continues to be added to each year; for the 40th anniversary in 2018 she spearheaded the return of the iconic green spines and created a series that won marketing and design awards – and made Nora Ephron’s Heartburn a top-20 paperback bestseller 35 years after first publication.

In addition, she has commissioned introductions by a wide range of high-profile writers – Hilary Mantel, Zadie Smith, Maggie O’Farrell, George Saunders, Tayari Jones, Kamila Shamsie, Stanley Tucci, Jane Campion, Sarah Waters, Jilly Cooper, Helen Oyeyemi, Carmen Maria Machado and Gillian Flynn, among others.

Lennie Goodings, chair of Virago, said: “Not since Carmen Callil founded the Virago Modern Classics in 1978 has there been a Classics editorial director like Donna Coonan. Over her 20 years working on this jewel in the crown of Virago, her passion, deep literary knowledge and creativity has given the series new authors, award-winning designs and new introductions by marvellous contemporary writers. We are hugely grateful to her for her inspired and dedicated work. She is splendid and leaves us with a great legacy. I thank her deeply.”

Coonan told The Bookseller she is "excited to explore new opportunities", adding: “It has been a source of professional and personal pride to be at the helm of the VMCs, a list which, it’s no understatement to say, has changed literary history. I’ve worked with so many of my literary heroes and it’s been a privilege to build on Carmen’s legacy of celebrating unfairly neglected women writers and challenging the accepted canon. The list feels like part of my DNA, so it’s a difficult decision to say goodbye to what has for many years been my dream job, and I’ll miss my wonderful colleagues at Little, Brown. But the time has come to explore new challenges.”

She can be contacted at Editor@dcoonan.com.