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Virago founder Callil thanks women behind the scenes as press celebrates 50th year
Founder of Virago Carmen Callil thanked all the women behind the scenes of the publishing house’s 50-year success story at an event marking the anniversary at the British Library,
In a speech at the 7th June event, Callil, who founded Spare Rib Books in 1972 with Rosie Boycott and Marsha Rowe before renaming it Virago and launching Virago Press as a publishing house in 1973, paid tribute to the the women who “did the nuts and bolts of keeping the company as a going concern over so many decades”.
She said: “It is customary to honour book publishers and editors on these occasions, but it is the other Viragos I want to honour this evening... Their names did not and do not appear in newspapers or gossip columns , but they know who they are, and I want to thank each of them, past and present, from the bottom of my heart and Virago’s heart.”
Callil said the team has always seen “Virago” as a separate human being in the room. “She is standing beside me as I speak,” she said, before going on to thank writers, “those here today, and those who are not, those who have written for Virago and those who have not,” for being “the spur and essence and magic of Virago’s purpose”.
Over the years Virago has been home to authors such as Maya Angelou, Margaret Atwood, Beatrix Campbell and Angela Carter.
In attendance at the event this week were publishers and authors including Helena Kennedy, Philippa Perry, Lindsey Hilsum, William Sieghart, Lennie Goodings, Ursula Owen, Hermione Lee, Joeli Brearley, Rachel Holmes, Kathy Lette, Amelia Gentleman, Natalie Haynes, Anita Anand, and Nell Dunn. Other speeches on the night were given by Boycott, Rowe and Bee Rowlatt, writer and British Library events producer.
Callil went on to thank Harrier Spicer “who joined me as my assistant well before I conceived of the idea of Virago and who steered the company on its forward course for so many years”, and Virago chair Goodings, who has now been at the helm for more than 25 years.
“She, and her magnificent achievements, exceed every hope we old folk had when we passed the reins to her,” she said.
“Virago now flourishes in a world of globalised, corporate management in which only the new kind of book publisher, like Lennie Goodings, can thrive. It’s a much better world in so many ways than we early Viragos could give attention to. The furies and inequalities we experienced in our childhoods and youth dominated the work we did those 50 years ago.
“Other battles, for race, for gender equality are now being fought – and Lennie and her Viragos have taken and will take the company into this new world. Thank goodness, thanks to the writers who open those old, closed curtains.”
She also referred to the “vital importance of freedom of speech and the rights of all authors to write without sensitivity editors, abuse or cancellation,” referencing her support for Kate Clanchy following criticism of her book Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me (Swift Press). Callil cancelled her membership of the Society of Authors last year over what she said was a lack of support for Clanchy and then SoA chairman Philip Pullman alongside the book’s critics.
She went on: “Running a business means taking power, just as men always do and have done through the ages, so what I want to say finally, is a response to a constant request made to me. Namely: what should feminists be working for now?
“My answer is this: I beg women to take power now, in these coming years, to fight for a new political arrangement. To give us a political opportunity to get rid of governments that perpetuate the gross inequalities we have come to live with in this country in the last 50 years, a country none of us who went into battle in the 1970s ever dreamed would come to pass. That is the next job for women.”
