Virago to mark first anniversary of Callil's death with new lecture series

Virago is marking the first anniversary of the death of its founder, Carmen Callil, with a lecture series.  

The first of The Carmen Talks will be held by biographer and critic Dame Hermione Lee at the British Library on 17th October and will open to the public. Lee will “present a vivid portrait of the publisher who wanted to revolutionise the world" and will talk about the women’s writing that Callil loved and about how the Virago Modern Classics changed the course of English literary history. 

Callil’s most famous series was born from her passion for reading and sheer frustration with the male canon of the day. “The Virago Modern Classics list was meant to be ebullient, a library of women’s fiction with Boudica waving the flag. I saw in my mind rows of green paperbacks with luscious covers on all the bookshelves of the world… I saw a large world, not a small canvas … a great library of women’s fiction” she said. 

The Virago Modern Classics series saw hundreds of great women writers read and studied for the first time, including Zora Neale Hurston, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather, Rebecca West, Rosamond Lehmann, Miles Franklin, Henry Handel Richardson and Antonia White.

Virago plans an annual series of talks over the next five years on subjects dear to Callil and Virago’s hearts: classics, women’s literature and activism.