Author of Hags returns to Little, Brown with book on ‘kindness culture’

Little, Brown imprint Fleet has signed (Un)kind, a book on “how kindness culture is used against women”, by Victoria Smith, the author Hags: the demonisation of middle-aged women, published by Fleet in March 2023.

British Commonwealth rights were acquired by Ursula Doyle, publisher, from Caroline Hardman at Hardman & Swainson.

The book, which “looks at the ever-present exhortation to ‘be kind’, usually aimed at women when they look as though they might object to curtailments to their rights, their livelihoods and their relationships with their loved ones and wider society, all in the name of ‘progress’,” will be published spring 2025.

The publisher synopsis reads: “In (Un)kind, Victoria turns her pyrotechnic intelligence, ferocious wit and unerring eye for hypocrisy and muddled thinking to the many ways in which women find themselves undermined by being told that feminists are nothing but big meanies.

“Traditional beliefs about women’s ‘kind’ nature have been repackaged for an age that remains dependent in all sorts of ways on female self-sacrifice and been incorporated into the endless labour expected of women.

“Ultimately, the ‘be kind’ instruction distorts relations between humans, harming both those coerced into performative ‘kindness work’, and the (un)grateful recipients of their services. Kindness culture is a part of the terrifying backlash against feminism; it is, at its heart, unkind.”