| dc.description.abstract | Five years after their establishment in 1973, Virago started their popular fiction reprint range, republishing, in 1978, Antonia White’s 1933 novel, Frost in May. The Virago Modern Classics (VMCs) became a mark of feminist credentials for women during the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM), but there has been no research investigating why novels written during the interwar years, as many early VMCs were, had any relevance for second-wave feminists in the 1970s and 1980s. Basing my research on the Modern Classics section of the Virago Archives in the British Library, and focusing on the files for the republished authors, I investigated reasons for the popularity and iconic status of republished interwar novels among second-wave feminists.
The first chapter situates Virago as a component of the feminist movement, which emphasised sisterhood to empower women. Both Virago’s working practices and their creation of an audience for the VMCs reflected the importance of uniting women, and of enabling women to challenge dominant patriarchal values in publishing. The second chapter investigates Virago’s business model, looking at Carmen Callil’s unique determination to combine feminism and profit through Virago Press. The VMCs were targeted at an audience of non-radical middle-class readers, reflecting the values of both the Virago team and the WLM. Maintaining profitability whilst disseminating the values of the WLM allowed Virago to compete in a mainstream market and to evolve in the face of changing feminist movements. Chapter 3 contains an analysis of the paratextual elements of the VMCs, demonstrating how the books were branded and marketed to a specific audience. Virago subverted male-dominated advertising practices and used new introductions and covers to develop a market for their books, creating a community of readers based on commonalities between the interwar writers and the WLM readers. Chapter 4 is based on analysis of the novels of four VMC authors, assessing their presentation, and examining how their content was made relevant to WLM readers. Virago promoted active reading and rereading, encouraging feminist interpretations of books by a new generation of readers. Rereading enabled understanding of the overlaps between two groups of women.
By situating Virago within the feminist movement of the 1970s and 1980s, the thesis demonstrates how Virago created an audience for its reprint range, based on commonalities between generations. Empowering women by uniting them enabled challenges to male-dominated literary culture, giving (some) women a voice and a literary history. | en_GB |
