Dame Carmen Callil, founder of the pioneering feminist publishing company Virago Press, died on 17 October at the age of 84. Born in Australia in 1938, the publisher, critic, and writer was instrumental in amplifying the voices of many oft-neglected female writers.
Callil lost her father at the age of eight and was raised, along with her three siblings, by her widowed mother after the tragic event.
Having attained a Bachelors degree in History and Literature from the University of Melbourne 1960, she emigrated to the UK just a week after graduating. She traveled to Europe before settling in London in 1964 where she remained for the rest of her life.
Her career included a brief stint at Marks and Spencer’s as a buying assistant before she began working in publishing at Hutchinson in 1965 after she placed a brief and to the point ad in The Times: ‘Australian, B.A. wants job in book publishing’. She became publicity manager at Panther Books, then became responsible for all imprints at Granada Publishing, then Anthony Blonde and André Deutsch.
It was her time at countercultural newspaper Ink which formed the foundations of her founding of Virago. It was there that she met Marsha Rowe and Rosie Boycott, founders of the iconic feminist magazine of the 70s, Spare Rib. Virago was founded initially as ‘Spare Rib Books’ in 1974, with the stated aim to “publish books which celebrated women and women’s lives, and which would, by so doing, spread the message of women’s liberation to the whole population”.
Virago went from strength to strength and became an independent company with Callil as one of its co-directors in 1976. She was directly responsible for many out of print books by women finding thousands of new readers as they were republished as part of the Modern Classics List. It is thanks to her in part that we have access to fascinating old and texts by authors as varied as Maya Angelou, Naomi Wolf, Margaret Atwood, Angela Carter and Zora Neale Hurston.
Her impact on the world of publishing cannot be overstated. In 2017 she was awarded the Benson Medal by the Royal Society of Literature in recognition of her service to literature, and her legacy will undoubtedly live on through Virago’s continued work to platform increasingly diverse voices.
Words by Caitlin Barr
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