Women Poets, Male Publishers: Myth vs. Market in Post-1960s Britain

We are often told that the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s led to the rediscovery of forgotten women writers. Without feminist presses such as Virago, these women would have sunk into obscurity. Thanks to Carmen Callil and other trailblazing feminist publishers, a canon of women’s literature emerged, and living writers managed to survive and sometimes thrive in a literary marketplace that had so far been dominated by men. Although obstacles remained, the story is one of the triumphs...