Lennie Goodings - A Bite of the Apple: A Life with Books, Writers and Virago

Soho, London, early evening, late 1970s, and the sounds of Friday-night revelries rise up to our window on the fourth floor in Wardour Street where Im still working my way through piles of paperwork in the Virago office. I am not alone. We do everything ourselves in this companyincluding the dusting and vacuuming of our one largish room and small kitchen/bathroomand it is Carmen Callils turn to clean. If its your week you can come in on Saturday or stay late after work on Friday. Carmen is vigorously polishing one of our three telephones. I am just twenty-five, Canadian, new to Britain, and in awe of this formidable woman, but as there are only two of us in the office I feel emboldened to ask: Why did you start Virago? She looks up and, without missing a beat, replies, To change the world, darling. Thats why.

I know I am in the right place.

I am a fervent believer that books can affect, even change, lives. It was a memoir about bookselling that partly drew me to Britain to begin with. 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanfffunny, sharp correspondence between a girl from the new world and older gentlemen in a London bookshophad been one of my favourites as a young woman. (Satisfyingly, now a Virago Modern Classic.) Before I arrived in London in 1977, I felt I already knew the redoubtable Foyles and the famous street of second-hand bookshops which threaded its way from Oxford Street to Trafalgar Square. I longed for a relationship with London and its booksellers and publishers.

Clutching a temporary working visa, shrugging off the new-to-me idea that I was a slightly inferior character from the colonies who, as the immigration paperwork had it, understandably wants to visit the mother country, I packed my bags. I was not long out of university, had travelled to the west coast of Canada, where I had worked in a bookshop, and back to my home near Niagara Falls. Now, at last, I would go to London. I bought a round-trip air ticket and told myself and my family that I would stay for one year to try anything and everything and then head home, probably to Toronto, to get a proper job.

Over four decades later, still in London, married to an extraordinary man who has lived the Virago story with me, and now with two grown children, I write this book about Virago, the feminist press.

A Bite of the Apple is part memoir, part history of Virago, and part thoughts on more than forty years of feminist publishing. I consider myself so very lucky and privileged to be part of Virago. I have tried to be straight and not shy from awkward and painful times, as well as to tell of the truly great ones. At times the conflicting demands of the press have nearly capsized our ship but, to stretch that metaphor just a bit further, the Viragosby whom I mean authors, founders, staff, and our readerswere always going to rock the boat. We always meant to disrupt, to make a difference.

This is not an aggrandizing hagiography, though I remain deeply indebted to and impressed by the authors and staff who have made Virago what it is. There are some pretty fabulous women who deserve to have their praises sung.

What I love about publishing is that no matter how sophisticated, how technological, how digital our industry becomes, one fact remains: publishing still comes down to one person telling another, you must read this book. Publishing is driven by that passion, conviction, and excitement.

You also need courage to publish and, certainly, to write. To write this book means taking risks, which makes me feel a deep empathy with my authors. I am highly aware of laying claim to a story that so many have witnessed and participated in. Even as I try to be honest and represent myself and others, I am, of course, editing, deleting, and leading readers to believe that what I saw, what I thought, and what I think is the truth. That both humbles and scares me.

One of my favourite kinds of book is one that doesnt quite fit neatly into categories and it turns out thats what I have written too. I have followed the chronology of the press and try to represent the enormous breadth of the Virago titles published over these years, set against the background of the march of feminism, but I also segue into thoughts on editing, on post-feminism, on reading, on breaking boundaries, and at times I fast-forward or think back. The chronology might lose you at times but thats okay, even understandable: weve had ten different offices and seven different forms of ownership. I have had four different jobs: Publicity Manager/Director, Marketing Director, Publisher, and now Chair. Over these years probably close to one hundred women have worked at Virago and weve published nigh on 4,000 titles and just over 1,000 authors. Thats a lot of history. But I am not trying to capture every detail; what I want to portray is how it felt to be there. So its a hybrid book.

I have come to see that the connecting thread of this book is tension. Tension, though uncomfortable at times, is not necessarily bad: it makes creative sparks and even maddening constraints can be productive. Virago lives within the tension between idealism and pragmatism; between sisterhood and celebrity; between art and commerce; between independence and being owned; between behaving independently but for over twenty-five years being part of a conglomerate; between watching feminism wax and wane and then become popular again, while at the same time knowing so many of the battles are still to be won; between being modest and yet aware of ones power; between trying to do good in the world and sometimes failing. Tension does seem to be an integral part of change.