Welcome to
The Women’s Press (1977-2003)
and to this global online, ongoing ARCHIVE.
“I admire The Women’s Press, which has consistently taken risks, and been enterprising and brave.”
– Doris Lessing. Nobel Laureate in Literature
Politically challenging yet commercially innovative and successful. A publishing house that consistently changed lives of readers for the (very much) better.
The Women’s Press, London, was founded in 1977 by New Zealand-born, UK resident and already-successful publisher, Stephanie Dowrick. The Women’s Press began to publish in February 1978 – with Stephanie initially working as the only full-time employee from her home in Bow, in the East End of London.
This on-line, on-going global archive exists to honour the key place The Women’s Press holds in Second Wave feminism – the women’s liberation movement that was part of a wider recognition of the need for civil rights, economic and social justice for ALL. Not just for some.
A truly innovative, status-quo-challenging publishing house, The Women’s Press broke new ground in key areas, including sexual, race and class politics, psychoanalysis and social analysis, textual studies, environmental awareness, theology, sexuality/gender, anti-war, anti-pornography, art history, art and media studies, including language and linguistics.
In a 1978 announcement, Stephanie Dowrick wrote: ‘We are not only asking for the same rights as men, we are also actively reassessing the society in which we are to play an equal part. We are examining history to find our place there and, while demanding power, are questioning where the distortions of power lie.’
Non-fiction writers who will never be forgotten include Angela Davis, Virginia Woolf, Beatrix Campbell, Rozsika Parker, Andrea Dworkin, Shulamith Firestone, Susan Griffin, Barbara Demming, Nor Hall, Mary Daly, Ellen Kuzwayo, Sally Belfrage, Nawal El Saadawi, Leonie Caldecott, Phyllis Chesler, Joanna Ryan. Perhaps one book among so many stands out for its incredible cut through to make the emerging field of feminist-informed psychotherapy: In Our Own Hands, by Sheila Ernst and Lucy Goodison.
Literary commentators/scholars included Michèle Barrett, Helen Taylor, Ellen Moers, Louise Bernikow, Cora Kaplan, Carolyn Heilbrun, Joanna Russ, Casey Miller and Kate Swift, and Lisa Alther. In the crucial field of art history, pioneering books were published by Gillian Perry, Rozsika Parker, Judy Chicago.
Hugely significant fiction and memoir writers notably included Toni Cade Bambara, Alice Walker (whose blockbusters included The Color Purple), Janet Frame, Lisa Alther, May Sarton, Marie Cardinal, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Kate Chopin, bell hooks, Joan Barfoot, Marge Piercy, Stevie Davies, Patricia Grace, Michèle Roberts and Monique Wittig.
The Women’s Press kept their authors centre stage, editing, marketing and publishing those writers whose books they chose wholly professionally – and sometimes brilliantly.
Through images, memories and experiences, this archive is needed to applaud the courageous, bold, visionary writers who were free to give of their best because The Women’s Press understood their intentions and worked closely and co-operatively with them.
This archive also reflects the success stories of independent publishing houses across many countries that could vigorously reflect and advance the social-political changes of that potent time, while being savvy, innovative, skilful in how and what they published. It is a political story. It is a publishing history. It is a much-needed honouring of the talented, committed writers who deserved the very best for their work.
This archive will grow further from your personal contributions of experiences, images, memories. This will bring the best years alive again for present and future generations. We sought to inspire then; we seek to inspire now.
We welcome YOUR SUPPORT and active engagement.
The financing of The Women’s Press has long been scandalously – risibly – misrepresented. Stephanie shared ownership of the Press – originally with shares worth GBP100 pounds – with “literary gambler”, Palestinian-born entrepreneur, Naim Attallah.
The story of Dowrick and Attallah’s eventful meeting in Knightsbridge early in 1977, is told elsewhere (forthcoming). Stephanie was 29 and Editorial Manager of Triad Paperbacks, owned by Cape, Chatto and The Bodley Head, together with Granada Publishing. She was NOT seeking backing for a publishing house! It was Naim’s mad gamble – and hers – when she chose to step away from a highly secure, high-prestige role to jump into the Great Unknown.
Every bit of that high-level experience was needed. But as co-owners, with Stephanie unable and anyway – as a single woman living in London – totally unwilling to raise capital independently, she was promised highly conditional financial backing from Naim Attallah in his role as Chairman of the Namara Group.
That was a promise Naim kept faithfully, extending that privilege to later “regimes” – until 1991 when he had to step in to save the Press from financial collapse. Then, with more confidence from 1991-1999, under the leadership of Stephanie Dowrick as Chairperson, with Kathy Gale formerly of Pan Macmillan as joint MD with Mary Hemming, formerly Sales Director of The Women’s Press and continuing also in that key role.
The brilliant “iron” iconography that gave the Press immediate brand recognition was the creation of Canadian artist, Donna Muir.
Following a move to Shoreditch in 1979, The Women’s Press Book Club was founded by Dowrick as an innovative means to support the Press as a whole and the authors plus other excellent feminist writers – giving them readers and an eager direct sales audience they would not otherwise have had. The Book Club aided cash flow and increased TWP visibility with far less investment than publishing demands.
“The close association we seek to have (in 1983/4) with the women’s liberation movement (WLM), necessitates constant awareness of criteria beyond personal enthusiasm and financial viability. So, it’s not enough to say I publish books I like (though that has to be part of it), or those which will sell (though a bankrupt publishing house could advance no cause) . . . It is an understatement to say that women have a long history of excellence in writing. The desire to play some part in the continuance of that tradition means that we look for high standards of writing and argument, and this becomes more and not less important as a publishing house grows. The Women’s Press is not just another publisher, turning out attractive books each year, but a publishing house which must create and keep available the work of women who are intellectual and political pioneers.”
The Color Purple
Alice Walker
In Our Own Hands
Sheila Ernst and Lucy Goodison
