Why words matter

A letter to researchers

Dear Researchers, Documents follow in the above menu as a guide to current and future academic writers, whom we wholeheartedly encourage through the painstaking, evidence-based research presented on this weksite, in this section, the Archive, and throughout.

Editorial independence had, throughout, to be linked to responsible management of financial and intellectual resources by women for TWP to claim its place as a women’s press. Private “patronage”, government grants, institutional support: none of this was for a moment desired or sought by Stephanie Dowrick when literary entrepreneur, Naim Attallah, (typically) impetuously offered her the chance not to publish a feminist list of books for Quartet (of no interest to Stephanie) but a “press of her own”. Not, in reality, “her own”. Co-owned. With what seemed and indeed was for many years a fertile, exciting, productive collaboration: Naim’s investment of relative and conditional “security” through guaranteeing the bank overdraft Stephanie would have been unable to secure (as a 29-year-old New Zealander in 1977); Stephanie’s shining career to date, proven creative ability, and the kind of “outsider” risk-taking “crazy” drive and work ethic that Naim could recognise, enjoy – and trust.

The celebration due to The Women’s Press is everywhere on this website, and in the minds of authors, staff loyal to the press and women’s liberation values who worked there, and those hundreds of thousands of readers whose lives were changed for the better by books and writers who, to use a Quaker phrase, “spoke to their condition”: met the needs they didn’t even know they had. Or that they experienced only through an aching or confusing lack.

“Speaking truth to power” is also a Quaker phrase that demands respect as well as attention. That, too, was the founding value Stephanie brought with her: not to power only, but to empower.

The achievements of TWP are perhaps best understood in retrospect. No feminist publisher anywhere offered – from 1978 onwards – the same range of books and writers, stylishly and professionally published, continuously exploding the myth that “women’s issues” were in any way limited or confined.

Intellectual rigour, integrity of research and argument, accessibility of complex and groundbreaking positions without “dumbing down”, the introduction or advancement of entire new categories of publishing, intensely creative presentation and marketing of individual books, calendars, art diaries, posters, postcards, badges, and of TWP as an imprint and the Bookclub as a vital adjunct: how this was achieved, and the legacy of those myriad breakthroughs in women’s never-uniform self-perceptions and gaining of agency, remains to be fully explored.

Publishing is by its very nature an assertion of “voice”. That takes confidence; it also enables it. Giving “voice” to the 5-600 authors published by The Women’s Press is just a start. Each writer herself offered a fresh visibility to those countless others she was evoking either through her prose, or her research. Frequently, this was an act of radical articulation.

Authors like Mary Daly, Andrea Dworkin, Angela Davis, Phyllis Chesler, Lisa Alther, Alice Walker, Toni Cade Bambara, Lucy Goodison, Michèle Roberts, Shulamith Firestone, Susan Griffin, Verena Stefan – and so many more – took risks that saw some lose “security” and “status” as they dramatically challenged the status quo. “What does ‘a writer’s life’ mean to you?” That’s a question TWP founder, Stephanie Dowrick asked as recently as 2024 (in You Are the Future, co-written with Mark S, Burrows). She went on: “Do you imagine that the generic writer most likely lives in and through their imagination and reflections, rather than in—if not up to their necks in—the messiness, contradictions, and unpredictability of so-called ordinary life?”

It was accepted, normalised, protected perceptions of what was, and what was possible, in “so-called ordinary life” that TWP existed to interrogate and challenge. And – with and through those radical acts of naming, articulating, sometimes insisting – to envision better, fairer, more alive and far more enriching ways of women being “up to their necks” in the messy, desirable living that is indeed “ordinary life” (re-presented, re-figured, re-newed as a profound act of individual and collective awakening).

This vital “correcting the history” section focuses on just a few years of crisis that threatened the survival of TWP – but did not break it (TWP continued to publish boldly and stylishly for another 13 years, making a quarter of a century in all).

Those crisis years have been adopted by some academic writers as a vehicle for creating a narrative that is both innacurate and startlingly reductive. It depends upon a “creative” use of confirmation bias that’s ubiquitous in contemporary media but should be rigorously weeded out by publishers maintaining credibility of what they present as “peer reviewed”.

Confirmation bias, more fully explained below and elsewhere, is a choice to search for, privilege, and not only retain but also repeat information that matches what you already believe, while ignoring, trivialising or dismissing facts or evidence that oppose, confront, or factually undermine your preferred narrative. It demands the reassurance of echo-chamber accounts that fit an idealised or theoretically constructed theory, leaving out all material or documented evidence that would disrupt the favoured fable. When this applies to a supposed ideological analysis of TWP, the losses of insight and integrity in the telling and re-telling are significant.

To create this archival website, and to provide all current and future researchers with a far more honest and interesting account of TWP history, we have sought out and published the kind of evidence that should have been at the forefront of any account of the founding, establishment and achievements of TWP, the intellectual, cultural and political groundbreaking contributions to readers over two and half decades, the actual (not assumed) causes for the widely misreported “crisis period”, and the brave and sustained revival that came after, also seriously misrepresented or omitted in the least credible accounts.

This account is entirely based on archived evidence. It is coming to you with copious quotes from Dr Stephanie Dowrick almost half a century after she founded The Women’s Press (TWP), London, in 1977, with the first books appearing in February 1978.

The founding and evolution of The Women’s Press is both a publishing and a political story that deserves serious attention. Our goal is to make such a serious interrogation not just possible but also self-evident for contemporary researchers, and those who will come after them.

STANDARD ACADEMIC CITATION GUIDE

When introducing an archival correction into future academic work, scholars are encouraged to use the following citation framework:

“Traditional accounts of twentieth-century feminist publishing often view commercial structures essential for non-subsidised trade publishing as inherently antithetical to political radicalism (cf. Murray, 2004; Riley, 2018), whatever the material evidence in catalogues or lists of publications. However, archival evidence regarding the management of The Women’s Press (London)—specifically the joint ownership structure tying editorial independence to trustworthy fiscal responsibility, the causes and documentation of a £344,086 operational deficit, and the subsequent 13-year editorial and commercial revival led by publishing professional Kathy Gale, TWP Sales and Joint MD, Mary Hemming, and founder Stephanie Dowrick—demonstrate an enduring model of independent resilience that directly challenges these reductive anti-corporate, sexist and sometimes racist, historical narratives.”

Media attention to The Women’s Press, London, was and is unsurprising.

The second-largest feminist publishing house (after Virago) globally — and arguably the most adventurous of all in its scope and focus — it has been speculated about for almost half a century.

That was always predictable. What was less predictable — and became the catalyst for this article in particular — is where published accounts in articles or books patently fail to understand or even analyse TWP’s immense contributions to second-wave feminism, and to the history of British and radical publishing.

The evidence of those achievements is everywhere on this website, as are the lasting positive contributions of so many writers nurtured from the earliest pioneering days. Yet the narrative that too many scholars have relied upon when looking at The Women’s Press, or feminist (trade) publishing more generally, rests mainly on a three-year period of crisis with little or no understanding of what preceded, caused, and followed that.

Nor does it offer much or any clarity about where that period belongs in a deeper history of UK radical publishing, and in the Press’ own 25-year history of founding, accomplishment, survival. Editorial independence had, throughout, to be linked to responsible management of financial and intellectual resources by women for TWP to claim its place as a women’s press. That this basic fact of life can be consistently overlooked in accounts lacking epistemic or factual integrity does a serious disservice to scholarship that claims to be “feminist”, as much as it does within the small self-perpetuating circles of those claiming to write about TWP with interest and even authority,

For research to have any claim to integrity, facts must prevail over assumptions. Any form of “feminist analysis” has to be trusted to encompass critical issues of “voice”, power, how both voice and power are used, and for what ends.

This has to be done with rigour and honesty. Plus, a willingness to review established biases and inherited assumptions when factual evidence is presented.

Below is just one farcical example (among many) of a writer, in this case Catherine Riley, projecting supreme confidence in what she’s writing about — without ever contacting or checking her assumptions about The Women’s Press, its founding and purpose, with Dr Stephanie Dowrick in any of the many ways she’s publicly available. In the language of academics, this is confirmation bias: a staggering preference for one’s own assumptions and perceptions, whatever the evidence. It is sustained by refusing to engage with those whose first-hand knowledge and contemporaneous documents would disrupt your preferred narrative. Legitimate scholarship? It is not. (We are publishing separately a longer analysis of the more influential writings from Australian academic, Simone Murray, where confirmation bias lead her to conclusions seriously unharnessed from facts and the far more nuanced, accurate and celebratory history those facts would have supported.)

Founding The Women’s Press

Very briefly (with far more detail below for those who want that), the already exceptionally successful young publisher, Stephanie Dowrick, founded TWP in 1977, with an “investment” of trust and highly conditional access to a vital overdraft facility from Naim Attallah, newly Chair of Quartet Books and of the Namara Group. Stephanie and Naim “owned” TWP jointly.

Stephanie’s editorial independence was guaranteed both by that high-level commercial and literary prior publishing experience — and her commitment to TWP solvency based on healthy publishing decisions and a vigilant watch on outgoings and expenditure.

It was also guaranteed by Stephanie’s explicit commitment to her own — and the Press’s — independence.

From Wikipedia:

Dowrick worked first as a law clerk while studying law at Victoria University (Wellington, NZ). [Kaye Fallick, “Stephanie Dowrick, Happiness Your Choice”, Your Life, Winter 2007.] She lived independently from the age of 16. In 1967, before leaving New Zealand, she worked in the library at Victoria University. “She left New Zealand and an unhappy girlhood behind [following her mother’s death in 1955] at 20 and took on the world. ‘I had a lot of vitality and huge energy.’ With little formal training, but a mind ready for anything, she found herself in publishing.” [Maxine McKew, “Lunch with Stephanie Dowrick”, The Bulletin, November 21, 2000.]

The years from 1977–1982/3 particularly benefitted greatly from Stephanie’s “mind ready for anything”, her drive and publishing passion, excellent global contacts including in the US, high-end “brand” marketing (Donna Muir was the brilliant “iron” designer), plus her committed engagement, first as MD (until end 1981), then as ongoing Director, co-owner, then as mentor to her successor as MD, Ros de Lanerolle, later as Chair of The Women’s Press Ltd.

Stephanie Dowrick was involved either intensely and formatively, or with advice and interest, for almost 20 of the Press’s 25 years.

Was there a crisis? What did it reveal?

Ros de Lanerolle and those working with her did benefit from the credibility established by Stephanie in the founding years, and the acceptance of TWP in the book world. She also continued to publish key authors contracted by Stephanie (until 1982), plus some newer books that are part of a precious TWP history. These should be – and are – honoured.

From 1985 onwards, however, and especially between 1988/9–1990/1, key management issues at TWP began to go awry. Then badly so.

The facts of the crisis need serious correction

Much of the problem belongs in Publishing 101: diminishing sales, unchecked expenses, a serious loss of marketing heft in an increasingly competitive market, too many unremarkable covers, and persistent investment in writers and even categories, including the supposedly popular SF list, despite clear evidence they were failing to find viable numbers of readers.

Decisions were persistently made that failed to link vital editorial independence to financial accountability through books sales, subsidiary rights sales on originated books (and growing the Book Club income), rather than the “borrowed” funds (and accumulating interest) that put TWP in an increasingly precarious position. Independence linked to responsibility, accountability and solvency was the essential foundation that made TWP a women’s publisher. Without that independence, TWP’s feminism was compromised. Equally, without responsibility and accountability for solvency any claims to “publishing with (feminist) integrity” were also lost. TWP was founded as, and functioned as, a trade publisher. This demanded professionalism: owed to readers, owed most of all to authors.

(Academic presses, it should be noted, are not trade publishers. They are generally subsidised by the university they represent and by the virtually “free” labour of authors — invariably academics — whose return on their writing comes largely in the way of prestige and “publications”, rather than through advances and royalty payments dependent on book sales and correctly expected by writers.)

Although clear danger signs were there through the final 1980s years, it was not until 1990 that Naim — solely responsible for the accelerating debts — stepped in with attempts to halt the crisis (and save the press that he and Stephanie had founded in explicit and shared good faith).

By 1991, the crisis became public. The media had a field day, amplifying the fable that the “problem” or crisis at TWP was not a business failure, but was ideological: Naim interfering with feminists’ editorial choices and autonomy. Also newly objected to was what was now described as a “corporate structure” within the (distinctly “un-corporate”) Namara Group, despite that very same structure tolerating near to a million pounds of losses accumulated (in today’s money), and bank interest with it.

(Stephanie’s immeasurable contribution in founding TWP, “branding” it so effectively with Donna Muir, adding The Women’s Press Bookclub as an additional source of income, plus bringing to the Press its best-selling as well as most innovative authors – fully detailed below from a vital report to the Board made by Ros after persistent requests from Stephanie – then further mentoring Ros for the first three years at least of her tenure, was also obliterated in the “crisis” accounts.)

With suggestions now made that Palestinian-born Naim was particularly censoring the publication of emerging “Third World” writers, the media — egged on by some at TWP and other interested parties — cast this in ludicrously stereotyped terms: Naim, not only a capitalist, a man, an “Arab” vs. feminists who felt “constrained in their global publishing ambitions” (while taking no responsibility for losses that threatened the survival of The Women’s Press, stability for its authors, and hope of employment for remaining staff).

Much was made of an attempted management buy-out in early 1991 by Ros. This was based on the proposal that Ros could raise half a million pounds in 1991 terms (£1,400,000 approximately in 2026). No evidence has ever been produced that this or any smaller sum was raised, given the run-down in turnover, and the run-up in debts.

Yet this story has stuck, and you would have to ask why.

Without this corrected “Revival Era” data, the history of radical publishing looks like a tragedy of patriarchal suppression. With it, the story becomes one of strategic resilience, proving that feminist institutions can be both politically uncompromising and commercially formidable. Reasons for the confirmation bias liberally practised by some include the “purity” narrative: Scholars who romanticise de Lanerolle’s publishing, focus on her”Global South” and anti-apartheid politics as the “bravest” form of radical publishing – ignoring the overt commitment to race, class as well as gender politics from TWP’s inception. In this view, any attempt to ensure TWP viability through professionalism and solvency (the “Dowrick” then the “Dowrick/Gale model”) is framed as “selling out” or, worse, as “depoliticisation.” This does a grave disservice to a story of rare feminist activism through publishing that is unsubsidised, free of instiutional support, and authentically “women run”.

Casting co-owner Naim Attallah as the “patriarchal” founder (while obliterating Stephanie Dowrick as founder, co-owner, visionary force, and later Chair), a “corporate capitalist” who should also have simultaneously been an unlimited “funder” of unchecked spending and consistently poor publishing choices, academics including Simone Murray (2004) and Catherine RIley (2018) can re-frame de Lanerolle’s management and very serious publishing failures as a heroic struggle for autonomy rather than a case of fiscal insolvency and tragic disloyalty to a highly visible feminist imprint, its remarkable authors, and hundreds of thousands of readers. It would appear, too that some academic papers rely solely on the public statements made by the staff who resigned in 1991 – framing their departure as a moral protest. And, persistently, without any accountability for the financial losses and chaos they left behind.

The bigger or more painful irony is that months earlier, in 1990, while still very much MD of The Women’s Press, drawing both salary and status from her role, Ros and unnamed “others” had sought advice from business consultant Robert Oakshott to set up an “alternative” feminist press, worker-run, to be called Miriam Books. Further, Ros was proposing to take TWP staff with her.

There was a later effort (1992) by Ros, after she had left TWP, to establish Open Letters, with author Gillian Hanscombe and former Gay News literary editor Alison Hennegan, proposing to take some TWP authors, as well as staff. It has to be noted that for all the vigorous criticism of the support Stephanie had negotiated in 1977, and the freedom it had given Ros and others for most of nine years, these efforts came to nothing. No funds raised. No structure established. No books published. ARCHIVE.

With this early 1991 debacle unfolding in the public gaze, claims continued to be made against Naim that were shockingly racist as well as pathetically sexist, presenting him as sole “owner”, denigrating him for the very structure that Stephanie had insisted upon to ensure no charges could be made to impugn TWP as a formiable women’s activist press.

Declining an offer to stay on as chief editor but not as MD, Ros eventually left TWP — with a pay-out. Five staff left with her — presumably without a pay-out, certainly without taking any responsibility for what they left behind. Perhaps they expected Miriam Books to eventuate. Or, in 1992, Open Letters, to materialise. It did not.

Meanwhile, following the departure of Ros — from a publishing house she claimed (to Oakshott) to be in a state of “decline if not demise” — Naim took over as MD for a matter of weeks, Sydney-based Stephanie returned to London, Stephanie took up her role of Chair of The Women’s Press Ltd and, now with far more positive media being generated, appointed Kathy Gale as Publishing Director, soon to be joint MD. (See REVIVAL.). It should be noted that Miriam Books (1990) and Open Letters (1992) are rarely analysed in any depth because their failure to publish a single book, and the particularly quick collapse of Open Letters, proves that de Lanerolle and those standing with her, could not survive without the “capitalist” infrastructure she and they so robustly criticised when the survival of TWP was at risk. By ignoring these failures, academics can maintain the myth that Ros and her team could have succeeded at The Women’s Press if only Attallah had handed over the keys. It also allows them to ignore the material evidence of the dozen years on from that prediction of “decline if not demise” when successful, stylish, politically adventurous publishing continued – giving TWP a publishing arc of 25 years.

The revival years (1991–2002/3) are surely the most accurate testimony we could present of the need for all reputable trade houses to be run professionally and responsibly. That’s the least that writers deserve. That’s the least that ensures survival.

It was never Stephanie’s intention or wish to be dependent on a patron.

In summary:

• TWP was not founded (in 1979) to be a subsidised press;
• TWP was founded to reflect and advance the key values of the women’s liberation movement through publishing that was both bold AND professional;
• TWP income was to come from skilful publishing and marketing, scrutiny of outgoings, book sales, rights income, the (1980) establishment of The Women’s Press Bookclub (also founded by Stephanie – particularly to support cash flow)
• to maintain its credibility as a WOMEN’S PRESS, all key decisions had to be made by the women running the Press RESPONSIBLY and without risking the Press’s survival, or expecting or asking for handouts;
• solvency was the “price” Stephanie welcomed (and bequeathed) for rare editorial and management freedom;
• no accountability has ever been offered for the eye-watering losses;
• no publishing emerged from the Ros team under any of its before-during-after various attempts;
• post-crisis, significant political and highly professional publishing continued and flourished for 13 more years – making a total of 25 in all.

“Books of integrity” had to be published with integrity. Accountability for all decisions was for Stephanie, and remained under Kathy Gale’s later leadership, fundamental.

Why this is so poorly understood not by readers and certainly not by TWP authors, but by a handful of academics, remains a mystery that this website exists, in part, to remedy.

The Women’s Press deserves better. The founder and visionary, Stephanie Dowrick, the many staff loyal to TWP, Kathy Gale for her intense, successful revival efforts, the authors who should always have been central in any account of what was achieved: all deserve better. So do the hundreds of thousands of readers over a 25-year period of political courage, and (mostly) publishing excellence.

The finances: what the record shows

Silences were indeed broken from the first books published by TWP in February 1978 to the last in 2002/3. Broken, too, in those radical early days, were taboos.Because so much of the disputed history turns on money, the key financial facts are gathered here in one place. The narrative context appears in the sections that follow; the contemporaneous documents themselves are in the ARCHIVE.

The founding structure (1977). TWP was never subsidised. Naim Attallah guaranteed a conditional overdraft facility — with interest — that had to be earned out through politically uncompromised, highly competent publishing. Stephanie Dowrick and Naim shared ownership; Naim was solely responsible for the debts. Editorial independence was explicitly linked to fiscal responsibility, supported from 1980 by The Women’s Press Bookclub, founded by Stephanie as an additional income stream to aid cash flow.

The crisis years (1988/9–1991). The most reliable profit/loss figures come from a report prepared by the Namara Group company secretary, as at June 1992 for the single year ending June 1991: TWP loss £96,873; Bookclub profit £3,205; interest costs £41,584. Cumulative losses to the end of June 1991 were £344,086 — nearing one million pounds in 2026 value — which in all likelihood explains the £300,000 figure quoted in some press reports. No evidence has ever been produced that the £500,000 said to have been offered for a management buy-out was raised.

The table below is transcribed from the original handwritten ledger, setting the actual results for the year ending 30 June 1991 against the forecast prepared for the incoming management:

The revival (1991 onwards). Against that forecast loss of £21,225 (with Bookclub profit of £15,930), Kathy Gale delivered a profit of £52,353 in the year ending June 1992 — a swing of nearly £150,000 from the prior year’s £93,668 combined loss, achieved within her first full year. The Gale–Hemming team went on to deliver a profit in every year of their tenure, with one small exception: a period when the Book Club was briefly run as a separate business from separate premises. Profitability was rapidly re-established once it returned to their directorship.

The year-by-year record (1985–1998). A second handwritten ledger records turnover and profit/(loss) for The Women’s Press Ltd across fourteen years:

The three crisis-year losses recorded here — £160,631 (1989), £89,787 (1990) and £93,668 (1991) — sum to exactly £344,086, independently confirming the cumulative loss figure cited above. The ledger also shows the healthy trading of the mid-1980s, the sharp 1992 turnaround under Kathy Gale, and the profitable Gale–Hemming years, with the 1995–96 dip corresponding to the period, described below, when the Book Club was briefly run as a separate business from separate premises.

These figures are the essential context for every account of the “crisis”: the losses were real, sustained over three years, and carried solely by Naim Attallah — and the Press returned to profit within months of professional, accountable management being restored.

A story of achievement

The Women’s Press is a story of achievement during an era of change and possibility that current readers, publishers, researchers could continue to learn from. It is also a story of widely productive creativity, occurring in a rare moment of “daring to hope”, to quote British social historian Sheila Rowbotham, plus loyalty by readers to an imprint that they quickly trusted, and of women — founder, staff, authors, readers — who remained dedicated to its survival and flourishing.

Stephanie Dowrick writes:

“Claiming an authority to write in a scholarly way about The Women’s Press, some writers and academics have chosen to brush by the intellectual and political achievements gained by so many deeply committed women. They have instead focused on an ideological story that is reductive, blatant in its omissions, and even dishonourable in its reliance on their predecessors’ biases and their own assumptions. Or on questionable, sometimes ludicrous media accounts or self-interested oral reporting, rather than on the contemporaneous documents we share here that tell a very different story.

This has produced accounts that do a grave disservice to the intellectual, political and social advances which The Women’s Press enabled — and furthered.

Such accounts additionally show a startling lack of understanding of what successful trade publishing demands in terms of emotional and intellectual investment. Also, a lack of curiosity about why a period of crisis has been so strenuously blamed on Naim and ‘his’ mythical corporate structure (and a general recession ignored as spending increased, not decreased, during the last of that three-year period). This without any sensible analysis of why and how The Women’s Press made the immense progress it did during my founding years, and the success of the commissioned books and authors I contracted (including Alice Walker, Janet Frame and so many others) until the mid-1980s.

It also ignores the years following the end of Ros and her senior staff’s period of management (more below for those seeking evidence), and the how and why of the successful revival.

This surely raises serious questions about any further reliance on so-called ‘reliable sources’ — including via reputable publishers — without freshly seeking actual evidence beyond media and hearsay, or adequately interrogating assumptions when contemporaneous evidence is presented.

That some aspects of The Women’s Press publishing and processes have self-evidently been unduly aggrandised, while others have been diminished or obliterated, raises urgent questions about how an ‘academic record’ is created and how the familiar citations systems retain validity when proven inaccuracies are repeated, despite available evidence and our availability for comment.”

Issues all researchers should be exploring

Issues all researchers should be exploring — but (too many) have not:

a) Stephanie’s widely stated purpose and intellectual/political achievements in founding The Women’s Press, and remaining involved for 20 of its 25 years;

b) the essential contribution of financial backer Naim Attallah within the Namara Group (not a “corporate structure”!);

c) the unsustainable breakdown of publishing responsibility and management integrity of the “crisis period”;

d) the three failed attempts by Ros de Lanerolle to set up an “alternative feminist press” — and the shameful, racist blaming of the undermining of TWP on “interference” by Naim Attallah and the Board, with no hint of accountability for the risks taken to the very survival of The Women’s Press, either by Ros and her supporters then, or commentators since;

e) the obliteration in some accounts of the highly successful “revival years” that kept TWP alive for a further 13 of its 25 years.

That an ingenuous or plainly false reading of the crisis period has dominated some supposedly “reliable” accounts of The Women’s Press and its work is alarming. It has also been devastating to discover how resistant some researchers — and their publishers — are, as late as 2026, to looking into and reporting on not only a far more honest picture, but also a far more interesting and courageous one.

It is not only those who worked resolutely and with commitment at The Women’s Press who deserve that more honest and encompassing history, but the authors and their many hundreds of thousands of readers.

Why are these corrections necessary?

The corrections made here necessarily focus on the periods of founding and crisis. They are all backed by contemporaneous documents as well as thoughtful commentary here and elsewhere on this website on the entire twenty-five-year history from 1977–2002/3. (And in her article, REVIVAL, Kathy Gale wonderfully positively describes why the “ending” [4 years after she left The Women’s Press] was of an era, from which we benefit in so many conscious and less conscious ways.)

A personal note from Stephanie

“Over these months of research and enquiry, I have been by turns hopeful (that informed insight might emerge somewhere), devastated (as more misrepresentations have come to light), betrayed (discovering the identity of some unexpected actors in this self-serving psychodrama), exhausted (as my attempts to correct misleading writing are rebuffed, and reliable documentation is secured but also rebuffed). Yet, with invaluable support, I have remained determined that a far truer, fuller, evidence-based account must come into the open while this is still possible.

The prevailing before-during-after narrative of the crisis years runs along almost comically stereotyped lines. Where it is consistent is in blaming my business supporter in The Women’s Press, literary entrepreneur Naim Attallah, with no accountability demanded for the final years of Ros’s leadership.

The quote that follows is from one of many interviews I did during the years from 1978–1985. It could not be clearer that being “subsidised” was never the TWP agenda.

“The financing [of The Women’s Press] had to depend on Dowrick’s financial accountability. ‘We…pay ourselves modest wages and are responsible for what and how we publish, and for eventual solvency.'” — Brenda Little, “A Press of Her Own”, Cleo (UK), June 1979

An explicitly radical start-up, I set TWP ambition and standards high from its inception. (Before the first list appeared in February 1978, and just a very few months after I left Triad, I was commissioning original books ahead.) Thanks both to my earlier career and to the brilliant activist women who gave of their best as supporters and advisers, we were able to attract global writers, pioneering literary scholars and art historians, peace and ecology activists — and feminists speaking out for race justice, for better mental health, protesting violence against women in its multiple forms including pornography and war, all making an indisputable case for a greater sense of empowerment and agency across all ages, races and cultures.

Australian writer, academic, provocateur, TWP author and supporter, (much-missed) Dale Spender, offers two quotes that go to the heart of the appreciation we pioneers felt for the chance to publish writers who knew what power is, what harm its abuses cause, and how it could be reclaimed.

“There is a real split today between those who push the button [of destruction] and those who do the dying.”

“Paradoxically, the most constructive thing women can do is to write, for in the act of writing we deny our mutedness and begin to eliminate some of the difficulties that have been put upon us.” — Dale Spender (TWP author)

Writers who brought their insights and experiences to The Women’s Press deserved the best from their publishers, both professionally and politically.

We launched with exceptional panache, with all credit to the stunning artwork and graphic design skills of Donna Muir – everywhere evident on this website. We had interest and support from a generally cynical book trade, thanks to the professionalism, rigour and integrity of the books, and their scrupulously professional publishing.

The Women’s Press drew on — and nourished — the talents of women from around the world. It allowed for the development of greater confidence, insight, and achievement of many more. It articulated experiences ignored by conventional publishers at the time. It broke “silences”.

“Literary history and the present are dark with silences,” wrote Tillie Olsen a decade or so before I published the ground-breaking literary anthology The World Split Open as one of my earliest TWP titles.

Silences were broken from the first books published by TWP to the last. So, in those radical early days, were taboos. When we published two books simultaneously (one by Phyllis Chesler, one by Susan Griffin) that called out the scourge of pornography, we had to indemnify the printers because one of the books contained images that were deemed “shocking”.

From its inception, the publishing at The Women’s Press was global in reach, diverse, bold and “politically sound”. It was also courageous across so many pioneering areas as this website testifies. It required more rather than less skill than conventional publishing. It certainly demanded far closer editorial engagement with the authors, not handed over to free-lancers, and a committed persistence to remove their writing from modest silos to ensure the books were taken up by the book trade as a whole.

The graphics, brand identity, production and use of multi-media, all supported this. That impetus, too, was lost in the crisis years.

Casting Naim as the villain suppressing women’s writing, and especially “Third World” women’s writing, was a knowingly effective distraction from the senior management failures. Also from their barely concealed attempts to set up an alternative press, Miriam Books, at the expense of the by now well-established, widely trusted Women’s Press and its authors (not one of whom could have been offered the imprint branding, security and marketing and distribution structure TWP had given them).

Both Stephanie Dowrick and Naim Attallah attempted to correct the record.

Naim Attallah to The Guardian, UK, 30 March 1991 (see letter below):

The Women’s Press has been losing money for the last three years. An imprint weakened by financial losses has neither the strength nor the scope to champion the cause of women. I could not sit back and allow the Press to lose its impetus after its dramatic evolution over almost fifteen years. If those who protest were to direct their energies to something of greater consequence I have no doubt they would serve the women’s movement more effectively.”

Recognising the ability of the Kathy Gale-led team from 1991–1999 to prevent the Press’s “decline if not demise” so direly predicted by Ros in her late 1990 document to Robert Oakshott, thereby ensuring another 13 years of healthy political and professional publishing — little of this would matter decades later, except to those of us directly affected. And dismayed.

It does matter, though.

Stephanie says, “Many invaluable experiences came to life and found new life in the pages of TWP books. Many more women saw themselves on the page for the first time, or with new clarity. To have participated in that and enabled positive change on a global stage was a privilege — and, despite the eye-wateringly hard work involved, remains an honour.”

Yet as long as the crisis story is served up without attention to the facts, its effects will resonate.

The Founding Years in Detail (1977–1983)

Stephanie Dowrick, Naim Attallah, the Namara Group — and The Women’s Press

Given the misrepresentations of a rare business structure that allowed for genuinely radical publishing to thrive, it is useful to repeat that The Women’s Press was founded in London in 1977 by New Zealand-born publisher Stephanie Dowrick shortly before her 30th birthday. Stephanie had the personal support of a small group of feminist academics, therapists and media workers. She also had essential backing from literary entrepreneur Naim Attallah, within the Namara Group, of which he was chairman. Quartet Books was also part of the Namara Group (as was the Literary Review, founded by Dr Anne Smith). Some production and distribution functions, excluding editorial and management of finances and staff, were to be shared between Quartet and TWP, as did indeed happen until 2002–03. It was this that allowed for professional publishing.

Never a “corporate support”, the financial support from Naim was a conditional guaranteeing of an overdraft facility that, with interest, had to be earned through politically uncompromised and highly competent publishing.

Stephanie Dowrick and Naim Attallah shared ownership of TWP, with Naim owning a small majority within the Namara Group. The conditional overdraft was necessary because Stephanie — a New Zealander living independently in the UK — could “invest” her vision, contacts and creative expertise, but not funds. Naim was therefore solely responsible for debts, to be paid down with effective publishing translating into book sales. Naim was also dependent: on Stephanie — or her management successors — holding up her/their significant part of that mutual understanding of what editorial/management independence demanded.

“In 1977, Dowrick met Naim Attallah, the charismatic London-based Palestinian philanthropist, owner of Quartet Books and the prestigious Literary Review. He was so impressed with Dowrick he helped finance a new feminist publishing house with her at the helm. ‘We hit it off immediately,’ he told HQ. ‘She was very committed, full of energy, and she had passion. We formed The Women’s Press with £100…she was hungry, not for food, but to do something worthwhile and to fight for it.'” — David Leser, “In Search of Stephanie”, HQ, Nov/Dec 1993

From its inception in 1977, Stephanie was adamant that TWP was to be neither a “sheltered workshop” within the Namara Group, nor a subsidised publishing house as with university presses (subsidised by their institution and by academic authors expecting no or low royalties).

Income to sustain The Women’s Press had to come from publishing that was commercially and politically astute — and from business acumen and caution that reflected a keen responsibility to the autonomy at the heart of its founding.

Again: editorial independence linked to fiscal responsibility was the inviolable understanding of securing feminist credibility for The Women’s Press.

Stephanie writes:

“The scorn heaped upon Naim Attallah for his ‘failure’ to indefinitely support losses over that 1989–1991 period, losses that threatened the very survival of The Women’s Press due to poor publishing decisions and unchecked expenses, was indefensible. And, in my view, politically pathetic. The irony of pillorying Naim as a ‘capitalist’ while simultaneously expecting to receive unlimited handouts, all in the name of ‘feminism’, is tragically far from the values of integrity and independence on which TWP was founded. I feel angry as well as sad that no responsibility was taken by the senior management for the very real threat this cavalier attitude posed to the survival of The Women’s Press. I’ve found myself equally frustrated that what was self-evidently the least successful period in TWP’s life, has been claimed by some as representing a version of political ambition or idealism that was ‘unfairly’ thwarted.”

During the first era (1977–83), a balance between political idealism and commercial realities had been quickly established. Never at the cost of vision and belief in the best that women could do.

Bold writers succeeded because of a high degree of brand recognition, clever brand marketing (that memorably witty “iron” iconography, designed by Donna Muir), and publication of books original enough to draw the attention of reviewers, as well as high street booksellers.

For at least the first year I was indeed the sole full-time employee, and to save money worked from home until 1979. Keeping costs low while prioritising the “look” of the books and multi-media marketing (posters, postcards, badges, bookmarks, give-aways) kept bank borrowing to a minimum. Solvency was always the goal.

Books had to “earn out” wherever possible through bookshop sales, supported (from 1980) by direct sales through The Women’s Press Book Club, established crucially to support cash flow without the much longer time lag of publishing contracted or commissioned titles. This also allowed TWP to give extra support to its own authors through regular promotion of their books direct to committed readers — as well as supporting other feminist writers.

Founding the Book Club was a business decision to further secure TWP stability. For most of the next 20 years, it did precisely that — with rocky periods eventually stabilised again by Kathy Gale (with whom I worked especially amicably).

To grasp what was achieved at The Women’s Press, the realities of commercial (unsubsidised) trade publishing need to be understood. This is a particular challenge within a publicly radical framework. Could women run a feminist business, and do it well? Those pressures necessitate a determination to choose and publish “books of integrity” with sufficient flair to reach readers. From readers, it asks a depth of imprint loyalty, based on commonly held values that cannot be lightly betrayed. A successful publishing house — successful enough to attract experienced and/or ground-breaking writers — cannot emerge from nowhere. It takes professional skills, years of building close contacts within the book trade and global publishing industry, unusual ability, confidence, flair — and vision

Key factors in the survival of The Women’s Press

The existence (and achievements) of The Women’s Press depended on several historical and cultural factors. “Seizing the moment” was self-evidently vital. It was not my willingness to be “installed” in the highly risky enterprise of a start-up that interested Naim. It was — on the record — my high-level prior publishing experience, plus an energy and capacity for unceasing work that he and I, both outsiders in the UK, would share with other start-up risk-takers also.

Why did I do it? With the hindsight of decades, I have wondered, given I lost so much security leaving my high-profile job with the three leading UK literary publishing houses. I can only assume that it was as a unique, unexpected opportunity to combine my twin passions: publishing excellence and social justice/feminist ideals. It was also the chance to publish only the books I believed would and could really matter.

The SEXUAL POLITICS history on this website and especially PUBLICATIONS offer central testimony to the magnificent writers who stepped so willingly towards a genuinely feminist publishing house that from 1977 to 2002–03 was explicitly exposing and resisting sex, gender and race “oppression” while equally explicitly celebrating and showcasing women’s achievements of the highest order.

In establishing The Women’s Press (quickly and credibly), I used my earlier publishing experience as editorial manager of Triad Paperbacks, owned by leading literary publishers Jonathan Cape, Chatto & Windus and the Bodley Head, together with Granada Publishing, and, prior to that, as managing editor of large commercial publisher New English Library (NEL) to ensure agents trusted the Press when selling British rights in potentially high-profile authors.

Among authors I had published or re-launched at Triad were Martin Amis, Peter Singer, Ernest Hemingway, Aldous Huxley, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. It was the Woolf experience (and her close contact with Chatto & Windus and its subsidiary the Hogarth Press) that made it possible for her to commission Michèle Barrett to collect Woolf’s feminist writings, published as Virginia Woolf: Women and Writing, a seminal work in print from 1979 to the present day.

As a professionally run feminist publishing house, The Women’s Press was globally “on show”, raising expectations and creating a demand on me greater than I could have predicted. Most observers, booksellers and the vast majority of reviewers and readers were enthusiastic supporters. Some though could be sharply critical without knowing what it took to publish within the mainstream — on a shoestring — while ensuring the books looked terrific.

It’s essential to emphasise — repeatedly given what came later — that TWP was always intended to be editorially independent and fiscally responsible for its survival and success. Solvency was not just the goal (and achieved in virtually all years other than the crisis period), it was ethically essential, if only to show that women’s high-level publishing could succeed without “sheltered workshop” subsidies.

Were there compromises? Yes, always. Were sacrifices made when those working in a smallish political publishing house could not benefit from the advantages of a genuinely “corporate” structure? Yes, again.

There were also freedoms: freedom to be true to the explicit values of the women’s liberation movement, freedom to inform honestly, to share truthfully, to support choice, to speak strongly for and to practice diversity while holding in common a respect for human integrity that was never to be compromised on the basis of race, gender, sexuality or culture.

“Looking back at my young self, as I have had to do while working towards this website, I have wondered if I had any idea of how difficult it would be to set up a publishing house, virtually on my own, with backing, yes, but that always strictly limited so that the overdraft needed to launch the Press would be kept manageable.

In her illuminating book, Daring to Hope, social historian Sheila Rowbotham says of that period: ‘In London the undercurrents of distrust [within the women’s liberation movement] were particularly evident.’

Sometimes it seemed to me as if every London feminist had views on how a women’s publishing house should be run, generally with no insight whatsoever as to what a risky business quality book publishing is, and what tenacity as well as dedication is needed.

As a young New Zealander, living in London from the age of 20 without family connections or any financial resources apart from my own earnings, I stepped away from an excellent career that would have given me so much more stability. Is that what I would now advise the ‘young Stephanie’? Perhaps not. So my greatest reward comes from the books and authors — so exceptional with many contacts alive and well still today. Also, from the ‘branding’ that I continue to delight in (designed by Donna Muir) — together with a whole crazy concept of what might be possible as a ‘political publisher’. Then it was! It was possible. It did happen. Flaws and all. The books are the testimony — and always will be.”

TWP’s early publishing

To quote Wikipedia on TWP’s early publishing:

Dowrick commissioned British or British-based writers to create original work, including Gillian Perry, Sally Belfrage, Rozsika Parker, Joanna Ryan and Sue Cartledge, Lucy Goodison and Sheila Ernst, Lindsay River and Sally Gillespie, Léonie Caldecott and Stephanie Leland, Frankie Armstrong, Dale Spender, and Sibyl Grundberg.

She also commissioned Helen Taylor’s introduction to the first British publication of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Cora Kaplan’s introduction to Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh, Michèle Barrett to write Virginia Woolf: Women and Writing.

“Southern” writer Lisa Alther, a TWP author, was commissioned to write the introduction to Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find. Rosalind Delmar (later author of the essay What Is Feminism?) wrote the introduction to the first British edition of The Dialectic of Sex. Dowrick herself edited the first British edition of A Handbook of Non-Sexist Writing by Casey Miller and Kate Swift.

From her native New Zealand, Dowrick published among others Janet Frame, Patricia Grace, and later Sandi Hall. She also contracted and/or published many leading US feminist writers of the day, including Angela Davis, Judith Arcana, Nor Hall, Andrea Dworkin, Phyllis Chesler, Shulamith Firestone, Louise Bernikow, Mary Daly, Ellen Moers, and Susan Griffin.

Early global fiction and memoir writers contracted for the Press by Dowrick included Alice Walker (USA), who would become TWP’s all-time best-selling author; Toni Cade Bambara (USA); May Sarton (USA); Alther (USA); Joyce Kornblatt (USA); Marge Piercy (USA); Sylvia Townsend Warner (UK); Colette (France); Joan Barfoot (Canada); Monique Wittig (France); Meridel Le Sueur (USA); Yuan Tsung-Chen (China); Cora Sandel (Norway); Charlotte Perkins Gilman (USA); and Michèle Roberts (UK).

The Women’s Press also published some books in collaboration with feminist magazine Spare Rib, starting with Hard Feelings in 1979 (edited by Alison Fell), and collaborated with Frauenoffensive, Munich, publishing Verena Stefan’s Shedding, and with feminist publishing house Sara, Amsterdam, by publishing Anja Meulenbelt’s The Shame is Over.

Working closely with writer/clinicians, including from The Women’s Therapy Centre in London, TWP also pioneered some exceptional writing to empower women in the most intimate and subjective areas of their lives.

The de Lanerolle Years and the Crisis Period (1982–1991)

COVERS

Of the 37 books contracted between December 1981 and October 1982 for (forthcoming) publication by TWP, just 14 were initiated by de Lanerolle (Board report from de Lanerolle, October 1982).

December 1981–June 1982 new contracts initiated by Dowrick included writers Dale Spender (Australia), Andrea Dworkin (USA), Michèle Roberts (UK), Walker (USA), Angela Davis (USA), Joan Barfoot (Canada), Léonie Caldecott (UK), Janet Frame (NZ), Joanna Ryan (UK) and Joyce Kornblatt (USA/Australia).

De Lanerolle’s contracted writers were Barbara Wilson (USA), Sheila Ortiz Taylor (Mexican/American), Jill Miller (UK), Sheelagh Kanelli (UK/Greece), Dorothy Bryant (USA) and Moira Duff (Scotland/Canada). (SEE ARCHIVE)

The marketing gloss begins to fade

Marketing — of some individual books as well as the unique “branding” of the Press as a whole — was beginning to suffer even by mid-1982. In that same letter to Ros on 17 June 1982, Stephanie expressed concern about the sales impact of some of the forthcoming covers under Ros’s management. She urged her to suggest to p/time designer Suzanne Perkins, who worked from home, “to spend a day out with one of the reps, to get a really good feel of what shows up in the shops”.

Authors new to TWP in the post-1983 period included Val Wilmer (UK), Gillian Slovo (South Africa), Leena Dhingra (India/UK), J. California Cooper (USA), Wendy Chapkis (USA), Robin Morgan (USA), Moa Martinson (Sweden), Dorothy Dinnerstein (USA), Stevie Davies (Wales), Ellen Kuzwayo (South Africa), Fettouma Touati (Algeria), Joan Riley (Jamaica/UK), Tsitsi Dangarembga (Zimbabwe), Shizuko Gō (Japan), Anna Swir (Poland), Rosie Scott (New Zealand) and Pauline Melville (UK).

TWP also published feminist crime fiction including Val McDermid and Mary Wings, plus a feminist science fiction list, edited by Sarah Lefanu. The SF list could not be sustained beyond 1992, however, despite some fine writers, including Joanna Russ and Lisa Tuttle, joining the writings of Marge Piercy, Monique Wittig and Charlotte Perkins Gilman published much earlier by Stephanie Dowrick as “literary finds” with SF interest.

As one publishing insider wrote to Stephanie: “It is a laudable ambition to publish a whole list of women writers envisaging alternate worlds. But a Venn diagram of those readers who will buy Women’s Press books and those who will buy science fiction (published primarily as science fiction rather than as literature) shows an intersection too small to result in financially viable publishing.”

SF titles were published with mass market production values without a capacity to establish a mass market readership. Too little testing of the market then pivoting when – with the best exceptions – readers simply weren’t there. Was it a problem with booksellers in that genre? Perhaps. But market research soon reveals that. So do sales figures. Brutally. The financial losses were extensive. They remain unacknowledged in later accounts.

The crisis unfolds: the financial situation grows worse

From the mid-late 1980s, the financial situation at TWP, and its relevance in the wider book trade, progressively worsened.

By 1990 and into 1991, the “crisis period” exposed a financial and management imbroglio at the Press that had become unsustainable. These losses, detailed below, self-evidently arose from a publishing programme that emphasised inexperienced/unknown authors who often required high levels of investment yet failed to attract readers, and were not published with the necessary flair to survive in a tough trade publishing market.

On the management side, over-spending on unearned advances, inexperienced but expensive free-lancers, internal costs out of proportion with projected income, remained unchecked. In fact, costs and spending accelerated.

The scale of the losses is set out in full — with the contemporaneous ledger — in THE FINANCES: WHAT THE RECORD SHOWS: a £96,873 Press loss in the single year ending June 1991, interest costs of £41,584, and cumulative losses of £344,086 (nearing one million pounds in 2026 value).

Why has the cause of these disastrous losses remained immune from analysis by critics?

No explanation is possible for this situation other than a series of poorly judged publishing/editorial/marketing decisions, along with an in-house attitude that lost sight of the goals established by Dowrick: that The Women’s Press would be political and professional in its internal systems, its clarity and effectiveness, and its dealings with authors and within the publishing industry. Blaming a “corporate structure”, a “general recession” (which should have been met with decreased not increasing outgoings, and “interference” from Naim) speaks to a lack of political as well as publishing seriousness that has to be far, far better understood.

Emphasising her comments above, Stephanie says:

“I have no hesitation in saying I always envisioned TWP as a publishing enterprise that had to be highly professional, commercially savvy and politically courageous. It had to be self-sustaining with limited ‘economies of scale’ through some sharing of non-editorial functions with Quartet Books. It had to be solvent. Anything less than “standing on its own feet” would have undermined TWP as a boldly visible, politically effective women’s publishing venture. Dependency – most particularly without basic accountability and acceptance of measures to reduce that – had never been my personal experience; it is not what I envisioned for TWP. The “right” and power to publish is activism of the highest order. Naim understood and respected that. He also understood and thoroughly respected that my public claims to independence were grounded in my proven ability to contract, commission and publish skilfully, and my newer ability as founding MD to harbour resources and manage borrowings/debt, largely through initially working from home, working 24/7, turning my hand to whatever needed doing, and taking nothing for granted. (All very “New Zealand” qualities, if I may say so.)

My establishment in 1980 of The Women’s Press Bookclub was as an additional income stream for TWP, adding to cash flow with a minimal and predictable investment, while increasing TWP brand recognition and direct sales to readers of TWP books, as well as strong feminist titles from other publishers on which a small profit could be made.”

In what can now be regarded as the first in a fairly tragic series of claims, Ros argued in an article by David Pallister, published on 27 March 1991 in The Guardian (UK), that – against all the evidence made available to her then, and available on this website now – the losses were “small”, that the cause had been a general recession and that the company was recovering but that Naim Attallah, then still Chair of the TWP Board and solely responsible for the debts and accumulating interest, believed the growing focus on “Third World women writers” was “financially risky”. (See above as well as ARCHIVE letters from Naim and Stephanie strongly disputing this.)

What was not made clear to The Guardian, other media and supporters, was the scale of the losses, the length of time (three years) the losses had been accumulating, the internal dissension as well as lack of publishing wisdom, and the well-developed if somewhat chaotic Miriam Books proposal that would have seen Ros walking away from The Women’s Press, its authors, readers and staff — other than those she wished to take with her. Self-evidently, Ros’s focus was not on rescuing the press that had given her such a unique opportunity, and where unprecedented losses and disarray had accumulated.

In the same Guardian report, it was claimed that Attallah had “failed to support his (sic) managing director” and, as part of a management buyout proposal, had rejected an offer of £500,000 from Ros.

There is no archival evidence that Ros had located a backer or group of backers with sufficient access to capital to “buy out” The Women’s Press, especially with the level of debt plus interest run up over the last years of her watch. Her later inability to sustain either Miriam Books (1990) or Open Letters (1992) suggests that even with her preferred editorial freedom from anything that resembled “corporate” support, she could not solve the fundamental challenges to anything remotely resembling serious publishing of raising capital, commercial distribution, and securing cash flow.

In the document, sent from her home to Robert Oakshott for his business advice, Ros had written: “The Women’s Press faces decline if not demise [after nine years on her watch], owing to problems developing out of its company structure, and, in addition, will be further weakened by the attracting of some of its key staff to Miriam Books.” (Document sent November 1990, with handwritten letter)

That lengthy proposal document for Miriam Books was prepared in the company of unknown “others” who seemingly supported a need for a publishing house run by women free of any “corporate” constraints, as the support within the Namara Group was now described. (The document was circulated at The Women’s Press among some but not all staff.) A very few months later Ros was assuring British Book News (February 1991) that life at The Women’s Press, and its place within the Namara Group, was rosy.

These facts, and the integrity issues they raise, warrant fresh scrutiny from researchers serious about what was actually accomplished — and what was not. Editorial independence had to be linked to responsible management of financial and intellectual resources by women for TWP to claim its place as a women’s press. There is something tragic as well as profoundly unscholarly in the persistence some researchers show in ignoring the factual evidence in favour of a highly romanticised narrative. Common to these accounts is a shifting of ethical as well as financial accountability away from Ros – and eager “others” – to “blame” Naim, plus staff and authors who remained loyal to TWP, and founder Stephanie herself. Common also to these accounts is an inability or dissonant unwillingness to make sense of the material evidence in the books themselves: TWP would continue to publish – effectively, professionally, and never less than “politically” – for 13 years after the “demise” predicted by Ros.

Ros de Lanerolle’s departure from TWP

With financial losses finally recognised by the Board as unsustainable, and with Stephanie Dowrick in Australia, Naim asked Ros to step down as managing director, take on the role of editor-in-chief, and share managing director responsibilities with the then-sales director. Ros was not “dismissed” as Simone Murray claims in Mixed Media, when she writes: “Attallah, as the owner of the press [itself a false claim as TWP was co-owned with Stephanie as all evidence shows], was the party in the dominant position during the ensuing dispute [Naim was solely reponsible for the debts accrued with mounting interest by Ros’s team], and he was able to achieve his desired outcome: the dismissal of de Lanerolle; a revamping of the press’s list priorities away from Commonwealth and third-world writing; and the appointment of a more commercially sympathetic management team .” (Page 81). On the contrary. With every reason to dismiss her, given the debts, internal chaos, lack of publishing integrity (books published repeatedly, including SF, that could not find readers), Naim hung on, wishing to avoid exactly the bun fight the media would so relish. It is risible also to suggest that the list – as established by Stephanie and revived by publishing professional, Kathy Gale – ever moved away from “Commonwealth and third-world writing“. (See PUBLICATIONS on this website for the material evidence Murray and others have chosen to ignore.) Or that a “more commercially sympathetic management team” was anything but the reason for and means by which TWP could survive, continuing to publish bold, interesting, feminist “Books of Integrity” with integrity.

It was Ros’s choice to reject the offer made by Naim. Instead, she accepted a redundancy payout; five other staff resigned in solidarity with her. In a letter that year to Spare Rib magazine, she wrote “…the major disagreements between Mr. Attallah and the majority of the workers at The Women’s Press were not simply about losses but about what we published and how we ran the company”.

“Not simply about losses” is questionable. And ingenuous. What is at issue is responsibility for those losses – and Ros’s plans to desert a publishing house that had given her vital imprint and structural credibility. While this was presented to the media as a battle between “idealism” and “capitalism”, it was, in Stephanie’s words:

“A tragic misrepresentation of the professionalism necessary to attract excellent writing that is intellectually/politically challenging, while ensuring that this work was of interest to reviewers, bookshops and readers. Given the time frame between contracting, publishing, and any return on sales, no writer is served well by a trade publishing company that has become financially precarious. A ‘worker-run management structure’ sought unsuccessfully for Miriam Books by Ros (then later for her second proposed new company, Open Letters) would have demanded tough financial accountability for each book chosen, and full responsibility for those choices. That’s exactly what Ros failed to demonstrate even with the support she had at TWP.”

Stephanie’s founding principles in 1977 must be returned to. Her understanding of Naim’s financial support of a feminist enterprise — and his acceptance that on all editorial/management matters her authority must prevail — was on the clear understanding that TWP would as soon as possible “stand on its own feet”. That means, without the kind of financial patronage that seems, in 1990–91, to have been expected of Naim (even as he, a Palestinian man, was ridiculed and described as “Attallah-disgusting” and “The Ayatollah”).

The crisis period concluded only after Stephanie returned from Australia, having accepted the post of chair of the TWP Board, and appointed publishing professional Kathy Gale first as publishing director and soon after as joint managing director along with long-term sales director, Mary Hemming.

What the conflict does — and does not — represent

The conflict surrounding Ros’s final TWP years, the breakdown of trust, the short-lived Miriam Books proposal, Ros’s failure to raise the funds for a serious tilt at a TWP management buy-out, then her belated rejection of a structure she had tested to the limits, represents a turning point in the history of The Women’s Press.

It’s a moment that might appear to highlight a tension between so-called feminist or left-wing “ideals” and the need for a real-world, commercially sound structure within a highly competitive industry.

But does it, in fact?

Was The Women’s Press any less “idealistic” or ground-breaking or courageous in its foundational years when outstanding authors by any measure took a risk with an unproven publishing house on the basis of a common understanding of TWP principles and professionalism? Stephanie had compensated for the predictable fiscal constraints on this publishing start-up through her publishing experience and what she describes as “unceasing work”.

Inspired in part by her close observation of her former boss Tom Maschler’s highly creative and energetic style, and her own aptitude for originating and personally editing the books she contracted, Stephanie used her extensive publishing contacts in Britain, Europe and the US to attract high-profile existing authors, to commission then personally and painstakingly edit less experienced writers with something “urgent and important to say”.

She knew this kind of energy and high level vision was appreciated by Naim and created trust. She was also able to work co-operatively within the Namara Group, sharing some non-editorial functions with Quartet Books for vital economies of scale.

There is little or no basis for the argument that “idealism” was at risk in the period of conflict at TWP in 1989–1991. At risk was The Women’s Press itself, and the achievements and ideals built so painstakingly, including by the committed authors, since 1977.

What went wrong?

From the mid-1980s until late 1990, too many inexperienced authors were contracted (not all of them published; contracts made, advances paid, manuscripts not delivered). There was far too little in-house editorial expertise, book covers were designed that could not compete in high street bookshops, and a view of feminism prevailed that had become partisan rather than wide-ranging. For the tension and accusations to emerge into the public domain where they were seriously amplified, then reinforced by 21st-century academics with little or no understanding of the financial responsibility and accountability essential for sustaining “editorial independence”, compounds the distractions from fact-finding.

There appears to be little or no basis for the argument, either, that TWP was being “unfairly squeezed by its corporate parent” when:

a) the Namara Group was co-owner of TWP with Stephanie Dowrick;

b) the essential financial lifeline in periods of loss, such as 1989–91, was guaranteed solely by Naim Attallah;

c) Ros’s earlier and later projects failed to secure financing for even the most basic publishing.

Was Naim Attallah “interfering”?

Stephanie is quoted as saying:

“Not only was I not ‘controlled’ — and not ‘installed’ at TWP either as writer Catherine Riley so absurdly claimed (see above) — I had from Naim an indisputable sense of trust in my abilities, and a rare freedom to flourish.

Before starting The Women’s Press, my boss at Triad Paperbacks was the legendary publisher and chairman of both Triad and Jonathan Cape, Tom Maschler. Working with Tom was exhilarating, energising, immensely stimulating. There was plenty of sexism in publishing in those days, but my good fortune was to work with two men — both ‘outsiders’ as I was, both highly entrepreneurial and energetic as I was — who enabled others to be innovative, not just commercially but also intellectually and, in the case of a radically ‘out there’ publishing house, politically.”

Ros’s very public criticism of Naim’s “interference” referenced his attempts to introduce tighter financial accountability — not editorial control — after losses had spiralled.

That this could be ignored as standard business practice, and pilloried when “standard business practice” would have been to act much earlier, speaks to the serious lack of insight from those observers, and a fairly sad expectation of what an authentically “feminist” enterprise should expect and deliver.

History shows that any effort to try to separate The Women’s Press from its essential financial backing within the Namara Group was naïve, with no evidence that Naim was a negative force, nor that Stephanie as founder had any illusions she could or would wish to publish adventurously and professionally in the absence of a sound financial basis and support.

Miriam Books and Open Letters

In the period after her departure from TWP, Ros had moved on from attempting to establish Miriam Books, or to buy-out TWP, to proposing another new company, Open Letters, their press release announcing it was “aiming at originality and diversity” with Alison Hennegan and Gillian Hanscombe as co-directors. The launch was to be in June 1992. A catalogue was prepared to announce “Europe’s newest independent women’s publisher” but the directors were unable to raise funds to publish.

Lacking the commercial realities of successful trade publishing, led to the demise five months later of Open Letters, when a letter to shareholders, 10 November 1992, revealed: “Despite our best efforts during the summer and autumn to secure the company’s finances we have reached a position where the burden of debt carried by the company can no longer be sustained… We have decided we must cease trading, with immediate effect.”

Publishing outside academia is a business that runs on slim margins, raw energy and a keen eye to what will work for readers, as much as it is an envied medium to share ideas, entertain, or even attempt to change the world. Self-indulgent publishing, no matter how “noble”, can break any publisher. In 1983, Dowrick had explained how decisions were made at The Women’s Press about what to publish.

“The close association we seek to have with the women’s liberation movement necessitates at The Women’s Press a constant awareness of criteria beyond personal enthusiasm and financial viability. 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) … The Women’s Press is not just another publishing house turning out attractive books each year. It is a publishing house which must create and keep available the work of women who are intellectual and political pioneers.”

Revival and survival (1991–2002/3)

Despite the harsh emotional repercussions of that time of crisis, a period of recovery did follow, led by Kathy Gale from 1991 until 1999, that would give TWP a further 13 years of successful publishing. This was both commercially sustainable and, crucially, it retained the “pioneering edge” of the Press’s earliest years.

That brief was tough. Kathy was no older than Stephanie had been in 1977 when she started the Press. But she was another incredibly hard worker, politically committed, and determined to turn around the fortunes of a Press she admired enough to work for, even in the midst of difficulties intended by a vociferous few to undermine her.

Stephanie writes:

Kathy’s previous high-level publishing experience was vital to return the Press to financial and editorial stability. It was also essential to the central task of calming and retaining writers loyal to the Press and its ideals, to attracting interesting new writers, and to engaging and developing staff via her much-needed professional expertise.

We were in touch often and creatively. That copious correspondence (much of it on fast-fading faxes) will also become part of the hard copy archive. Within a remarkably short time, and while dealing with some disgraceful post-crisis turbulence, she shifted the strategy back much closer to original vision of editorial independence achieved through fiscal responsibility and control of the finances – and the depth of mutual trust that can only come with transparency and accountability. (I was, by this time, Chair of the TWP Board.)

The publishing flourished. She adapted that vision for the final decade of a turbulent 20th century: publishing relevant, exciting books that could attract widespread review coverage, generate reader interest, and self-fund TWP through medium to higher volume sales.

She professionalised the Press operations with rigorous cost-control measures essential to curtail spinning-out overheads. She combined a broad-ranging political focus with publishing acumen to ensure that books and authors could be sustained through sales, and transformed subsidiary rights and serial rights income, as my own publishing had done through the sale of multiple foreign rights (Why Children?, for example, which had multiple foreign-language editions) or hefty paperback rights (the sale of Kinflicks author Lisa Alther’s follow-up novel, Original Sins, to Penguin UK).

Kathy also paid close attention to covers, transforming the look of series, and highlighting marketing strategies that could and did attract high street bookshop interest.

Within months, Kathy Gale succeeded in restoring financial stability. The gratitude of the Board, the authors, interested and supportive readers battered by the earlier negative media, can only be imagined.

The Women’s Press under Gale’s leadership

Under Kathy Gale, TWP continued to champion diverse experienced and experimental voices. She notably contracted and published titles that maintained and expanded TWP’s reputation for women-centred innovation as well as publishing professionalism.

She needed to professionalise every aspect of the publishing to survive both a difficult recession and increasing competition from mainstream publishers (such as HarperCollins and Penguin), who by then were competing for feminist writers under their own imprints and who could pay far larger advances than TWP.

This ensured that well beyond the rebuilding stages, TWP’s publishing remained true to the feminist principles Stephanie had established in 1977 when she 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.”

Post-1991: The Women’s Press stabilised and flourished

Kathy Gale introduced a range of new writers to The Women’s Press, including bell hooks (Gloria Jean Watkins), Beatrix Campbell, Stephanie Dowrick herself (UK rights only), Sue Woolfe, Dionne Brand, Charlotte Watson Sherman, Shay Youngblood, Charlotte le Favor, M Nourbese Philip, Beth Yahp, Marcia Muller, Kate Cann and Manda Scott.

Kathy demonstrated her political acumen nurturing writers who would provide a steady ongoing stream of successful books, while also paying needed attention to the rich TWP backlist, thereby ensuring existing authors could develop their careers, and strong-selling writers would stay loyal to the Press.

Revival — financial and cultural

The full figures — the forecast prepared for the incoming team set against what Kathy Gale actually achieved — appear in THE FINANCES: WHAT THE RECORD SHOWS near the start of this document. In brief: against a forecast loss of £21,225, Gale delivered a £52,353 profit in her first full year, and the Gale–Hemming team was profitable in every year of their tenure bar one brief, explicable exception. That turnaround allowed The Women’s Press to offer essential professionalism, stability and confidence to its long-term authors, to expand into newer areas of concern, and to revive the Livewire list, the Women Artists Diaries, and The Women’s Press Book Club. It offered remaining and new staff a reliable workplace.

(Stephanie’s own commitment to the new management team is demonstrated by the eventual publishing — in the UK only, with separate publishers in the US and ANZ — of three of her non-fiction books, and her second novel.)

1999–2002/3 at The Women’s Press

By 1999, Gale felt it was time for her personally to move on. Being in a very public position as a feminist publisher is not easy. Working with such tight margins – without a “corporate structure” – is a constant challenge.

With her co-MD, Mary Hemming (who chose to leave at the same time), Kathy wanted to appoint a successor who would be thoroughly supported as she took up her role – in direct contrast to Kathy’s own initial experience, even while she was thoroughly respected and supported by Stephanie, the Board, and the majority of staff who had stayed on, plus talented newcomers.

Editor, publisher and writer Elsbeth Lindner was appointed, but stayed in the role only a year before leaving TWP to live with her partner abroad.

Elsbeth later became a member of the Orange Prize Management Committee. Kathy’s own publishing career continued to soar. Stephanie’s writing, teaching, interfaith leadership, has included the international publication of 20 books.

During this final period, TWP editorial and daily management passed to Quartet Books (until 2002/3). Authors from that period included Hester Kaplan (USA), Elizabeth Stead (Australia), Shamim Sarif (South Africa) and Anchee Min (China/USA). Long-time writers continuing with TWP in this period included Alice Walker, Caeia March, Joan Barfoot and Stevie Davies.

An open door to researchers: TWP from 2026 forward

Stephanie said in 1983,

“It is an understatement to say that women have a long history of excellence in writing. A desire to play some part in the continuance of that tradition means that we at The Women’s Press look for high standards of writing and argument, and this becomes more and not less important as the publishing house grows. Writers of the calibre of Janet Frame or Toni Cade Bambara or 1983 Pulitzer Prize-winning Alice Walker should expect the highest possible literary as well as political standards from their publisher.”

“Books of integrity” demand and deserve vigilance and care from their publishers, and from those seeking to write about The Women’s Press. Editorial independence had to be linked to responsible management of financial and intellectual resources by women for TWP to claim its place as a women’s press.

• We look forward now to intellectually and ethically sound analyses of what was achieved. And how it resonates and inspires.
  
• We offer a wide-open door to our archival records, unfolding on this website. We welcome researchers and readers to our CONTACT page. We welcome your memories, images, photos, your sharing on social and mainstream media; we welcome your care.

At the time of the 1998 celebration of 20 years of TWP publishing, British journalist Angela Neustatter said: “I remember vividly The Women’s Press when it first began, a wonderful, feisty step into the sharks’ nest that is the world of publishing. And what a triumph that it has succeeded, not only in staying alive… The Women’s Press has made an immeasurable contribution to women’s lives.” Indeed! Wonderfully, that positive contribution, the motivation that drove it, the efforts from so many that sustained it, lives on.