Virago is a British publishing company founded in 1973 by Carmen Callil, primarily to publish books by women writers. Both new works and reissued books by neglected authors have featured on the imprint's list, as well as works with feminist themes by male authors such as H. G. Wells.
In 1982 Virago became a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chatto, Virago, Bodley Head, and Cape Group, but in 1987 Callil, Lennie Goodings, Ursula Owen, Alexandra Pringle, and Harriet Spicer put together a management buy-out from CVBC, then owned by Random House, USA. The buy-out was financed by Rothschild Ventures and Robert Gavron. Random House UK kept a ten per cent stake in the company, and continued to handle sales and distribution.
In 1993 Rothschild Ventures sold their shares to the directors and Gavron, who thus became the largest single shareholder. After a downturn in the market forced a reduction in activity, the board decided to sell the company to Little, Brown, of which Virago became an imprint in 1996 (with Lennie Goodings as Publisher and Sally Abbey as Senior Editor). In 2006, Virago's parent company became part of publishing group Hachette Livre. Lennie Goodings remains as editor and publisher.
Famous quotes containing the word press:
“What chiefly distinguishes the daily press of the United States from the press of all other countries is not its lack of truthfulness or even its lack of dignity and honor, for these deficiencies are common to the newspapers everywhere, but its incurable fear of ideas, its constant effort to evade the discussion of fundamentals by translating all issues into a few elemental fears, its incessant reduction of all reflection to mere emotion. It is, in the true sense, never well-informed.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)