Women Poets, Male Publishers
Myth vs. Market in Post-1960s Britain
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Beschreibung
We are often told that the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s led to the rediscovery of forgotten women writers. Without feminist presses such as Virago, these women would have sunk into obscurity. Thanks to Carmen Callil and other trailblazing feminist publishers, a canon of women’s literature emerged, and living writers managed to survive and sometimes thrive in a literary marketplace that had so far been dominated by men. Although obstacles remained, the story is one of the triumphs over a misogynistic publishing industry—a sector that had once sought to erase women writers of the past, marginalise living authors, and close the doors to any future legacy.
There are two problems with this oft-repeated story. First, it focuses mainly on fiction rather than poetry (founded in 1973, Virago did not start publishing poetry until the early 1980s). Second, it neglects the major role that conservative male publishers played in (re)discovering women poets in post-1960s Britain. With the growing influence of the Women’s Liberation movement, these publishers realised that there was a growing market for poetry by women. At the same time, the Arts Council of Great Britain started pushing for more diversity, nudging its “clients” to make more room for women and ethnic minorities.
Drawing on extensive archival work and oral history interviews, this open access book pushes the boundaries of a scholarship that has focused mainly on women’s poetry in relation to women’s presses. Archival documents show the influence of the Arts Council and the market in pushing conservative publishers towards more diversity. This evolution has had long-term consequences on the canon of women’s poetry, a canon that was largely shaped by conservative publishing houses rather than radical feminist presses.
Lise Jaillant is Professor in Digital Cultural Heritage at Loughborough University, UK. Previous publications include three monographs; twenty-one articles; eleven book chapters; three edited books and seven journal special issues. In recent years, Lise has developed collaborations with multiple museums/special collections libraries, building on her expertise in publishing history in the digital age.
We are often told that the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s led to the rediscovery of forgotten women writers. Without feminist presses such as Virago, these women would have sunk into obscurity. Thanks to Carmen Callil and other trailblazing feminist publishers, a canon of women’s literature emerged, and living writers managed to survive and sometimes thrive in a literary marketplace that had so far been dominated by men. Although obstacles remained, the story is one of the triumphs over a misogynistic publishing industry—a sector that had once sought to erase women writers of the past, marginalise living authors, and close the doors to any future legacy.
There are two problems with this oft-repeated story. First, it focuses mainly on fiction rather than poetry (founded in 1973, Virago did not start publishing poetry until the early 1980s). Second, it neglects the major role that conservative male publishers played in (re)discovering women poets in post-1960s Britain. With the growing influence of the Women’s Liberation movement, these publishers realised that there was a growing market for poetry by women. At the same time, the Arts Council of Great Britain started pushing for more diversity, nudging its “clients” to make more room for women and ethnic minorities.
Drawing on extensive archival work and oral history interviews, this open access book pushes the boundaries of a scholarship that has focused mainly on women’s poetry in relation to women’s presses. Archival documents show the influence of the Arts Council and the market in pushing conservative publishers towards more diversity. This evolution has had long-term consequences on the canon of women’s poetry, a canon that was largely shaped by conservative publishing houses rather than radical feminist presses.
This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access The first history of British poetry publishers and their (re)discovery of women poets, from the 1960s onwards Sheds new light on influential men who controlled the publication of poetry, and the women poets they published Offers a new model of scholarship in hybrid archives (comprising paper and born digital documents)
Autor*in
Lise Jaillant
Themen in »Women Poets, Male Publishers«
Open Access Twentieth Cenutry British Poetry Publishers and Editors Women Poets Second-Wave Feminism Literary Canon Arts Council of Great Britain Elizabeth Jennings Sylvia Plath Hilda Doolittle Carcanet Press Virago
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No one has done more to show us how twentieth-century literature was shaped and sustained by commercial publishers than Lise Jaillant. In this, her latest and most methodologically ambitious work, Jaillant tells the surprising story of how male editors at self-declared conservative publishers helped to fuel a resurgence in women’s poetry in late twentieth-century Britain. The book re-emphasizes that this thing we call “literature,” emerges, unpredictably, in the complex relations among writers, publishers, editors, readers, and institutions.
Patrick Collier
Emeritus Professor of English
Ball State University, USA
Lise Jaillant’s deeply researched book offers a fresh, illuminating account of the British poetry scene from the 1960s to the 1980s and beyond. Alert to the regional, institutional, and commercial contexts of literary production, she shows, through groundbreaking archival and oral history research, how commercial publishers shaped a diverse and cosmopolitan canon of women’s poetry. It offers a compelling revisionary account of literary and publishing history in the period.
Andrew Nash
Reader in Book History and Director of the London Rare Books School
Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London, UK
This broadly ranging, wonderfully researched history of women poets and male publishers, based on original study in often overlooked archives, challenges stereotypical views about the supposed insularity of male publishers. It also corrects the received idea that only feminist presses led to the rediscovery of women poets, while the critical role of conservative male publishers, in rediscovering women poets and bringing them to the marketplace, is told here for the first time. The text also raises critical questions concerning social values, publishing practices and public funding. Considering anthologies, reviews, individual poets and even digital archives, Jaillant masterfully revises the conventional view of women poets and the channels for poetry publication.
Ira Nadel, FRSC
Professor of English Emeritus
University of British Columbia, Canada
Author of The American Sentence: from Pulpit to Pulp Fiction (2025).
A welcome addition to the body of scholarship on modernist small presses and little magazines, Women Poets, Male Publishers urges us to consider the category of poetry written by women as a dynamic and complex genre profoundly shaped by institutional forces in the postwar British publishing industry and literary and sociocultural marketplaces. If terms like “growth industry,” “marketing appeal,” “mergers and acquisitions,” “management buyout,” and even “bestseller “feel a world away from the concerns of poetry and poetry studies, Women Poets, Male Publishers will challenge you to think otherwise.
Mike Chasar
Professor of English
Willamette University, USA
Author of Poetry Unbound: Poems and New Media from the Magic Lantern to Instagram (2020)
Lise Jaillant’s Women Poets, Male Publishers: Myth vs. Market in post-1960s Britain is a meticulously researched cultural history that incorporates interviews, contemporary reviews, and publishing data to describe the complex landscape and the behind-the-scenes decisions that led some conservative male publishers to (re)discover women poets after 1960. Focusing on three case studies (Carcanet and H. D.; PN and Elizabeth Jennings; Faber and Sylvia Plath), Jaillant tells a fascinating and counterintuitive story about the ways market conditions and the Arts Council paved the way for these influential publishers to promote and publish the work of women poets.
Karen Leick
Clinical Assistant Professor and Director, Professional Writing Program
Department of English
University of Illinois at Chicago, USA
Poetry Survival is both a significant contribution to the scholarship about twentieth-century literary institutions and a well-told analysis of a publishing firm that has not received much attention.Jaillant knows the players well, uses archival research expertly, and has well-informed ideas about how digital-born materials will change these kinds of projects.
Greg Barnhisel
Professor of English
Duquesne University, USA
Women Poets, Male Publishers is a major contribution to literary history. The book challenges commonplaces about aesthetic autonomy and canonization by demonstrating how state funding and the market combined to increase the status of poetry by women in postwar Britain. The book also presents a vital history of Carcanet Press from its beginnings as an undergraduate magazine in the early 1960s to its current position as one of the most important poetry publishers in the world. The book will become necessary reading for historians and sociologists of literature, and scholars of postwar poetry.
Joshua Kotin
Associate Professor of English
Princeton University, USA
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