Nearly 40 years on from its humble beginnings around Carmen Callil’s kitchen table in 1973, Virago has become one of the most vigorous, stylish and successful British publishing imprints, the outstanding international publisher of books by women.

Our contemporary fiction list has been blessed with award-winners and bestsellers including Margaret Atwood,  Marilynne Robinson, Sarah Waters, Linda Grant, Sarah Dunant, Gillian Slovo; from the Man Booker to the Orange Prize for Fiction.

The famous Virago Modern Classics began with Antonia White, Elizabeth Taylor, Edith Wharton, Willa Cather among others. It now includes Angela Carter, Muriel Spark and Daphne du Maurier.

Virago launched its non-fiction list with memoirs and biography – Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – and continues with the bestselling The Bolter by Frances Osborne; Lyndall Gordon’s biography of Emily Dickinson, Lives Like Loaded Guns; and Shirley Williams’ autobiography.

Seeking up-to-date, thought-provoking analysis, we have published Natasha Walter, Joanna Bourke, Naomi Wolf, Lisa Appignanesi and the all-time bestseller Åsne Seierstad’s Bookseller of Kabul.

Virago has had every kind of ownership: first, publishing in association with Quartet; then independently owned; then part of CVBC (Chatto, Virago, Bodley Head and Cape), followed by a management buy-out. In 1996 the directors sold the company to Little, Brown, where Virago has flourished for a decade to become, today, a brand name and in 2010, won The Bookseller’s Imprint of the Year Award.