Lennie Goodings:  A Bite of the Apple - A Life with Books, Writers and Virago, 

9780198828754, Oxford University Press, hardback, also available as E-Book

Lennie Goodings is one of the pioneers in feminist publishing, arriving first as publicists and later becoming publisher/editor at Virago Press whose fate she helped shape to this day.  

Coming  originally from Canada and joining then tiny Virago Press in 1978 with their larger than life publisher Carmen Cahill,  Lennie started her career at one of most important feminist publishing houses dedicated to publishing  female authors and topics solely,  a revolutionary concept then. 

“A Bite of the Apple” is a fascinating recollection, of great interest to anyone interested in UK publishing, feminism and literature.  Part memoir, part history of Virago with all its politics, successes and economic struggles, I was particularly captured by Lennie’s own thoughts about editing and her stories and commitment to her authors.  I know Lennie from my days at Penguin and had the great pleasure to help sell Virago books into Germany when Virago was sold to Little Brown, now Hachette.  Consequently reading her book felt like a déjà vu to me, I savored her spilling the beans about office and publishing politics, so many names and people were familiar. I vividly remember her enthusiastic presentations of her books at sales conferences followed by wild dancing and partying in the evening!  “A Bite of the Apple” is a  frank, intimate and passionate memoir, exquisitely written as one might expect of someone like Lennie who introduced such great authors as Margaret Atwood, Marilynne Robinson, Sarah Waters, Linda Grant, Natasha Walter, Naomi Wolf and Maya Angelou among many others into UK and European market.