Carmen Callil
Encyclopedia
Carmen Thérèse Callil is a publisher, writer and critic. She founded Virago Press
Virago Press
Virago is a British publishing company founded in 1973 by Carmen Callil to publish books by women writers. Both new works and reissued books by neglected authors have featured on the imprint's list....

 in 1973.

Life

Callil was born in Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...

 Australia, but has lived in London since 1960. Her mother Lorraine Clare Allen, widowed in her early forties, raised four children of whom Carmen was the third. Her father, Frederick Alfred Louis Callil was a barrister and bibliophile, and a Lecturer in French at Melbourne University.

Education

Callil was educated at Star of the Sea Convent, and at Loreto Mandeville Hall
Loreto Mandeville Hall
Loreto Mandeville Hall Toorak is a Roman Catholic day school for girls in Toorak, a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.It is one of many Loreto schools distributed over the world, established by the sisters of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary or Loreto Sisters, founded some 400 years...

. She graduated from the University of Melbourne with a BA Arts degree in History and Literature in 1960.

Career

In the same year she left for Europe, and, after a period in Italy, settled in London in 1964. She worked for Marks & Spencer
Marks & Spencer
Marks and Spencer plc is a British retailer headquartered in the City of Westminster, London, with over 700 stores in the United Kingdom and over 300 stores spread across more than 40 countries. It specialises in the selling of clothing and luxury food products...

 as a buying assistant, then, after placing an advertisement in the Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...

 Newspaper: "Australian, B.A. wants job in book publishing", began work at Hutchinson Publishing company in 1965. From 1967-1970 she was Publicity Manager of the paperback imprint Panther Books, and later all imprints of Granada Publishing, and then at Anthony Blond
Anthony Blond
Anthony Bernard Blond was a British publisher and author.Blond was the elder son of Major Neville Blond CMG, OBE, who was a cousin of Harold Laski. His mother was from a Manchester Sephardic Jewish family; they divorced when Blond was a child. Born in Sale, Cheshire, Blond was educated at Eton,...

 and André Deutsch
André Deutsch
André Deutsch was a British publisher.After having learned the business of publishing working for Francis Aldor with whom he was interned in the Isle of Man during the Second World War and who had introduced him to the industry, André Deutsch left Aldor's employment after a few months to continue...

. She left to work for Ink, a countercultural Newspaper founded by Richard Neville
Richard Neville (writer)
Richard Neville is an Australian author and self-described "futurist", who came to fame as a co-editor of the counterculture magazine Oz in Australia and the United Kingdom in the 1960s and early 1970s...

, Andrew Fisher, Felix Dennis
Felix Dennis
Felix Dennis is a British magazine publisher, poet, and philanthropist. His privately owned company, Dennis Publishing, pioneered computer and hobbyist magazine publishing in the United Kingdom...

 and Ed Victor
Ed Victor
Ed Victor is one of the world's leading Literary Agents.-Biography:Victor is the son of Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, who ran a photographic equipment store...

 in 1971. Ink was an offshoot of Oz
Oz (magazine)
Oz was first published as a satirical humour magazine between 1963 and 1969 in Sydney, Australia and, in its second and better known incarnation, became a "psychedelic hippy" magazine from 1967 to 1973 in London...

 and was intended to be a bridge between the underground press of the 1960s and the national newspapers of that time. Launched in April 1971, it collapsed with the Oz
Oz (magazine)
Oz was first published as a satirical humour magazine between 1963 and 1969 in Sydney, Australia and, in its second and better known incarnation, became a "psychedelic hippy" magazine from 1967 to 1973 in London...

 trial for obscenity of Richard Neville
Richard Neville (writer)
Richard Neville is an Australian author and self-described "futurist", who came to fame as a co-editor of the counterculture magazine Oz in Australia and the United Kingdom in the 1960s and early 1970s...

, Felix Dennis
Felix Dennis
Felix Dennis is a British magazine publisher, poet, and philanthropist. His privately owned company, Dennis Publishing, pioneered computer and hobbyist magazine publishing in the United Kingdom...

 and Jim Anderson
Jim Anderson (editor)
Jim Anderson edited Oz Magazine and later wrote the book Billarooby.Jim Anderson was born in Haverhill, Suffolk, but his family emigrated to Australia when he was a year old. This was due to his father having a dispute with his own father with whom he never reconciled...

.

At Ink, Callil met Marsha Rowe and Rosie Boycott
Rosie Boycott
Rosel Marie Boycott , better known as Rosie Boycott, is a British journalist and feminist.-Journalism career:Daughter of Major Charles Boycott and Betty Boycott née Le Sueur, Rosel Boycott was born in St Helier, Jersey and was educated at the independent Cheltenham Ladies' College and read...

, who went on to found the feminist magazine Spare Rib
Spare Rib
Spare Rib was a second-wave feminist magazine in the United Kingdom that emerged out of the counter culture of the late 1960s as a consequence of meetings involving, amongst others, Rosie Boycott and Marsha Rowe.-Description:...

 in June 1972. At the same time Carmen Callil founded Virago
Virago Press
Virago is a British publishing company founded in 1973 by Carmen Callil to publish books by women writers. Both new works and reissued books by neglected authors have featured on the imprint's list....

, to "publish books which celebrated women and women's lives, and which would, by so doing, spread the message of women's liberation to the whole population". Rowe and Boycott
Rosie Boycott
Rosel Marie Boycott , better known as Rosie Boycott, is a British journalist and feminist.-Journalism career:Daughter of Major Charles Boycott and Betty Boycott née Le Sueur, Rosel Boycott was born in St Helier, Jersey and was educated at the independent Cheltenham Ladies' College and read...

  became Directors of Virago
Virago Press
Virago is a British publishing company founded in 1973 by Carmen Callil to publish books by women writers. Both new works and reissued books by neglected authors have featured on the imprint's list....

 in its first years.

Also in 1972 Callil launched a Book Publicity Company, Carmen Callil Limited. Harriet Spicer
Harriet Spicer
Harriet Greville Spicer is a lay member of the Judicial Appointments Commission. She was born on 24 April 1950 to James Spicer, the then owner of Spicer's Paper and Patricia Palmer. She lived in Chelsea before attending Lillsden School for Girls and then Benenden School. In 1968 she spent some time...

 became Callil's assistant. This publicity company, run by Spicer
Harriet Spicer
Harriet Greville Spicer is a lay member of the Judicial Appointments Commission. She was born on 24 April 1950 to James Spicer, the then owner of Spicer's Paper and Patricia Palmer. She lived in Chelsea before attending Lillsden School for Girls and then Benenden School. In 1968 she spent some time...

 and Callil, helped to finance Virago
Virago Press
Virago is a British publishing company founded in 1973 by Carmen Callil to publish books by women writers. Both new works and reissued books by neglected authors have featured on the imprint's list....

 in its early years, together with Callil's inheritance from her grandfather. Further assistance came from Quartet Books, with whom the first nine Virago
Virago Press
Virago is a British publishing company founded in 1973 by Carmen Callil to publish books by women writers. Both new works and reissued books by neglected authors have featured on the imprint's list....

 titles were published. Ursula Owen
Ursula Owen
Ursula Margaret Sachs is a publisher, editor and campaigner for free expression.-Early life:She was born Ursula Margaret Sachs in Oxford, England, to Emma Boehm and Werner Sachs, a chemical engineer who became managing director of a multinational company dealing with non ferrous metals...

  became a part time editor in 1974. She was to become a full time director, with considerable responsibility for the content of the Virago
Virago Press
Virago is a British publishing company founded in 1973 by Carmen Callil to publish books by women writers. Both new works and reissued books by neglected authors have featured on the imprint's list....

 publishing list.

In 1976 Virago
Virago Press
Virago is a British publishing company founded in 1973 by Carmen Callil to publish books by women writers. Both new works and reissued books by neglected authors have featured on the imprint's list....

 became an independent company, with Callil, Owen
Ursula Owen
Ursula Margaret Sachs is a publisher, editor and campaigner for free expression.-Early life:She was born Ursula Margaret Sachs in Oxford, England, to Emma Boehm and Werner Sachs, a chemical engineer who became managing director of a multinational company dealing with non ferrous metals...

 and Spicer
Harriet Spicer
Harriet Greville Spicer is a lay member of the Judicial Appointments Commission. She was born on 24 April 1950 to James Spicer, the then owner of Spicer's Paper and Patricia Palmer. She lived in Chelsea before attending Lillsden School for Girls and then Benenden School. In 1968 she spent some time...

 as Directors, shortly to be joined by Lennie Goodings and Alexandra Pringle.

In 1982 Callil was appointed Managing Director of Chatto & Windus and The Hogarth Press
Hogarth Press
The Hogarth Press was founded in 1917 by Leonard Woolf and Virginia Woolf. It was named after their house in Richmond, in which they began hand-printing books....

 where she remained until 1994, continuing also as Chairman of Virago Press
Virago Press
Virago is a British publishing company founded in 1973 by Carmen Callil to publish books by women writers. Both new works and reissued books by neglected authors have featured on the imprint's list....

 until 1995. In 1994 she was Editor-At-Large for the worldwide group of Random House
Random House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...

 publishing companies. At Virago
Virago Press
Virago is a British publishing company founded in 1973 by Carmen Callil to publish books by women writers. Both new works and reissued books by neglected authors have featured on the imprint's list....

, among other business and editorial aspects of the company, she was responsible for the creation and development of the Virago
Virago Press
Virago is a British publishing company founded in 1973 by Carmen Callil to publish books by women writers. Both new works and reissued books by neglected authors have featured on the imprint's list....

 Modern Classics list, which brought back into print many hundreds of the best women writers of the past. At Chatto & Windus, among the writers she published were Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
Dame Iris Murdoch DBE was an Irish-born British author and philosopher, best known for her novels about political and social questions of good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious...

, V. S. Pritchett
V. S. Pritchett
Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett CH CBE , was a British writer and critic. He was particularly known for his short stories, collected in a number of volumes...

, A. S. Byatt
A. S. Byatt
Dame Antonia Susan Duffy, DBE is an English novelist, poet and Booker Prize winner...

, Angela Carter
Angela Carter
Angela Carter was an English novelist and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, and picaresque works...

, David Malouf
David Malouf
David George Joseph Malouf is an acclaimed Australian writer. He was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2000, his 1993 novel Remembering Babylon won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 1996, he won the inaugural Australia-Asia Literary Award in 2008, and he was...

, Amos Oz
Amos Oz
Amos Oz is an Israeli writer, novelist, and journalist. He is also a professor of literature at Ben-Gurion University in Be'er Sheva....

, Edward Said
Edward Said
Edward Wadie Saïd was a Palestinian-American literary theorist and advocate for Palestinian rights. He was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and a founding figure in postcolonialism...

, Alice Munro
Alice Munro
Alice Ann Munro is a Canadian short-story writer, the winner of the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for her lifetime body of work, a three-time winner of Canada's Governor General's Award for fiction, and a perennial contender for the Nobel Prize...

, Marina Warner, Alan Hollinghurst
Alan Hollinghurst
Alan Hollinghurst is a British novelist, and winner of the 2004 Man Booker Prize for The Line of Beauty.-Biography:Hollinghurst was born on 26 May 1954 in Stroud, Gloucestershire, the only child of James Hollinghurst, a bank manager, and his wife, Elizabeth...

, Anne Tyler
Anne Tyler
Anne Tyler is an American novelist.Tyler, the eldest of four children, was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her father was a chemist and her mother a social worker. Her early childhood was spent in a succession of Quaker communities in the mountains of North Carolina and in Raleigh...

, Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved...

, Francis Wheen
Francis Wheen
Francis James Baird Wheen is a British journalist, writer and broadcaster.-Early life and education:Wheen was born into an army family and educated at two independent schools: Copthorne Preparatory School near Crawley, West Sussex and Harrow School in north west London.-Life and career:Running...

 and Michael Holroyd
Michael Holroyd
Sir Michael De Courcy Fraser Holroyd, FRHS, FRSL is an English biographer.-Life:Holroyd was born in London and educated at Eton College, though he has often claimed Maidenhead Public Library as his alma mater....

.

Callil left book publishing in 1994, and for some years divided her time between London and Caunes-Minervois
Caunes-Minervois
Caunes-Minervois is a small medieval town or “commune” in the Aude department in the Languedoc-Roussillon region in southern France. It is known particularly for its ancient Abbey, dating from the eighth century, and the outstanding red marble that has been quarried locally from Roman times...

 in France. As a writer and critic, she has written reviews and features for many newspapers and journals, in addition to occasional radio and television work.

From 1985-1991 she was a member of the Board of Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...

 Television. She was a Member of the Committee for The Booker Prize, 1979–1984; a founder Director of The Groucho Club
Groucho Club
The Groucho Club is a well-known private social club located at Dean Street in Soho, London. Its members are mostly drawn from the media, entertainment, arts and fashion industries....

, London, 1984–1994 and in 1989 received the Distinguished Service Award from the International Women's Writing Guild
International Women's Writing Guild
The International Women's Writing Guild, founded in 1976 by Hannelore Hahn, is a non-profit network for the personal and professional empowerment of women through writing...

. She is a Doctor of Letters from Sheffield University, the University of York, Oxford Brookes University
Oxford Brookes University
Oxford Brookes University is a new university in Oxford, England. It was named to honour the school's founding principal, John Brookes. It has been ranked as the best new university by the Sunday Times University Guide 10 years in a row...

 and the Open University
Open University
The Open University is a distance learning and research university founded by Royal Charter in the United Kingdom...

. She has also been a judge of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award is an international literary award for a work of fiction, jointly sponsored by the city of Dublin, Ireland and the company IMPAC. At €100,000 it is one of the richest literary prizes in the world...

 and The Orwell Prize
Orwell Prize
The Orwell Prize used to be regarded as the pre-eminent British prize for political writing.Three prizes are awarded each year: one for a book, one for journalism and another for blogging...

. She was Chairman of Judges, Booker Prize for Fiction, in 1996.

In May 2011, when Philip Roth
Philip Roth
Philip Milton Roth is an American novelist. He gained fame with the 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus, an irreverent and humorous portrait of Jewish-American life that earned him a National Book Award...

 was awarded the Man Booker International Prize for achievement in fiction on the world stage, the fourth winner of the biennial prize, Callil, who was one of the judges, withdrew in protest, calling Roth's work the 'Emperor's clothes
The Emperor's New Clothes
"The Emperor's New Clothes" is a short tale by Hans Christian Andersen about two weavers who promise an Emperor a new suit of clothes that is invisible to those unfit for their positions, stupid, or incompetent...

.' She said "he goes on and on and on about the same subject in almost every single book. It's as though he's sitting on your face and you can't breathe... I don’t rate him as a writer at all, I made it clear that I wouldn’t have put him on the long list, so I was amazed when he stayed there. He was the only one I didn’t admire -– all the others were fine."

External links

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