MRS. NORAH SMALLWOOD: 'THE MOST FORMIDABLE WOMAN PUBLISHER OF HER GENERATION'? 1

Norah Smallwood (1909-1984) was a hugely influential presence within British publishing in the twentieth century: her career at Chatto & Windus spanned almost fifty years. To date, accounts of Smallwood's career, often journalistic or in memoirs written by her colleagues, are light in detai...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPublishing history Vol. 87; pp. 55 - 6
Main Authors Withers, D-M, West, Elizabeth
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Cambridge Chadwyck-Healey Ltd 01.01.2023
Subjects
20th century
Autobiographical literature
Autobiographies
Careers
Executives
Irish literature
Murdoch, Iris (1919-1999)
Occupations
Publishing industry
Sexism
Womens literature
Woolf, Virginia (1882-1941)
United Kingdom > UK
United States > US
Virginia
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Summary:Norah Smallwood (1909-1984) was a hugely influential presence within British publishing in the twentieth century: her career at Chatto & Windus spanned almost fifty years. To date, accounts of Smallwood's career, often journalistic or in memoirs written by her colleagues, are light in detail and tend to casually reproduce sexist tropes, be they of her fearful, harridan personality, or her business incompetence. In this article, we draw upon archival sources from the University of Reading and the University of Leeds to paint a more nuanced picture of Smallwood. We use this evidence to investigate her relationship with authors such as Iris Murdoch, Laurie Lee, and Sylvia Townsend Warner. Smallwood's interactions with a younger generation of female publishers, namely Stephanie Dowrick and Carmen Callil, are also discussed, as is her fierce ability, maintained toward the very end of her life, to negotiate impressive financial deals for Virginia Woolf's estate. We reposition Smallwood from the footnotes and anecdotes of general publishing histories, and analyse her specific qualities as editor, publisher, and businesswoman. We place her where she belongs: at the heart of the twentieth-century literary world.
ISSN:0309-2445