The Feminist Press

The Feminist Press at The City University of New York is a nonprofit literary and educational institution based in New York City. The Press publishes and promotes the works by women from all eras and all regions of the globe. Founded in 1970, the Press has brought more than 300 critically acclaimed works by and about women into print. The Press seeks to publish classic and inspiring works of literature by women from around the world, recover precious out-of-print and never-in-print documents, establish the history of women around the globe, inform readers everywhere on urgent social issues relevant to women, support the outreach of diverse community groups to bring books to underserved readers, and achieve activist and educational goals.

Founding

From the beginning, in partnership with women’s studies, The Feminist Press has provided the books and other educational materials essential to changing the content and focus of classroom education. By the end of the 1960s, both Florence Howe and her husband Paul Lauter had taught in the Freedom Schools in Mississippi, and Howe was already attempting to compile a mini-women’s studies curriculum for her writing students at Goucher College in Baltimore.

As the 1970s approached, Howe was convinced that, just as she needed texts for teaching abut women, so would other educators. Her appeal to a number of university and trade publishers to issue a series of critical feminist biographies proved of no avail. Ultimately, the Baltimore Women’s Liberation, an active local group and publishers of a successful new journal, helped to raise money for the Press’s first publications.

In The Press’s founding years, Tillie Olsen changed its course dramatically by giving Howe a photocopy of the 1861 pages of the "Atlantic Monthly" containing an anonymously published novella called "Life in the Iron Mills". In 1972, The Press issued this work by Rebecca Harding Davis as the first of its series of rediscovered feminist literary classics. Olsen’s second suggestion, "Daughter of Earth" by Agnes Smedley, and Elaine Hedges’s suggestion, "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, were published in 1973, and both of these have become staples of the American literature and women’s studies classrooms since.

The Feminist Press also publishes , an interdisciplinary academic journal.

Significant Works

"Life in the Iron Mills" by Rebecca Harding Davis

"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

"Long Walks and Intimate Talks" by Grace Paley

"Changes" by Ama Ata Aidoo

"Still Alive" by Ruth Kluger

"The Answer/La Respuestra" by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz

"We Walk Alone" by Ann Aldrich

"Brown Girl, Brownstones" by Paule Marshall

"Baghdad Burning" by Riverbend

Series

2X2 Series

Classic Feminist Writers

Contemporary Classics by Women

The Defiant Muse

Femmes Fatales

The Helen Rose Scheuer Jewish Women's Series

Jewish Women Writers Women Changing the World

Women's Lives, Women's Work

Women Writing Africa Project

Women Writing in India

Women Writing the Middle East

Interesting Facts

The Feminist Press was founded after Florence Howe received $100 in contributions in her mailbox.

The Feminist Press is the longest surviving women’s publishing house in the world.

The first book to be published was Barbara Danish’s "The Dragon and the Doctor."

Gloria Jacobs is the Executive Director of The Feminist Press.

References

New York Review of Books, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/10505

The New York Times, http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60A15FA3C540C708CDDA80894DF404482

External links

* [http://feministpress.org The Feminist Press]