2010: Lost Man Booker nominees

Nina Bawden’s The Birds on the Trees and Shirley Hazzard’s The Bay of Noon are nominated for the Lost Man Booker. Nina Bawden wins the Gold PEN Award for her contribution to literature.

2010: Lennie Goodings and Virago win Editor and Imprint of the Year

Lennie Goodings and Virago win Editor and Imprint of the Year at the book industry’s NIBBIES awards.

2010: Sarah Waters wins Glamour Magazine Writer of the Year Award

Sarah Waters wins Glamour Magazine Writer of the Year Award.

2011: The Paris Wife is Published

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain is published, selected for Richard & Judy and has now sold over 100,000 copies.

2012: Mary Renault comes to Virago Modern Classics

Virago Modern Classics acquire all of Mary Renault’s ouevre.

2012: Polemic is back

Polemic is back: Virago publishes Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (2010); Living Dolls by Natasha Walter (2010) and Vagina by Naomi Wolf (2012) and all sell extremely well.

2013: Katie Ward is awarded the Clarissa Luard Award

Katie Ward, author of Girl Reading, is awarded the Clarissa Luard Award by Hilary Mantel.

2013: Virago team

The Virago editorial team in 2013.

2013: Virago is 40

Seven forms of ownership later . . . Virago is forty, still celebrating the power to publish. To celebrate forty years of Virago, we asked our authors to write something inspired by the number forty. Their answers are published in a free ebook, available for download at your favourite ebook retailer.

2013: Launch of Virago Modern Classics for Younger Readers

Donna Coonan starts a new list within the Virago Modern Classics including L. M. Montgomery, Rumer Godden and Joan Aiken.

2013: Her Brilliant Career

The Stereotype of the 1950s housewife is challenged by Rachel Cooke

2013: Tracey Thorn, everybody’s favourite disco queen . . .

. . . tells us what it’s really like to be in a band.

2013: In response to you know what . . . (!)

. . . we publish Fifty Shades of Feminism

2014: Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala wins the PEN-JR Ackerly Award

‘A stunning memoir of grief . . . contains some of the best, most affecting writing about love and family that I have ever read’ – India Knight, Sunday Times.

2014: Patricia Highsmith

Patricia Highsmith, the Queen of Crime, joins the Virago Modern Classics

2014: Maya Angelou, much-loved Virago author, dies at the age of 86

2014: Virago Modern Classics welcomes Angela Thirkell

The best-loved Barsetshire series, by Angela Thirkell, first joined the Virago Modern Classics list in 2014.

2015: Testament of Youth film is released

One of Virago’s most treasured memoirs, Vera Brittain’s Testament of Youth, is adapted for the big screen.

2015: I Call Myself a Feminist

Twenty-five young women tell us why they call themselves feminists.

2015: Carrie Brownstein’s Hunger Makes Me A Modern Girl tells it like it is

Virago Press publishes the memoir from the Portlandia star and feminist punk hero. Shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Awards

2015: Laughing all the Way to the Mosque by Zarqa Nawaz

‘A sort of Muslim Miranda’– Sunday Times

2015: Virginia Baily’s Early One Morning is a stunning success

A beautiful novel, now sold in over fourteen languages.

2015: The Paying Guests

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters is shortlisted for the Baileys Prize for Fiction

2015: The Walk Home

Rachel Seiffert’s first novel with Virago, The Walk Home, is longlisted for the Baileys Prize for Fiction

2015: Stella Duffy OBE

Stella Duffy is awarded an OBE for services to the Arts

2016: Stop the Clocks

Joan Bakewell’s book on what she will leave behind, is published

2016: Valley of the Dolls

Virago Modern Classics mark the 50th anniversary of the fabulous Valley of the Dolls

2016: President Obama interviews Marilynne Robinson, one of his favourite writers

The Givenness of Things, by Marilynne Robinson.

2016: iO Tillet Wright’s Darling Days

A New York memoir that also tells us about gender.

2016: Linda Grant’s stirring The Dark Circle is published

The following year it is shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and The Wingate Prize.

2016: Virago publishes Lauren Graham from Gilmore Girls

Sarah Savitt, Virago’s Deputy Publisher, brings us the wonderful memoir from Lauren Graham, Talking As Fast As I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls (and Everything in Between).

2016: The Virago Team

Top row (l-r) Ailah Ahmed, Commissioning Editor; Lennie Goodings, Publisher; Donna Coonan, Editorial Director, Virago Modern Classics. Bottom row (l-r) Sarah Savitt, Deputy Publisher; Angela Cammarota, Executive Assistant; David Bamford, Assistant Editor.

2017: Molly Keane by Sally Phipps

Molly Keane’s daughter writes the biography of the much-loved Irish author of Classics such as Good Behaviour and Time After Time

2017: Anne of Green Gables,  The Railway Children and What Katy Did Next

Some of the greatest children’s classic authors join the Virago Modern Classics, including E. Nesbit and Susan Coolidge.

2017: The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington

Fascinating biography of the important surrealist painter

2017: Trans Like Me by CN Lester

CN Lester writes one of the first important books about transgender people and politics, a journey for all of us

2017: I Was Told to Come Alone by Souad Mekhennet

Extraordinary story by a Washington Post journalist `courageous and deeply knowledgeable’– Jason Burke.

Longlisted for The Baillie Gifford Prize and shortlisted for the Nayef Al-Rodham Prize for Global Cultural Understanding

2017: The Last Girl by Nadia Murad

Nadia Murad was awarded with Denis Mukwege the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize `for their efforts to end the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war and armed conflict’.

`Her voice will not be muted’ – Amal Clooney

2017: Carrie’s War and Peppermint Pig

Nina Bawden’s famous books join the Young Virago Modern Classics

2017: Sarah Savitt

In July, after 20 years of being Publisher, Lennie Goodings steps down to become Virago Chair and Sarah Savitt becomes Publisher of Virago. `I am honoured … to build on Virago’s unique history and take it into the future.’

2018: The Vagina Monologues

The book that inspired V-Day, the radical grassroots movement to end violence against women and girls. The Vagina Monologues special 20^th anniversary edition is published .

2018: On Smaller Dogs and Larger Life Questions

The author of Life After Birth writes her last brilliant book and, sadly, dies in December of this year.  Honest, brave, funny, Kate Figes was intent on making a difference through understanding the relationships of our lives.

2018: 40 years of VMC

The Virago Modern Classics series is 40 Years Old and we celebrate with publishing Writers as Readers and other exceptional classic writers.  Yehrin Tong was awarded the V & A Illustration Award for Their Eyes Were Watching God and the series won the Beautiful Book Award at Books are My Bag Readers Award.

2018: Fruit of Knowledge

We publish our first graphic novel, by celebrated Swedish artist Liv Strömquist.

2018: The Seventh Cross and Transit

Anna Seghers, one of Germany’s most important twentieth-century writers, becomes a Virago Modern Classic. Her novel of resistance, The Seventh Cross, is translated, unabridged, for the first time in English and shortlisted for The Schlegel-Tieck Prize.  

‘It was [Seghers] who taught my generation and anyone who had an ear to listen after that not-to-be-forgotten war to distinguish right from wrong. The Seventh Cross shaped me; it sharpened my vision’ – Gunter Grass

2018: Promising Young Women

We publish the debut novel by Caroline O’Donoghue (`Whipsmart and so witty’ – Marian Keyes) which is Shortlisted for the Irish Book Awards – Newcomer of the year – and she goes on to write Scenes of a Graphic Nature and The Rachel Incident.

2018: Wind in my Hair by Masih Alinejad

We are proud to publish `the fight for my freedom in Iran’ by the extraordinary courageous Iranian-American journalist, author, and women’s rights activist

2018: The Guilty Feminist

Inspired by the award-winning podcast of the same name, which has had 100 million downloads, Deborah Frances White’s book is an instant Sunday Times bestseller

2018: Can we all be Feminists?

June Erica-Udorie edits an important collection of essays on intersectional feminism, including: Black Lives Matter, Trans Rights, Sex Workers’ Rights, Body Positivity, Disability Rights, Immigration, British Muslims, Intersectionality, Latinx Identity and Colourism that asks ‘How can we make feminism more inclusive?’

2018: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier 

We celebrate the 80^th anniversary of this iconic novel in a Virago Modern Classic special hardback edition

2018: The Secret Diaries of Anne Lister

The Secret Diaries of Anne Lister edited by Helena Whitbread, first published by Virago in 1992, is reissued as a Modern Classic. Sally Wainwright’s BBC/HBO series, Gentleman Jack, which is based on Anne Lister’s life, airs the following year.

2018: Noel Streatfeild’s Holiday Stories

The beloved Noel Streatfeild  becomes a Virago Modern Classic. Two volumes of previously uncollected short stories and three novels are published.

2019: A Woman of No Importance

Sonia Purnell’s gripping history of the untold story of Virginia Hall, The Second World War’s most dangerous spy is a New York Times bestseller and wins the Plutarch Award for Best Biography

2019: A Stranger City

Linda Grant wins the 2020 Wingate Literary Prize for her seventh novel, a “compelling love letter to London life”.

2019: Radical Help by Hilary Cottam

How we can remake the relationships between us and revolutionise the Welfare State.

`Might be the most important book you read this year’ – Jonathan Freedland

2019: Equal by Carrie Grace

Though equal pay for equal work has been the law for half a century women still often get paid less than men. Carrie Gracie takes up the battle for us all. Longlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award

2019: My Judy Garland Life

Reissued to coincide with the film JUDY. 

`Sets out to map the boundaries of celebrity obsession, and somewhere along the way discovers what it means to be human . . . beautiful, heart stopping writing’ – Viv Groskop, Observer

2019: High School

From iconic musicians and noted LGBTQ+ activists, a nostalgic memoir about high school, first loves and first songs.  A  New York Times bestseller and now a TV series

2019: Between the Stops by Sandi Toksvig

`It’s about a bus trip really, because it’s my view from the Number 12 bus … It’s not a sensible way to write a memoir at all, probably, but it’s the way things pop into your head as you travel, so it’s my way’.

 Brilliant.  From our national treasure.

2019: Ann Petry

Ann Petry’s first novel, The Street, was a literary event in 1946, praised and translated around the world – the first book by a black woman to sell more than a million copies.  Reissued with The Narrows in the Virago Modern Classics.

`A wonderful novel’ – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

2019: My Cousin Rachel

Reissue of the extraordinary and mysterious novel by Daphne du Maurier to coincide with the film starring Rachel Weisz

2019: Sigrid Nunez

Virago welcomes to the list the marvellous American writer with  The Friend: Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction, shortlisted for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award and a New York Times bestseller.  We go on to publish Nunez’ backlist and in 2020 What are You Going Through.

2019: Gayl Jones

Corregidora, a lost classic (first published in 1975) joins the Virago Modern Classics. Hailed as a masterpiece, from James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison and John Updike. Virago goes on to publish her new novel Palmares in 2022, which is a Pulitzer Prize Finalist and longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize.

2019: Sarah Waters OBE

Sarah Waters is awarded an OBE for Services to Literature. 

In 2017 she was named Author of the Year by DIVA; awarded Stonewall’s Writer of the Year; and British LGBT Lifetime Achievement