Silver Moon Bookshop – Female Empowerment
We all have certain objects that we treasure that evoke cherished memories of moments, people, and places.
One of my favourite treasures is a mug I bought around 1996 or so, from the iconic women’s bookshop Silver Moon based in Charing Cross London. The names of fabulous female writers are emblazoned all over it. It also evokes exciting memories of discovering LGBTQ London.
As my tea steams from my mug, I am reminded of the fantastic history to which we all belong.
Iconic Feminist Bookshop – Silver Moon
The Silver Moon Bookshop was a feminist bookstore on Charing Cross Road in London founded in 1984 by Jane Cholmeley, Sue Butterworth and Jane Anger.
It stocked only books by women or books about women, with extensive coverage of feminist and lesbian titles. The shop was also a resource centre for women’s issues, and hosted author events by writers such as Margaret Atwood and Germaine Greer.
In 1989 Silver Moon Bookshop won the Pandora Award for “contributing most to promoting the status of women in publishing and related trades”.
Women In Publishing
The Women in Publishing Oral History website celebrates the achievements of women in book publishing during the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s – vital decades for both feminism and professional advancement of women in the UK. Coming together in 1979 to create their own networking organisation, members of Women in Publishing remember the challenges they faced, the problems they overcame, and how, through striving for greater equality, they changed the industry in which they worked.
It’s a fantastic resource so head over to hear from some of the pioneering women themselves about their experiences in publishing.
I remember being surprised and actually very thrilled and, we won it [Pandora Award] for setting up Silver Moon Women’s Bookshop. Sue Butterworth and myself and also Jane Anger. And to say it was a sort of healing thing, sounds a bit sort of wishy washy, but we’d had such a lot of difficulty, if not to say, attacks on us for setting up the bookshop.
Now, setting up a feminist bookshop in the Charing Cross Road, and a feminist and lesbian bookshop in the Charing Cross Road, I never expected that that would win us much in the popularity stakes but what I was completely taken aback by and very surprised by was the hostility that that provoked…
Jane Cholmeley
anna larner 