It was originally known as Spare Rib Books,[5] sharing a name with the most famous magazine of the British women's liberation movement or second-wave feminism.
The latter were reissued under the "Modern Classics" insignia, which launched in 1978 with Frost in May, a novel by the British author Antonia White originally published in 1933.
After a downturn in the market forced a reduction in activity, the board decided to sell the company to Little, Brown, of which Virago became an imprint in 1996 (with Lennie Goodings as publisher and Sally Abbey as senior editor).
The sale to Little, Brown, a large company owned by the telecommunications giant Time Warner, was met with negative publicity and raised questions about the future of feminist publishing houses.
In 2008, the British Library acquired the Virago Press archive, consisting of organisational papers, author/editor files, publicity materials and photographs.