Victoria Press

The Victoria Press was founded by activist Emily Faithfull in London in 1860. Faithfull saw the work of her press as three-fold: furthering the messages of the women’s liberation movement, making space for women’s writing and intellectual output, and creating opportunities for women to work. The Victoria Press was part of a large network of organizations that pushed for the employment of women in the print trade. The press was an offshoot of both the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women which was founded in 1859 and the Women’s Printing Society that Faithfull had founded in the 1870s. Faithfull’s work was motivated by the barrier’s which women faced within the print trade. Printing unions barred women entry and male compositors refused them work declaring that they did not have the capacity for the technicalities of composition or justification. Faithfull believed that the industry could provide respectable and profitable jobs for middle-class women who sought work to allow themselves greater independence.

Faithfull came to be a printer and publisher in ordinary for the queen finding great success and wide readership. She and her team of women compositors and printers published women’s periodicals, poetry work, and official government sanctioned texts like The Health of Merchant Seamen, a copy of which is included in this exhibition. The press also engaged with activist print across a variety of social movements. Faithfull undertook several print runs for the Ladies’ London Emancipation Society. Copies of two of the pamphlets that she printed for this group “The Essence of Slavery” and “The Chivalry of the South” are housed in Western’s Special Collections.