Spare Rib

For other uses, see Spare rib (disambiguation).

Spare Rib

200px Spare Rib cover, December 1972
Editor	Collective from late 1973
Categories	Feminist Magazine
Year founded	1972
Final issue	1993
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Website	http://www.bl.uk/spare-rib (archive)

Spare Rib was a second-wave feminist magazine in the United Kingdom that emerged from the counter culture of the late 1960s as a consequence of meetings involving, among others, Rosie Boycott and Marsha Rowe.

History

Spare Rib's first issue was published in June 1972. At the time, some newsagents refused to stock it, including W. H. Smith. Selling at first around 20,000 copies per month, it was circulated more widely through women's groups and networks.

Its purpose, as described in its editorial, was to investigate and present alternatives to the traditional gender roles for women of virgin, wife or mother.

Early articles were linked closely with left-leaning political theories of the time, especially anti-capitalism and the exploitation of women as consumers through fashion.

As the women's movement evolved during the 1970s, the magazine became a focus for sometimes acrimonious debate between the many streams that emerged within the movement, such as socialist feminism, radical feminism, revolutionary feminism, lesbian feminism, liberal feminism and black feminism.

Spare Rib ceased publication in 1993.

It was announced by The Guardian in April 2013 that the magazine was due to be relaunched, with the journalist Charlotte Raven at the helm. It was subsequently announced that while a magazine and website were to be launched, it would now have a different name.

In May 2015 the British Library put its complete archive of Spare Rib online.

Editors

Spare Rib became a collective by the end of 1973 (see Spare Rib Reader, edited by Marsha Rowe, and Rosie Boycott, A Nice Girl Like Me).

Sources

• An extensive collection of most if not all publications can be found in the Women's Library reference/reading room in London.

• Feminist Publications Brief history of Spare Rib at Bristol University History Department. Retrieved June 2008.
• Interview with Marsha Rowe The first editor of feminist magazine Spare Rib interviewed by Claire Daly at The F-Word. 31 January 2008. Retrieved June 2008.
• Feminists and Flourbombs - Passion, bitterness and feminism by Sue O'Sullivan, collective member of Spare Rib magazine from 1979 to 1984. Accessed June 2008.
• Article on Spare Rib by Hazel K. Bell from The National Housewives Register's Newsletter no. 19, Autumn 1975, pp. 10-11. Retrieved June 2008.
• Preview.

Further reading

• Documenting the history of the British magazine, "Trouble and Strife: The Radical Feminist Magazine" which ran from 1983 to 2002.

External links

• British Library archive
• Full, free-to-access, online archive hosted by the JISC Journal Archive
• Marsha Rowe, Rosie Boycott, Angela Phillips, Marion Fudger and Anna Raeburn talk to Sue MacGregor about the early years, BBC Radio 4.
• Photo of Marsha Rowe and Rosie Boycott Founders of Spare Rib, at the magazine's offices, 19 June 1972.
• Spare Rib magazine (1972-1993) - article on grassrootsfeminism.net website.
• Spare Rib review of Angelique Rockas` Internationalist Theatre`s UK premiere of Griselda Gambaro `El Campo`