Spare Rib was the largest feminist circulating magazine of the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) in Britain of the 1970s and 80s. It remains one of the movement’s most visible achievements. The trajectory of Spare Rib charted the rise and demise of the Women’s Liberation Movement and as a consequence is of interest to feminist historians, academics and activists and to those studying social movements and media history.

The Spare Rib digitisation project makes available the entire run of fully searchable Spare Rib magazines via a digital journals archive platform hosted by Jisc alongside this curated British Library website. The British Library’s website features over 20 contextual articles and 300 examples of content selected from the magazine.

The magazine’s content is eclectic and varied and as such represents the many facets of the Women’s Liberation Movement and women’s experiences. Contributors ranged from well-known feminist writers, activists and theorists from around the world as well as the voices of ordinary women telling their own stories.

We are working with the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS), the Society of Authors and the Association of Authors' Agents to help identify authors and the British Association of Picture Libraries and Agents (BAPLA), Design and Artists Copyright Society (DACS), National Union of Journalists’ (NUJ) Photographers’ Council to help identify photographers and other visual artists.  Please contact us at [email protected] if you are able to identify and locate names of authors on this list or photographers and other visual artists on this list.  

For more information about the project, visit www.bl.uk/spare-rib/.