How did Tillie Olsen’s work help inspire the founding of the Feminist Press?

Tillie Olsen’s work was instrumental in the founding of the Feminist Press in 1970, primarily due to her dedicated efforts to recover and promote the work of forgotten women writers.1

Olsen’s commitment to highlighting lost literary voices directly influenced the press's mission and its subsequent reprint series. Her impact was further solidified through her recommendations of these authors, which were published as "Tillie Olsen’s Reading Lists" in the Women’s Studies Newsletter between 1972 and 1973. Additionally, she contributed directly to the press's early catalog by providing an extensive historical and biographical afterword for the 1972 publication of Rebecca Blaine Harding Davis’s Life in the Iron Mills. Through these actions, Olsen helped ensure that the contributions of women authors were preserved and recognized within the women’s movement and the broader literary canon.1