Partners in Publishing – and Life

Together for almost 60 years, Rehoboth Beach residents Anyda Marchant and Muriel Crawford have built a remarkable life as a couple and as pioneering book publishers.

By Kevin Riordan*

When Anyda Marchant and Muriel Crawford met in 1948, lesbians and gay men lived mostly in the closet. This invisibility extended to literature as well; there were but a handful of works about homosexual people, and the touchstone lesbian novel was the "The Well of Loneliness," the title of which says it all.

Nearly six decades after they fell in love while working for a Washington, D.C., law firm, longtime Rehoboth Beach residents Marchant and Crawford are still together, and their high-profile life reflects the increased visibility for all gay people.

They – literally and figuratively – have helped write the book about the dignity and longevity of same-sex love, through the example of their own relationship, Marchant's 14 novels (written under the pen name Sarah Aldridge) and the two publishing companies they co-founded or founded, Naiad Press in the '70s, and A & M Books in the '90s.

"They were among the first lesbian publishers, and they were very brave," says Rehoboth writer Fay Jacobs, whose entertaining book, "While I Lay Frying" was published by A&M last year.

Crawford is 90. Marchant is 94. They are mentally vigorous, if somewhat physically fragile, and during an interview on a pale gray January afternoon they are gracious and fascinating hostesses. The home where they have lived for 40 years is both cozy and capacious; it's full of books and paintings and mementoes that attest to their long-standing devotion to each other, and to the life of the mind. On Saturday evenings in the summer, the couple entertains writers, readers and lovers of things literary on their big front porch; a sort of informal salon.

Marchant, who was born in Brazil, is a natural storyteller. Crawford, a Washington native, is the quieter of the two, but she's quick with a quip or an aside ("I'm Anyda's alter ego," she says). Both women speak in the measured, almost stately manner of an earlier era, and they talk to each other in the way of deeply compatible couples – at one point in the conversation, Crawford calls Marchant "sweetie." And both grew up in homes where reading was a treasured pastime, and where education for women was encouraged.

"My father was a scholar who had been educated by French Jesuits," Marchant says. "Books were very, very important...I read my way through the children's section of the D.C. public library."

Although neither came from families of means, both women were determined to pursue their studies after high school. Marchant got a scholarship to law school at what is now George Washington University, and Crawford trained to be a legal secretary. They met while working at the law firm of Covington and Burling.

"The first thing I did," Marchant recalls, "was to find her."

Was it love at first sight?

"Yes," Marchant says.

"I'm not going to get into my love life," Crawford says, smiling.

"I'm not going to make any bones about it," Marchant continues. "I looked out the window and saw her crossing the street."

Needless to say, pursuing a lesbian romance while working at an august D.C. law firm (Dean Acheson, who served as secretary of state, was a partner) was no simple matter. "We had to be very circumspect," Marchant says. "We didn't go to bars. We didn't do anything that would shatter the illusion we were just friends."

In Washington, as elsewhere in America, discretion was a must for gay men and lesbians – even those, like Marchant and Crawford, who had long accepted their orientation.

"I was aware...that I didn't fit in with the scheme of things...my mother knew of the situation, and she was very supportive," Marchant says. "But you could lose your job and everything else. Everybody knew but nobody talked about it. If they didn't know, they were stupid."

Says Muriel: "I was afraid of the letter 'L.' We would refer to [lesbians] as shsshes" (as in, "shhh!").

But not long after they met, they decided to live together, an arrangement that was not necessarily unusual, given that housing was scarce in postwar Washington. Women could share a home without exciting much comment; at the time, lesbians were essentially invisible, and male homosexuality was hardly ever mentioned in the mainstream press – unless in connection with a vice raid, scandal, or congressional investigations of "perverts" in government. And as for literature, few novels of the period dealt openly, much less, positively, with lesbian life.

"I read anything that had any bearing on the subject," Marchant says. "There wasn't much."

Although she'd long dreamt of becoming a novelist, Marchant, like Crawford, was busy building a successful career in the '50s and '60s. She went on to work at the World Bank, then in its infancy, and Crawford worked for the head of the Southern (now Norfolk and Southern) Railroad. Eventually, both became concerned about their health, and they decided to retired in 1971. Earlier, they had bought a house in Rehoboth; Crawford had a friend who lived in Salisbury, Md., and during visits, "we decided we liked Rehoboth very much," she says.

But buying real estate together turned out to be a bit more complicated than they expected. "When we went to buy the house, for what is now a very modest amount of money, they wouldn't give us a mortgage," Marchant recalls. "We both had magnificent jobs, but you see, we weren't [legally] 'connected' in any way." But the second bank said yes, and the couple went on to buy other Rehoboth properties, including their current home.

It was while living in Rehoboth that Marchant began to focus on her writing. "I at an early age had wanted to be a novelist," she says. "I had written novels all through the years in my spare time...a few of them I did present to publishers, but I realized I was not reaching my potential because I was not writing about gay subjects. I had a gay mentality, but I was writing non-gay novels, so naturally they had a fatal flaw. When I came to retire I thought, 'Well, this is the opportunity'"

Crawford continues, "The first time I became aware of her writing, I went to California, and we corresponded, and I got these absolutely marvelous letters," she says. "And they've been marvelous ever since. Because that is Anyda."

Marchant and Crawford had been subscribers to The Ladder, the first American magazine by and for lesbians. Marchant had contributed fiction to the publication, marking the first appearance of the Sarah Aldridge byline in print. And it was through The Ladder that they became acquainted with the editor Barbara Grier. By 1972, the magazine had folded, and Marchant, with Crawford's "approval," contacted Grier about publishing her novel.

"I said, 'Why don't we found a publishing house'?" Marchant says.
At that time, she continues, "if you had a manuscript of a gay novel, you could not find a publisher. Work by women could not find a publisher."

In 1973, Grier, her life partner Donna McBride, and Marchant and Crawford founded Naiad Press (Naiad is a Greek word for water sprite). "So we published 'The Latecomer,' which was the first publication of the Naiad Press," Marchant says. "Then it went on from there."

"Didn't you get the printer down in Florida?" Crawford asks.

"I found the printer in Florida," Marchant agrees. "The printer had two principal clients – the first was the Naiad Press and the second was a Baptist church."

"The books were sent to us," Crawford says. "And we sent them out...we were the shipping clerks." Fortunately, she adds, "We have a very large garage."

Despite its modest beginnings, Naiad flourished, publishing hundreds of romances, mysteries and other genre novels by women, and bringing the work of writers such as Jane Rule and Katharine V. Forrest to a wide audience.

And the fact that a network of independent, gay and lesbian-feminist bookstores sprang up by the '70s proved invaluable to Naiad's viability. "There were a lot of little bookstores at that time," Marchant says. "And they were the lifeblood."

Felice Newman, co-founder of Cleis Press, says independent lesbian and gay publishers were significant not only for booksellers and readers, but for the building of the post-Stonewall community. "In order to have a social movement, you have to have a communications network," she says. "The ideas of the movement were in those books. They were very precious to us."

The Naiad partnership dissolved amid considerable bitterness in the early '90s, with Grier and McBride ultimately buying out Marchant and Crawford's interest in the company. Naiad continued in business until last year, when Grier and McBride transferred the firm's assets – including about 200 titles in print, and 35 authors – to the Florida-based Bella Books.

Marchant and Crawford are reluctant to discuss the end of their relationship with Naiad; Marchant will only say that Grier wanted to take the operation in a more commercial, as opposed to literary, direction, while Grier says Naiad "published everything from the extremely literary to the extremely ephemeral, and I'm proud of that."

Not long after the dissolution of the partnership, Marchant and Crawford founded A&M, which celebrates its 11th anniversary this year.

"Nature abhors a vacuum," Marchant explains.

"And you wanted to [continue to] publish the Sarah Aldridge books," Crawford says.

"It was an opportunity to try to do something that would fill that void we tried to fill before," Marchant continues. "The void is the lack of opportunities for publishing the type of women's literature we wanted."

In addition to Jacobs' book ("Fay's work was what I had in mind," Marchant says), A&M published the latest Sarah Aldridge novel, "O, Mistress Mine," in 2003. It also owns the Aldridge catalogue. And Marchant, meanwhile, is working on an idea for a new novel. "I'm trying to get there," she says. "It tantalizes me." These days, she writes in longhand, because of her eyesight and difficulty with mobility in her fingers.

For her part, Crawford is a reader, not a writer. "I'm merely her assistant...I think I typed all of [the early novels]," she says. "When I was a kid I wrote poetry [that was published] in the Washington Post. It was awful... although I was very proud of it at the time."

Crawford also was the proofreader for Jacobs' book – "and she was good," the author says – and brings the same attentiveness to bear on her partner's manuscripts. "Anything that Anyda does has to be perfect," she observes. "We don't pussyfoot around. If I have an objection, we talk it out."

So what are their favorite Sarah Aldridge novels?

"I have several favorites," Crawford says. "'The Latecomer,' of course. It was the first one of hers I read, and I fell in love with it."

"'Misfortune's Friend,'" Marchant adds. "There's something about that book I feel I've never reached with any of the others."

Kevin Riordan is a South Jersey-based journalist and book reviewer.

Special thanks to Visions Today magazine and Kevin Riordan for permission to republish this article.