For the historical lead-in, Goodings maintains a careful, stately tone, like the voiceover in a prestigious BBC period drama about ladies: The House of Elliot, but for books. The story is one of artistry, ambition, activism and a fierce desire to marry the three ... A Bite of the Apple is about the women who did this work from the 1970s onwards, a time of huge activism around race, class and sex ... The book snaps into wit and colour when she reflects on her experiences as a dedicated and worldly editor. She is great at acute, observant character snapshots ... At the core of this book is a curiously Victorian message about the value of sincerity and of acting in good faith ... As a cultural history, A Bite of the Apple is clear. As a reminder of female artists’ ongoing fight for space and respect, it’s necessary. As a riff on writers and writing, it’s essential.

... Goodings would become the Publisher at Virago, one of the most influential and renowned presses of the 20th century. A Bite of the Apple tells the history of over 40 years of the publishing house, through its books, its characters, its finances, and its drama. It is part memoir, part history, and part an exploration of feminism, publishing, and the place of literature in affecting social progress ... Not only does [Goodings] recover Virago’s story, but she loops in the narratives of various authors and movements, building up a rich and textured historical fabric ... Bringing us right through to the work of Lola Olufemi, Joanna Bourke and the impact of #MeToo, A Bite of the Apple is an engagingly-written, thoughtful, and fast-paced book that captures the infectious enthusiasm of Virago. Sometimes eccentric, dedicated, with rare holidays and working lunches, this is an inspiring, entertaining and insightful read, full of the energy and fervour of hard-won wisdom.

Lennie Goodings, one of Virago’s earliest employees, draws on memories of her 42-year career at the press as well as the testimonies of fellow 'Viragos' and authors, from Angela Carter to Angelou, to capture the 'hot flame' that fuelled their fast-growing project ... A Bite of the Apple is essentially a romance story about the power of storytelling and the passion required to sustain a precarious literary dream for more than four decades ... This is an immersive, lovingly written memoir, whose story resonates beyond publishing. There are times when you would like Goodings to be less diplomatic and offer more juicy details of the catfights [...] But she is clearly the most even-tempered of the founding members, the one who hasn’t thrown in the towel and the one who has ensured Virago’s thumbprints are all over the culture.

... pensive and surprisingly poignant ... With Goodings we have the distinct feeling of always being in earshot of the shareholders; there will be no talk of thighs here, and she’s discreet about her own politics, insisting on a flexible, welcoming notion of feminism ... Even as Virago’s mission was to shatter silences, the costs of speech were very clear. And so, perhaps, this deeply modest book that, of all things, contains its own critique and argues against its own circumspection, deploring the feminine habits of 'modesty, likability and anxiety.' It’s a memoir that doesn’t merely look backward, but in its form, in all its limitations, gestures at the work to be done. It’s a memoir of a Virago reader.

The old-style publisher’s memoir, which reached its high-water mark between about 1920 and 1950, was a relatively staid affair ... The signature mark of this apologia pro vita sua was, naturally, praise: praise for the authors whose careers he had boosted and praise for the associates who had helped him on his way, with perhaps a dire warning or two about the likelihood of the modern publishing scene very soon going to hell in a handcart. How odd, then, that Lennie Goodings, longtime chatelaine of Virago, the greatest feminist outfit in the history of British publishing, should have written a book that, once you subtract the feminism, reads as if it could have been put together in the library of the Savile Club about three-quarters of a century ago ... the light that gently emanates from A Bite of the Apple is practically roseate in its hue. Then there is the fact that, like many a book-world memoirist from the mid-20th-century golden age, Goodings can’t quite work out whether she is writing an account of her own affairs or the glorious undertakings in which she was engaged ... Goodings sharply conveys the intense communality of Virago in the independent years – the sense of everyone involved being on a collective mission to do good, the devoted authors, the loyal readers ... but also aware of some of the conflicts that ran beneath.

In her debut memoir, Goodings charts the company’s history and offers observations on not just 'the march of feminism,' but also editing, reading, so-called post-feminism, and more. Much of the book reads like an expanded catalog of Virago titles, with dozens of examples of the authors and books they publish, and the tone can be self-congratulatory and defensive ... An informative, occasionally dry account of a publishing house that has mostly succeeded in its mission 'to rock the boat.'