Seriously - a great subject for someone's thesis, I think, rather than thinking a publisher is going to support it - or a research grant (more or less officially unobtainable in this country now for work in the Humanities).

Yet another under-written area of women's history. I think you're on the right track with Virago in the sense that Women's Studies is where this will probably be investigated.

It's very tempting. In my next (or parallel) life I'll do it myself.

Cheers

C