Brigid Brophy: Avant-Garde Writer, Critic, Activist

by Richard Canning (Editor), Gerri Kimber (Editor)

Overview

Celebrates Brigid Brophy’s life’s work, its diversity, originality and achievement
The first critical book on Brigid Brophy covering all her interests from literature, music and art to animal rights and political activismIncludes previously unpublished written and illustrated material by BrophyContributions from leading literary scholars, biographers, creative writers and activistsThis book explores all aspects of Brophy’s literary career, alongside contributions on animal rights, vegetarianism, anti-vivisectionism, humanism, feminism and sexual politics, not only celebrating Brophy’s eclectic achievements but fully reflecting them. Contributors include literary critics, animal rights activists, Brophy’s daughter, Kate Levey, and Brophy herself.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474462679
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	03/03/2022
Pages:	264
Sales rank:	715,286
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.58(d)

About the Author

Richard Canning has taught English Literature at five UK universities, mostly recently as a Professor of British and American Literature. He is the author or editor of nine books, including Gay Fiction Speaks and the Lambda Literary Editors’ Choice Award-winning Hear Us Out (both Columbia UniversityPress, 2000 and 2004).

Gerri Kimber is a Visiting Professor in the Department of English at the University of Northampton, and a professional writer and book reviewer.

Table of Contents

Contents

List of IllustrationsAcknowledgements

IntroductionRichard Canning

1. Embodying the Fragments: A Reflection on the Reluctant Auto-Biography of Brigid BrophyPhoebe Blatton

2. Brigid Brophy’s Paradoxical World of ChildhoodMichael Bronski

3. Introduction to ‘The Librarian and the Novel’John Dixon

4. The Librarian and the Novel: A Writer's ViewBrigid Brophy

5. Penetrating (the) Prancing Novelist Richard Canning

6. ‘Shavian that she was’John Dixon

7. ‘Il faut que je vive’: Brigid Brophy and Animal Rights Gary Francione

8. Brigid Brophy’s Phenomenology of Sex in Flesh and The Snow BallJonathan Gibbs

9. Letter to BrigidRodney Hill

10. Encoding Love: Hidden Correspondence in the Fiction of Brigid Brophy and Iris MurdochMiles Leeson

11. Heads and Boxes: A Prop Art Exhibition Collaboration by Brigid Brophy and Maureen DuffyJill Longmate

12. Brigid Brophy’s Prancing Novelist and Black and White: Experiments in BiographyPeter Parker

13. ‘Monster Cupid’: Brophy, Camp, and The Snow BallAllan Pero

14. A Felicitous Day for FishKim Stallwood

15. Brigid Brophy: The Dissenting Feminist Carole Sweeney

16. A Certain Detachment?Kate Levey

Notes on ContributorsIndex

Editorial Reviews

Brigid Brophy, uniquely significant in postwar British literary, cultural and public intellectual life, is also its most egregiously neglected genius. This astonishing volume—which, as befits its subject, is honest, multifaceted and exploding with critical and imaginative intelligence—does a great and necessary service to her legacy, and to the history of twentieth-century letters.

Robert McKay