Brigid Brophy

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 University Press, 2000 and 2004). Gerri Kimber is Visiting Professor in the Department of English at the University of Northampton. She is co-editor of Katherine Mansfield Studies, and the author of Katherine Mansfield: A Hidden Life (2025), Katherine Mansfield – The Early Years (2016), Katherine Mansfield and the Art of the Short Story (2015), and Katherine Mansfield: The View from France (2008). She is the Series Editor of the 4-volume Edinburgh Edition of the Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield (2012–16). Together with Claire Davison, she has edited the 4-volume edition of Katherine Mansfield’s complete letters for EUP (2020–25).

• ContentsList of IllustrationsAcknowledgementsIntroductionRichard Canning1. Embodying the Fragments: A Reflection on the Reluctant Auto-Biography of Brigid BrophyPhoebe Blatton 2. Brigid Brophy’s Paradoxical World of ChildhoodMichael Bronski3. 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 Dixon7. ‘Il faut que je vive’: Brigid Brophy and Animal Rights Gary Francione8. Brigid Brophy’s Phenomenology of Sex in Flesh and The Snow BallJonathan Gibbs9. Letter to BrigidRodney Hill10. 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 Stallwood15. Brigid Brophy: The Dissenting Feminist Carole Sweeney16. A Certain Detachment?Kate Levey Notes on ContributorsIndex

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.