Brigid Brophy

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Standard Name: Brophy, Brigid
Birth Name: Brigid Antonia Susan Brophy
Married Name: Brigid Antonia Susan Levey
Titled: Brigid Antonia Susan, Lady Levey
In the novel BB 's topics are social and sexual comedy. In non-fiction (essays, criticism, polemic) she pursued her interests in causes (often for the benefit of animals or writers), in opera and other arts, in deviant or nonconformist behaviour, and in individuals with a particular appeal to her. Late in her career, which spanned the second half of the twentieth century, came moving and clear-sighted writing on her multiple sclerosis. BB disliked and opposed the study of women's writing in isolation from that of men.
Black and white photograph of Brigid Brophy wearing a zebra print sleeveless blouse over a black turtle neck. In the background, there are several bookcases visible. She is facing the camera.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Literary responses Patricia Highsmith
She has been better appreciated in Britain than her native USA, and perhaps better in Europe than in Britain. Frank Richards wrote that she made a life's work of her ostracisation from the American...
Publishing Shena Mackay
Before Babies in Rhinestones appeared, SM completed a novel entitled A Bowl of Cherries, which reuses some parts of her unpublished The Firefly Motel. She submitted this, her first novel for over a...
Literary responses Shena Mackay
SM 's early fame or notoriety, her love of marginal characters and dysfunctional human relations, her leaning towards the episodic and throwaway and her avoidance of the self-consciously serious or weighty, seem to have militated...
Friends, Associates Shena Mackay
She was a close friend of Brigid Brophy from the early 1980s until Brophy's death in 1995. Brophy's brave account of her battle with multiple sclerosis pays generous tribute to SM 's loving support.
Brophy, Brigid. Baroque-’n’-Roll. Hamish Hamilton, 1987.
14ff
Literary responses Shena Mackay
Brigid Brophy wrote appreciative reviews of some of SM 's early books.
Hamilton, Ian, 1938 - 2001. “Bohemian Rhapsodist”. The Guardian, 10 July 1999, pp. Saturday Review 6 - 7.
6
Literary responses Katherine Mansfield
More recently, writers citing Mansfield's importance to them have included Brigid Brophy , Angus Wilson , and Canadian Alice Munro . Janice Kulyk Keefer 's Thieves: A Novel of Katherine Mansfield, 2004, presents a...
Friends, Associates Iris Murdoch
She met Brigid Brophy (another friend who was years tempestuously a lover) in 1954. This relationship survived several crises, when Brophy took offence at Murdoch's actions or expressed dislike for her writing. IM met Elizabeth Bowen
Textual Production Iris Murdoch
IM gave the manuscript to her friend Brigid Brophy , who later sold it for £500, with her approval, to the University of Iowa . A film company began shooting the story in 1962, but...
Reception Iris Murdoch
This book was runner-up (to Brigid Brophy 's) for the Cheltenham Literary Festival's prize for a first novel.
Conradi, Peter J. Iris Murdoch. A Life. HarperCollins, 2002.
486
It and her second caused IM to be grouped with the so-called socially anarchic school
British Book News. British Council.
(1957): 451
Textual Features Iris Murdoch
The title comes from William Hogarth 's series of didactic engravings about the two apprentices, of whom the industrious one rises to be Lord Mayor while the idle one takes to crime and is hanged....
Anthologization Kathleen Nott
KN contributed to several joint volumes in philosophy: an essay entitled Is Rationalism Sterile? to a volume edited by H. J. Blackham in 1963, entitled Objections to Humanism, and essays to two collections edited by...
Friends, Associates George Bernard Shaw
He was an important figure in the lives and careers of almost innumerable women writers: a good friend of Annie Besant , Sylvia Pankhurst , Elizabeth Robins , and Christopher St John , a romantic...
Literary responses Dodie Smith
Most reviewers, however, found this book childish.
qtd. in
Grove, Valerie. Dear Dodie: The Life of Dodie Smith. Chatto and Windus, 1996.
272
One especially nasty review by Richard Lister (T. C. Worsley ) in the Evening Standard expressed incredulity that such a book could even be written after...
Literary responses Elizabeth Taylor
Brigid Brophy wrote that she valued very highly indeed the considered and considerable despair at the heart of this novel.
qtd. in
Leclercq, Florence. Elizabeth Taylor. Twayne, 1985.
85
From her dedicatee, Elizabeth Bowen , ET received with a letter praising the book's...
Literary responses Elizabeth Taylor
This volume drew an enthusiastic response from Brigid Brophy , writing in the New Statesman, who declared herself ET 's dedicated fan.
Brophy, Brigid. Don’t Never Forget. Cape, 1966.
164
Her enthusiasm was no passing feeling, for she chose to...

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

Brophy, Brigid. The Snow Ball. Secker and Warburg, 1964.
Brophy, Brigid. “The Waste-Disposal Unit”. London Magazine, London Magazine.