1. Brigid Brophy was an influential campaigner who agitated for many types of social reform, including homosexual parity, vegetarianism, humanism, and animal rights.
26 Facts About Brigid Brophy
1. 2.
Brigid Brophy studied classics at St Hugh's College; however, she did not gain a degree: the authorities asked her not to return after her fourth term.
3.
At a party, Brigid Brophy met art historian Michael Levey, and they married in 1954.
4.
For some years, Brigid Brophy had a complex amorous liaison with Iris Murdoch, and later a stable love partnership with writer Maureen Duffy.
5.
When that was suddenly ended by Duffy in 1979, Brigid Brophy had a severe emotional crisis, which she believed played a part in her developing difficulty in walking.
6.
Brigid Brophy had always been a punctilious correspondent and an indefatigable worker; she continued to write even while her mobility declined.
7.
However, following increasing debilitation and needing full-time care, Brigid Brophy unwillingly left London in 1991.
8.
Brigid Brophy was cared for in a nursing home in Lincolnshire, in the town to which her husband and daughter had moved.
9.
In 1953, when she was in her early twenties, Brigid Brophy became a published author with the issue of her volume of short stories, The Crown Princess.
10.
The stimulus for the novel was Brigid Brophy's living within earshot of the roar of caged lions in London Zoo; from childhood Brigid Brophy had been sympathetic to the plight of non-human animals.
11.
The novel is both funny and elegiac, and is thought to be the nearest Brigid Brophy came to autobiography.
12.
Prince Ulrich, heir to the throne, subverts the expectations of his position, rebelling in ways to which Brigid Brophy is clearly sympathetic.
13.
Brigid Brophy's performed and published plays are a play for radio, The Waste Disposal Unit, and her farce for the theatre, The Burglar.
14.
Brigid Brophy was a ceaseless worker, often dealing with several different types of project simultaneously.
15.
Brigid Brophy's first published study was Black Ship to Hell.
16.
Much in demand as a provocative, often acerbic literary critic, Brigid Brophy reviewed books for journals and newspapers.
17.
Brigid Brophy was an essayist and wrote pamphlets for the causes she supported.
18.
In Prancing Novelist: A Defence of Fiction in the Form of a Critical Biography in Praise of Ronald Firbank, Brigid Brophy explores the life and mind of Firbank, in a framework that justifies the value of the genre he employed.
19.
Brigid Brophy wrote two books on Aubrey Beardsley, the draftsman whose mastery of black ink on white Brigid Brophy not only much admired but profoundly understood.
20.
Brigid Brophy devised a literary panel game, Take It Or Leave It, where well-known authors participated.
21.
In 1969, Brigid Brophy collaborated with Maureen Duffy to exhibit, at a London gallery, a display of their home-made three-dimensional "heads and boxes", which they designated "Prop Art".
22.
Brigid Brophy had conceived the notion of "The Brophy Penny".
23.
Brigid Brophy later wrote an informative and entertaining guide to PLR.
24.
The Sunday Times invited Brigid Brophy to write an opinion-piece; Brigid Brophy's response was The Rights of Animals.
25.
Brigid Brophy gave a speech at the annual general meeting of the National Anti-Vivisection Society at Charing Cross Hotel in 1970.
26.
Brigid Brophy's article was published in the 1971 book Animals, Men and Morals.