Ignore the stern photo! Brigid Brophy's In Transit revels in linguistic license and gender gyration! New USA edition @dalkeyarchive.bsky.social
Kate Levey
@brophylevey.bsky.social
Daughter of writer and activist Brigid Brophy (1929-1995)
Brigid Brophy's prizewinning novel, Hackenfeller's Ape, reissued in USA by @dalkeyarchive.bsky.social Yay!
2026 Reading 53: The Snow Ball by Brigid Brophy. Re-read (in Faber’s lovely reissue with Eley Williams’s introduction) because I was going to see Don Giovanni for the first time, an opera which informs (rather than inspires) this novel, that I hold closer to my heart than maybe any other.
This month on the Essentials Blog, Katherine Packert Burke’s new introduction to IN TRANSIT by Brigid Brophy. Read it here: www.deepvellum.org/dalkey-archi...
“Brophy’s novel is a riotous sendup of gender, gender expression, social conventions of all sorts—and, as such, is as relevant today as when it first appeared. A timely reprint of a postmodern masterpiece.” —Starred review, Kirkus Reviews
Brigid Brophy, there, using the rare – the incorrect? – transitive form of the verb ‘to flicker’. I just *know* that I’ve used this, myself, and therefore stolen it from her.
I’ll always honour the sheer balls of Brophy for using, as epigraph to her marvellous novel, a FOOTNOTE from her previous, non-fiction book. And why shouldn’t she? She is, after all, quite as good as she herself thinks she is.I salute her.
I’m preparing, with joyous anticipation, for my first live experience of Don Giovanni, by listening the hell out of it, and reading the divine Brigid Brophy, in both non-fiction and fictional mode. Mozart the Dramatist is rich stuff (veeery Freudian) but The Snow Ball is an absolute favourite novel.
October’s Dalkey Archive Essentials Subscription Pick is IN TRANSIT by Brigid Brophy! A postmodern romp about a traveler who suddenly “loses” their gender and sets out to find it again — Brophy’s comic masterpiece. Subscribe here: dalkeyarchive.store/products/dal...
‘Male gay couples are, to the knowing eye, pretty clearly what they are, but from the start Firbank’s strategy, or perhaps simply his instinct, was to write almost entirely about women.’ Alan Hollinghurst on Ronald Firbank. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Alan Hollinghurst · It’s queer how I’m lonely: Ronald Firbank’s Century
Quite naturally, as with any truly original writer, one had to learn how to read Firbank. A certain clue-seeking and...
lrb.co.uk
Brigid Brophy with Michael Levey and Charles Osborne. Photo by Ken Thompson, 1968. Charles looks very much better than my parents in this!
For a time Stephen Vizinczey lived at Coleherne Court in London, as did my maternal grandmother. Stephen and his wife became friendly with Brigid Brophy, who wrote in praise of his novel, In Praise of Older Women.
'If this anarchic place exists, then Christine Brooke-Rose, Ann Quin and Brigid Brophy are its custodians.' PhD @bristolunienglish.bsky.social candidate Alice Hill-Woods reviews Hilary White's The Visual Novel for @thetls.bsky.social www.the-tls.com/literature-b...
Breaking away
Christine Brooke-Rose, Ann Quin and Brigid Brophy – three British authors who might be considered outliers in the second half of the twentieth century – have been described as “experimental” writers. ...
the-tls.com
Family affair: cover by my father, novel by my mother, Brigid Brophy.
Stuart Arnot@strtarnt.bsky.social · 3mo agoFun! Purchased this afternoon in Cambridge, and read this evening, on a train between Doncaster and Newcastle, and in the yard once back. Had been meaning to read for a while, and desired this cover. Enough to make one wish that book covers were retained like record covers, considered part of 'it'.
Maureen Duffy, who died in May, was in some respects my third parent. She arrived at our flat each weekday morning and stayed until the late afternoon, but often returned to go out with Brigid Brophy and Michael Levey in the evening. She enlarged my otherwise small family.
In the UK, it's called PLR (public lending rights) and it was campaigned for and set up in the 1970s by two amazing queer writers (& animal rights activists), Maureen Duffy and Brigid Brophy!
DJ Taylor's 2018 radio doc 'The Advance Guard of the Avant-Garde' on experimental 1960s British writers: BS Johnson, Ann Quin, Eva Figes, Brigid Brophy, Rosemary Tonks, Prynne & C Brooke-Rose. Views from Jen Hodgson, Jonathan Coe, Eimear McBride & Jeremy Noel-Tod. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...
Archive on 4 - The Advance Guard of the Avant-garde - BBC Sounds
DJ Taylor tells the story of an influential group of experimental 1960s British writers.
bbc.co.uk
Oh- how *wonderful* is this? Thank you @nguthrie.bsky.social
neil guthrie@nguthrie.bsky.social · 9mo agoPleased to add Brigid Brophy's Mozart the Dramatist (revised edition) to my Brophy-Levey shelf, where it will be next to her husband's The Life and Death of Mozart (rev. ed.). Both books are so good! @brophylevey.bsky.social #c18th #c18 #18thc
Just finished my first Brigid Brophy book 'Hackenfeller's Ape' ... 73 years after it was published. Better late than never! Excited to explore more by this author. Here's my review: bit.ly/49Qo7Kl #Booksky 💙📚 #Books 📚 #Literaturesky
"Hackenfeller's Ape" by Brigid Brophy
In this novel, London Zoo houses a pair of Hackenfeller's Apes, the nearest primates to humans. The Professor is studying them, hoping to be...
bit.ly
Come and join the fabulous panel discussing Iris's poetry at The London Library in March! www.londonlibrary.co.uk/whats-on/342...
Live in the Archive: Iris Murdoch and the poems in the
Live in the Archive is a collaboration between The London Library and Curtis Brown Heritage to celebrate some of the greatest literary stars in our combined history. This time, we’ll be turning o...
londonlibrary.co.uk
An unusual two-Brophy post! Brigid Brophy and John Brophy. Thank you @casmilus.bsky.social
Casmilus@casmilus.bsky.social · 9mo agoTurn The Key Softly was from a novel by John Brophy, dad of Brigid Brophy who had her own career as a novelist and reviewer, mentioned at the end of this: discontinuednotes.com/2023/04/24/t...
Been reading mid-20th century humanist campaigners for prison reform and just come across a description by Brigid Brophy saying in imprisoning people we are ‘burying them alive’. What a powerful image, even more true of conditions today! If you don’t already, do support @thehowardleague.bsky.social
Let Brigid Brophy tickle your brain and bend your mind. Read In Transit.
Just a reminder that the deadline for the first round of applications for our (frankly excellent) MA Writing programme at the @royalcollegeofart.bsky.social closes next Monday, 19 January, so if you're thinking of applying please do so soon!
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Study MA Writing to develop your literary skills, work on live projects, and become part of a community of supportive writers.
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