Brigid Brophy
| Brigid Brophy | |
|---|---|
| Born | Brigid Antonia Brophy June 12, 1929 Ealing |
| Died | August 7, 1995 (aged 66) |
| Nationality | British |
| Genre | novel |
| Spouse | Michael Levey |
Brigid Antonia Brophy, Lady Levey (12 June 1929 – 7 August 1995) was a British novelist, critic and campaigner for social reforms, including the rights of authors and animal rights. Among her novels was Hackenfeller's Ape (1953); among her critical studies were Mozart the Dramatist (1964, revised 1990) and Prancing Novelist: A Defence of Fiction ... In Praise Of Ronald Firbank (1973). In the Dictionary of Literary Biography: British Novelists since 1960, S. J. Newman described her as "one of the oddest, most brilliant, and most enduring of [the] 1960s symptoms."
She was a feminist and pacifist who expressed controversial opinions on marriage, the Vietnam War, religious education in schools, sex, and pornography. She was a campaigner for animal rights and vegetarianism. A 1965 Sunday Times article by Brophy is credited by psychologist Richard D. Ryder with having triggered the formation of the animal rights movement in England.
Brophy married art historian Michael Levey in 1954. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1983.
Brigid Antonia Brophy was born on 12 June 1929, in Ealing in west London. She was the only child of the novelist John Brophy and Charis Brophy (née Grundy), who was a teacher. Even as a child she began writing plays. During World War II she attended The Abbey School, Reading, between May 1941 and July 1943, and other schools. She then attended St Paul's Girls' School in London. In 1947 she went on a scholarship to Oxford University (St Hugh's College), but left in 1948 without a degree.
In 1953, when she was 25, her book of short stories, The Crown Princess, was published; it was followed in the same year by her much better received novel, Hackenfeller's Ape.
In 1954 she married art historian Michael Levey (afterwards director of the British National Gallery, 1973–87, and knighted in 1981). The couple had one daughter. In the following years she brought out a series of novels, including Flesh (1962), The Finishing Touch (1963, described as a "lesbian fantasia"), The Snow Ball (1964) and Palace Without Chairs (1978, in which a child of royal descent survives political tumult).
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