Brophy, Brigid Antonia

▪ 1996

      British novelist (b. June 12, 1929, London, England—d. Aug. 7, 1995, Louth, Lincolnshire, England), enjoyed a dual career as a writer and as a crusader for feminist issues, animal rights, and increased royalty payments for writers. Her campaign for establishing lending rights for authors resulted (1979) in a law that provided government royalty payments to authors whenever one of their books was checked out of a British library. Brophy attended (1947-48) St. Hugh's College, Oxford, but was expelled. A volume of short stories, The Crown Princess, was published in 1953, but it was the publication later that year of her first novel, the imaginative fantasy Hackenfeller's Ape, that brought her to the public's attention. It won (1954) the Cheltenham Literary Festival's prize for first novel. Brophy went on to write such novels as Flesh (1962), The Snow Ball (1964), In Transit (1969), and Palace Without Chairs (1978), her last novel. She also wrote the play The Burglar (1967), contributed to the controversial Fifty Works of English and American Literature We Could Do Without (1967), and, in one of her many other nonfiction works, the essay collection Baroque 'n' Roll (1987), described her battle with multiple sclerosis. Even after the disease confined her to her house, she continued to champion causes. Brophy became a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1973.

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