Brigid Brophy (1929-1995)

Brigid Brophy was a writer, humanist, vegan, and activist. A prominent voice for the rights of all sentient creatures, she was also a member of the Advisory Council of the British Humanist Association (now Humanists UK) from 1965, and an Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association from 1984. As a leading figure in the Writers’ Action Group, Brophy successfully campaigned for authors’ rights, helping to bring about the Public Lending Right in 1979. Brophy embodied the argument that an embrace of rationalism need not mean the sacrifice of imagination, leaving a rich legacy of inventive prose and articulate humanism to prove it.

Brigid Antonia Brophy was born in London, the only child of John and Charis Brophy, a novelist and teacher respectively. A gifted and precocious child, she began writing from an early age, later crediting her father’s encouragement – and the writings of George Bernard Shaw and Evelyn Waugh – for her own gifts as a writer. She went up to St. Hugh’s College, Oxford on a scholarship in 1947. There, in Brophy’s own words, she:

Initially earning her living as a shorthand typist, Brophy soon embarked on her career as a writer. Her first book, published in 1953, was a short story collection, The Crown Princess. Her second, Hackenfeller’s Ape, appeared in the same year, taking animal liberation as its theme and turning Brophy into a vegetarian. Over the course of her life, Brophy’s pen ranged over works of fiction, non-fiction, criticism, and biography. Fellow author Peter Parker has called her ‘determinedly experimental as a writer’, whose works nevertheless ‘constitute a highly coherent and distinctive oeuvre’.

In addition to (and often within) her writing, Brophy was an eloquent and active humanist. In a letter to the New Humanist on its 100th birthday in 1985, she wrote:

Brophy herself was, as the Times would later note, ‘devoted… wholeheartedly to the role of public crusader’, not only in the name of freethought, but for the rights of all sentient beings. She was an outspoken anti-vivisectionist and campaigner against blood sports, an articulate critic of faith schools and compulsory collective worship, and a vocal advocate of LGBT rights. She was also a driving force in the campaign for writers to be paid when their works are borrowed from public libraries, which resulted in the Public Lending Right Act 1979. This formed part of Brophy’s fervent belief in the value of art and literature to life and living. As she argued in Prancing Novelist (1973):

In 1983, Brophy was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, which eventually confined her to a wheelchair. Even in the face of her own progressive debilitation, she remained forthright in her opposition to animal testing, and continued to write. Her collection of essays and journalism, Baroque-‘n’-Roll (1987), included a characteristically lucid and humane account of her illness. She wrote:

Brophy had been married to art historian Michael Levey since 1954. Although they both ultimately regarded the institution of marriage as immoral, theirs was a warm, supportive, and unconventional partnership, which Brophy described as ‘a matter of serene happiness’. They had one daughter, Kate. Levey stepped down from his role as Director of the National Gallery to care for Brigid, and the couple moved from London to Lincolnshire in 1991. Brigid Brophy died on 7 August 1995, and was cremated.

Brophy’s significant legacy as a writer, an activist, and a humanist, was perhaps best summed up by Nicolas Walter, who wrote in 1995:

Brigid Brophy: a site by Kate Levey

Obituary: Brigid Brophy | The Independent

Murdoch and Brophy: Love, in lines unmusical | Miles Leeson

Brigid Antonia Brophy at the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Photograph of Brigid Brophy with other members of the British Humanist Association at the National Portrait Gallery