Is modern man threatening to destroy his world? First published in 1962, this book, which analyzes the origins, history, and manifestations of the destructive impulse that exists in human beings, has relevance and interest for all of us. The author sees this impulse as primarily one of self-destruction deflected outward, and her brilliant exploration of its multiple effects takes her and the reader into regions of complex fascination. In ranging the fields of art, science, and morality for evidence to support her contentions, Miss Brophy not only reveals herself as a writer of immense cultivation and power, but also as a provocative thinker. Her basic conclusion—that the philosopher, the teacher, the psychologist, and the artist, among others, in order to be productive or even operative, must acknowledge and allow for the instinctual sources of behavior, which Freud so daringly illuminated and documented—is expressed in lively, passionate prose. This is a highly controversial book that will undoubtedly rouse storms of argument, for the issues, like the outcome, are of the deepest concern to us all. Miss Brophy’s opponents, if they are to make themselves heard, must at least match her in intellectual caliber and cultural equipment.

'[Beardsley's] vision is permanently that of a child lying in bed watching his mother dress for a dinner-party. His fantasy hangs this here, tries the effect of that there: everything is a jewel, and everything is a sexual organ. He is allured, yet afraid to touch: driven back on a cold minuteness of detailed attention, and yet passionately curious, with the emotional and involved curiosity children give to sex.' Brigid Brophy first published her study of 'the most intensely and electrically erotic artist in the world' in 1968, at the height of her own powers and in the moment of a notable revival of interest - both scholarly and pop-cultural (amid 'the dandified realm of Carnavy Street') - in Beardsley's work. An infant prodigy, Beardsley retained through the brief years of his adult life the peculiar genius of a precocious child, and Brophy, well-versed in Freudian analyses, adroitly points out the polymorphous perversity of his pictures - that perversity, coupled with his inimitable graphic/monochromatic signature, accounting for why Beardsley, however 'high-baroque rococo' his style, has remained endlessly modern. Black and White is illustrated by 44 reproductions and augmented by a detailed chronology.

This book explores all aspects of Brophy's literary career, alongside contributions on animal rights, vegetarianism, anti-vivisectionism, humanism, feminism and sexual politics, not only celebrating Brophy's eclectic achievements but fully reflecting them.

Celebrates Brigid Brophy's life's work, its diversity, originality and achievementThe first critical book on Brigid Brophy covering all her interests from literature, music and art to animal rights and political activismIncludes previously unpublished written and illustrated material by BrophyContributions from leading literary scholars, biographers, creative writers and activistsThis book explores all aspects of Brophy's literary career, alongside contributions on animal rights, vegetarianism, anti-vivisectionism, humanism, feminism and sexual politics, not only celebrating Brophy's eclectic achievements but fully reflecting them. Contributors include literary critics, animal rights activists, Brophy's daughter, Kate Levey, and Brophy herself.

The tweedy Miss Hetty Braid worships the lovely but selfish Miss Antonia Mount, her co-proprietor at the most exclusive finishing school on the French Riviera. The girls they teach are quite remarkable, though hardly in the sense of academic distinction. But trouble looms when Antonia announces that 'Royalty is coming.' The great day arrives, and though at first things go tolerably well, disaster springs from good intentions. This Faber Finds edition includes a 1987 introduction by Brigid Brophy and a new preface by Sir Peter Stothard. 'A wicked little entertainment... plaubly not meant for the moralists or naive.' Evening Standard 'An outrageously indelicate joke made in beautifully mannered prose.' Daily Herald 'Waspish and witty.' TLS

Brigid Brophy first published her passionate, profoundly original Mozart the Dramatist in 1964, revisiting it subsequently in 1988. Organised by theme, the text offers brilliant readings of Mozart's five most famous operas - Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte, and Die Zauberflöte - while a 1988 preface reconsiders Idomeneo and La Clemenza di Tito. Brophy's analysis is richly informed by her readings and interests in psychoanalysis, myth, and relations between the sexes, but her stress above all is on Mozart's 'unique excellence', his 'double supremacy' both as a 'classical' and 'psychological' artist. 'An illuminating, invigorating, thought-provoking and profoundly human book, of immense value to any lover of Mozart.' Jane Glover

The Bodies That Remain is a collection of bodies and absences. Through biography, experimental essay and interview, fictional manifestation, and poetic extraction, The Bodies That Remain is a collection of texts and images on the bodies of artists and writers who battled with the frustration of their own physicality and whose work reckoned with these limitations and continued beyond them. The Bodies That Remain looks back at how the identity of these bodies was shaped by the spaces around them, through the retelling of memory, through stories told by others; of how their work, processed by their body, made it possible for others to experience sensations - mourning, desire, or a nostalgia that could not belong to another, to another's body and in capturing this ability, their work confirms the body's urgency. Amongst others, The Bodies That Remain tells the story of Emily Dickinson's decay, the missing grave of Valeska Gert, the voice and sound of the body of Judee Sill, and the derailed body and its work of Jane Bowles. It questions the absent body but broken organs of JT Leroy as they find themselves scattered across texts, and also interrogates the loss of distinction of illness for Jules de Goncourt as syphilis riddled his nervous system. It retrieves the illusory body of Kathy Acker through dream and through horror, sees the morphing body of Michael Jackson in becoming all of the bodies he was asked to be, and looks toward Sylvia Plath and the language of her own body. Contributions include texts and images by: Lynne Tillman (on Jane Bowles), David Rule (on Michael Jackson), Mairead Case (on Judee Sill), Claire Potter (on the Lads of Aran), Jeremy Millar (on Emily Dickinson), Chloé Griffin (on Valeska Gert), Phoebe Blatton (on Brigid Brophy), Susanna Davies-Crook (on Sarah Kane), Travis Jeppensen (on Gary Sullivan), Karen Di Franco (on Mary Butts), Tai Shani (on Mnemesoid), Philip Hoare (on Denton Welch), Heather Phillipson (on a dead dog), Uma Breakdown (on Guage Fanfic), Linda Stuppart (on Kathy Acker), Sharon Kivland (on Jacques Lacan), Harman Bains (on Wilhelm Reich), Pil & Galia Kollectiv (JT Leroy), Kevin Breathnach (on Jules de Goncourt), and Emily LaBarge (on Sylvia Plath).