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Prancing Novelist: A Defence of Fiction in the Form of a Critical Biography in Praise of Ronald Firbank
Hardcover with unclipped dust jacket, in very good condition. From the collection of Ian Angus (British Librarian and a scholar on George Orwell), whose name and date are pencilled to FEP. Jacket is sunned and edges are creased and nicked. Board corners and spine ends are slightly bumped and rubbed. Page block is lightly blemished, with small marks on the front pastedown and FEP. Binding is sound and pages are clear. LW
592 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1973
About the author
Brigid Brophy
43 books44 followersBrigid Antonia Brophy, Lady Levey (12 June 1929, in Ealing, Middlesex, England – 7 August 1995, in Louth, Lincolnshire, England) was an English novelist, essayist, critic, biographer, and dramatist. 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 (she was openly bisexual), and pornography. She was a vocal 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.
Because of her outspokenness, she was labeled many things, including "one of our leading literary shrews" by a Times Literary Supplement reviewer. "A lonely, ubiquitous toiler in the weekend graveyards, she has scored some direct hits on massive targets: Kingsley Amis, Henry Miller, Professor Wilson Knight."
Brophy was married to art historian Sir Michael Levey. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1984, which took her life 11 years later at the age of 66.
She was a feminist and pacifist who expressed controversial opinions on marriage, the Vietnam War, religious education in schools, sex (she was openly bisexual), and pornography. She was a vocal 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.
Because of her outspokenness, she was labeled many things, including "one of our leading literary shrews" by a Times Literary Supplement reviewer. "A lonely, ubiquitous toiler in the weekend graveyards, she has scored some direct hits on massive targets: Kingsley Amis, Henry Miller, Professor Wilson Knight."
Brophy was married to art historian Sir Michael Levey. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1984, which took her life 11 years later at the age of 66.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 14, 2016
Typically, Brophy's painstaking and meticulous study of the author Ronald Firbank is much more than a biography. Her 600+ page investigation into the life of an author few have read (either in his lifetime or later) would seem a demanding read, but Brophy uses the peculiar aesthete, a near contemporary of Oscar Wilde, to show how he might have set literature off down a different course - into non-naturalism and experimentation, away from the Victorian novel, which is what happened in art, as it moved from representational pictures to abstract forms.
Her book is a powerful defence of prose fiction, at a time when she felt it was particularly under threat. What’s so depressing is that we now see the results of her prescient argument all around us. Novels, especially populist ones, are more ploddingly literal than ever. Experimentalism and artifice of the kind Fairbanks practiced have been shelved or transmogrified into juvenilia. The literary clock has not just been turned back but left perpetually stuck in the late Victorian era.
It's probably a good idea to know a little of Firbank's work before tackling this - he was hugely influential, even though he did not survive long enough to know it. And based on 'Prancing Novelist' it's time Brophy was republished in full (some of her work, like the astonishing 'In Transit' has reappeared.)
Her book is a powerful defence of prose fiction, at a time when she felt it was particularly under threat. What’s so depressing is that we now see the results of her prescient argument all around us. Novels, especially populist ones, are more ploddingly literal than ever. Experimentalism and artifice of the kind Fairbanks practiced have been shelved or transmogrified into juvenilia. The literary clock has not just been turned back but left perpetually stuck in the late Victorian era.
It's probably a good idea to know a little of Firbank's work before tackling this - he was hugely influential, even though he did not survive long enough to know it. And based on 'Prancing Novelist' it's time Brophy was republished in full (some of her work, like the astonishing 'In Transit' has reappeared.)
Shelved as 'did-not-finish'
May 26, 2023Gee whiz, as a queer male snob who only reads literary fiction, I *should* worship Ronald Firbank, should I not? But no. I’ve read one novella, Caprice, which basically left me cold, and then I tried to read this mammoth biography that is also a work of dense, psychoanalytic explication of Firbank’s life and oeuvre. I got about halfway through, only to decide that, yes, I’d been right all along: psychoanalytic literary criticism is absolutely ridiculous, and Ronald Firbank as a human being, a homosexual pioneer, and a writer, is not all that interesting. I put the book down.
I will take it to the used bookshop and hopefully get credit so that I can buy another book that will be much more up my street. Maybe if you go to that used bookshop you can get it and fall into Freudian, Firbankian bliss. Knock yourself out!
I will take it to the used bookshop and hopefully get credit so that I can buy another book that will be much more up my street. Maybe if you go to that used bookshop you can get it and fall into Freudian, Firbankian bliss. Knock yourself out!
June 2, 2010
brilliant exposition of the lie of the 'major novelist'
August 9, 2023
This is probably a must read if you are passionately devoted to the novels of Ronald Firbank - how many other books are there (no need to answer)? I am not a devotee but I have read and enjoyed Firbank and have meant for many years to read this book - I remember Brigid Brophy from my youth, probably for her journalism and was actually surprised to discover how old this study of Firbank was - but I can't conceal that 'Prancing Novelist' was not a pleasant or easy read. It is as much an argument about literature as a biography of Firbank. Its multitude of footnotes are off putting, not because I dislike footnotes but because, unlike in a work of history were the footnotes are there to show that there is support for a historians claims, here they refer back to Firbank's ,and others including but not limited to Oscar Wilde's, works and are part of the argument and exposition so really one should have on hand these works (unless you are so conversant with the works that it is unnecessary which I doubt any of the original reviewers would have had the courage to admit not to be).
I believe this work is very much of its time, both in its 'defence' of Firbank, and in the approach taken by its author to create unassailable academic structure to support her arguments and the fact that Brigid Brophy was an immensely intelligent, combative author and journalist and female in the 1960's is a key to understanding how this book was written. One needs to remember was an incredibly misogynistic and patronisingly superior place Fleet Street (and the fact that no one under fifty probably understands the name 'Fleet Street' says a great deal about how vanished the recent past is) was and how much bullshit an intelligent woman like Ms. Brophy must have had to put up with to become the respected journalist and commentator that she was.
At its simplest this is not a work for any but a literary scholar or someone familiar with the works of academic literary criticism. I never like to discourage anyone from reading a serious work but you need to know what you are letting yourself in for.
I believe this work is very much of its time, both in its 'defence' of Firbank, and in the approach taken by its author to create unassailable academic structure to support her arguments and the fact that Brigid Brophy was an immensely intelligent, combative author and journalist and female in the 1960's is a key to understanding how this book was written. One needs to remember was an incredibly misogynistic and patronisingly superior place Fleet Street (and the fact that no one under fifty probably understands the name 'Fleet Street' says a great deal about how vanished the recent past is) was and how much bullshit an intelligent woman like Ms. Brophy must have had to put up with to become the respected journalist and commentator that she was.
At its simplest this is not a work for any but a literary scholar or someone familiar with the works of academic literary criticism. I never like to discourage anyone from reading a serious work but you need to know what you are letting yourself in for.
December 9, 2020
rarely has a writer been written about so thoroughly, so exhaustively, so exhaustingly, and so badly. i like Brophy otherwise but this is a tangled Freudian mess which presents Firbank as being incapable of writing about anything except himself. there is as much space devoted to oscar wilde as to firbank's actual work, and every single time brophy mentions something she mentions elsewhere in the book she footnotes it. she's constantly stumbling over herself backwards and forwards as she tries to cover everything at once and manages to cover nothing, and because she's writing in short little sections which are constantly intercutting the form of the book doesn't actually allow for a sustained attention on Firbank's work
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews