Black and white: A portrait of Aubrey Beardsley

by Brigid Brophy

Black and Portrait of Aubrey Beardsley

Genres: Nonfiction

95 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Brigid 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.

Reviews

[Prince Cad Ali Cad · Rating 1 out of 5]

Short Freudian psychoanalysis of Beardsley by a 1960s art critic. While clearly one must address certain subjects in his art, it's not exactly professional to sprinkle your supposedly high-minded dissertation with sentences such as "Going over the details of images to get them exactly correct is the imaginative technique of the masturbation-fantasist." Further, at times when the author does make reference to a particular picture to make a point, the picture mentioned is not shown, but a different picture with little relevance.

The short timeline in the back of the book was appreciated, however.

[Colleen Napolitano · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent collection of works that I look forward to keeping as a reference, but the analysis left a lot to be desired; would have preferred more consideration of A.B.'s work within historical and contemporary cultural context and less of the obvious Freudian musing.