The Burglar: a play and a preface

by Brigid Brophy

The jacket is in real good condition inside a protective cover, the $4.50 price is still on the front flap. Small sized price sticker imprint on the front endpaper. Book is without marks or writings, pages are clean, and book is tight and sturdy. 5 ½ x 8 ½ (approximately) 126 pages. BACKGROUND/ First Edition (stated). HOLT, RINEHART AND WINSTON, NY 1968. THE BURGLAR IS A FAST-MOVING BEDROOM FARCE WHICH PRODS THE READER TO EARNEST MORAL RECONSIDERATIONS BY DELIGHTING HIM. A BURGLAR STUMBLES INTO A LOVERS’ TRYST ONLY TO BE SURPRISED BY THE APPEARANCE OF THE BETRAYED HUSBAND AND HIS MISTRESS….

Genres: Plays

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

[Elijah Farrow · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an enjoyably funny play poking fun at extramarital relations, the bisexual nature of humans and the middle class. It also expounds on the dirty nature of the criminal justice system, a topic she speaks of at length in the preface. She is just the type of woman men of her time hate and she is all the better for it now. However, she was sorely under represented and should have enjoyed a hint more success were it not for middle class men and their ways.

[Surreysmum · Rating 3 out of 5]

[These notes were made in 1984:]. From the very front cover (which proclaims "A Play and a Preface"), we are reminded that Brophy is a great admirer of Shaw. And indeed, in its superior brilliance to the play, its weighty subjects, biting paradoxes and serious playfulness, the Preface is tremendously reminiscent of Shaw. I particularly liked one section entitled "Women Impersonate Women," which moves delightfully from a mock apology for being female to "I obdurately insist on believing that some men are my equals." Besides feminism, Brophy also sweeps through literary criticism and the penal system. The play is a five-hander, a set of two swapping couples, and the Puritanical burglar who beholds them in horror. Plenty of room for epigram and discussion about crime and punishment here. The conclusion is inventive: the couples end up 'curing' the burglar by giving him everything (Brophy is quick to disclaim any crypto-Christianity), but it is the means to the end, the five talking heads in various combinations, that provide the amusement. This play could be fairly easily coverted for radio, I should think - action is not its mainspring; nor, for that matter, is characterization, except possibly in the case of the Burglar.