![]() ![]() But Faber’s upcoming reissue of Dick’s book They, a strange and mesmerizing “sequence of unease” that won the South East Arts literature prize in 1977, marks a reevaluation of her legacy. Her autobiographical novel The Shelf captures much of the everyday homophobia she experienced as an openly queer woman decades before any formal queer rights movement.ĭespite Dick’s work being acclaimed and winning literary prizes in her lifetime, it never sold well, and she was in financial difficulties throughout her life until this year, De-la-Noy’s damning obituary had been the last widely circulated word on her career. ![]() She was close friends with many of the best authors of her day-among them Olivia Manning, Stevie Smith, Ivy Compton-Burnett, Brigid Brophy-and was also openly bisexual, living with her partner Kathleen Farrell from 1940 to 1962. The first female director of an English publishing house, she worked on George Orwell’s Animal Farm and wrote seven well-received novels of her own. Yet between the 1940s and the 1970s, Dick was a luminary of the London literary scene. ![]() He disparaged her as prioritizing “personal vendettas and romantic lesbian friendships” over writing books, catalogued her trail of lost friends in an unmistakably catty tone and claimed that her talent had been dissipated in “avenging totally imaginary wrongs.” After the London-born author died in 2001 at age 86, journalist Michael De-la-Noy wrote an obituary for Dick that read more like a gossip column. For two decades, one man had the last word on Kay Dick’s career. ![]()
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