SOURCE: "The Neglect of Brigid Brophy," in Review of Contemporary Fiction, Vol. 15, No. 3, Fall, 1995, pp. 12-17.

In the following essay, Hopkins explains why Brophy's fiction resists generic classification and academic characterization, concluding that her manipulation of multiple literary conventions, often within a single work, deserves a wider audience.

Brigid Brophy has been neglected not only in the academy but also outside it: neither my university library in England nor the local public libraries possess any of her novels, and they are now equally unobtainable in bookshops. Neglect (and ultimately obscurity) is, of course, the fate of many authors, but there are perhaps specific reasons in this case—reasons that are paradoxically also very much part of what is interesting about Brophy's work. A main reason for this neglect seems to be that her work is not easily categorized or characterized. Though uniqueness, originality, and creativity are recognized as...