Kay Dick

Kay Dick (1915–2001) was a novelist, writer and editor. She was the first woman director in English publishing and, with Brigid Brophy and others, an early campaigner for the Public Lending Right.

Her debut novel An Affair Of Love (1953), highly praised by L.P.Hartley, was followed by Solitaire (1958) and Sunday (1962).

Her award-winning novel They (1977) found a new generation of readers 50 years after its original publication: Lucy Scholes, writing in The Paris Review, described the novel as ‘a lost dystopian masterpiece’. In 2022 Faber reissued a new edition with advance praise from Margaret Atwood, Edna O’Brien, Eimear McBride, Emily St. John Mandel, Ian Rankin and others. They has subsequently been published in several languages and adapted for stage by Maxine Peake.

Kay Dick’s final, and most autobiographical, novel The Shelf (first published in 1984) will be reissued in 2026.

Her non-fiction includes Pierrot (1960), a major investigation into the commedia dell’arte, and two collections of interviews with writers, Ivy and Stevie (1971) and Friends and Friendship (1974). She extensively researched but never completed either her biography of Colette or a planned investigation into the marriage of Jane Welsh Carlyle and Thomas Carlyle.

There is more information about Kay Dick’s life and work on the website kaydick.com.

For all enquiries relating to Kay Dick, please contact Becky Brown at Curtis Brown Heritage: becky.brown@curtisbrown.co.uk

Photo of Kay Dick © Helen Craig