‘This pitch-perfect novel, an inquiry into romanticism and disaffection, is witty, unexpectedly moving and a revelation again of Brophy’s originality. Entirely of its time, it remains years ahead of itself even now, nearly 60 years later, in its emotional range and its intellectual and formal blend of stoicism and sophistication.’

Ali Smith



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ISBN: 978-0957410701 • Paperback with flaps • £10 RRP



















The King of a Rainy Country, the most intimate novel by writer, activist and intellectual Brigid Brophy, is available for the first time in over twenty years and deserves to see her mentioned in the same breath as her contemporaries Muriel Spark and Iris Murdoch.


The book – an hilarious, poignant coming of age novel that takes the reader from rain-drenched bohemian London to operatic Venice via a package holiday with a coachload of Coca-Cola guzzling Americans – is the first book release by The Coelacanth Press.


Lauded by leading literary figures including Ali Smith, Terry Castle, D. J. Taylor and Paul Bailey, the press offers this in a beautiful, contemporary package – designed by one of today’s best visual artists, Bonnie Camplin – with an introduction by the editor Phoebe Blatton and afterword by Dalkey Archive Press editor Jennifer Hodgson, all of which serves to assert Brigid Brophy’s prescience in the modern age.


A stylish, far-sighted work of disaffection, sexuality and intellectualism, The King of a Rainy Country deserves to be rediscovered.


Praise for The King of a Rainy Country


‘The novelist, biographer and critic Brigid Brophy – one of the strangest and wittiest British writers of the past half century – is long overdue for rediscovery and celebration. She was a comet in her day...Her coruscating essays on fiction, visual art, opera, sexuality and camp, pacifism, vegetarianism, the lives of animals – not to mention her lifelong battle on behalf of the Public Lending Right – were so far ahead of their time, we are only now beginning to catch up with her.‘

Terry Castle


‘Brigid Brophy was one of the luminaries of fiction and literary criticism of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. This reissue of her quirkily brilliant novel The King of a Rainy Country will, I hope, inspire new interest in her work. She deserves not to be forgotten.’

Paul Bailey


‘A series of sharp and deeply-felt despatches from the 1950s Bohemian front-line, shot through with the idiosyncratic comic sense that was Brigid Brophy’s trademark.’

D.J Taylor


Reviews and Press


‘Brophy succeeds so completely in this rendering of human emotion and relationships and the complexities of gender and sexuality’ Aimee Wall / Lemon Hound


Some Things From The King of a Rainy CountryCharlie Fox / Three Letter Words


'It's sharp, funny and clever, and fresh as new paint' The Times 


'Funny, puzzling, way-ahead-of-its-time...' The Daily Mail 


'a unique and potent flavour all its own' The Sunday Telegraph


'beautiful and evocative' Art Review


'boosted me better than any Omega 3' The Observer



Available from all good bookshops. Please contact us or Antenne Books if you would like to stock the book, or contact Bertrams or Gardners distribution.


Read more about Brigid Brophy by her daughter, Kate Levey, at discoveringbrigidbrophy.com