It had remained out of print due to poor sales and Kay experiencing harsh and sexist reviews in the press at the time of the award win. In 1977, Dick published They, a series of dream sequences that won the South-East Arts literature prize, and was described in The Paris Review in 2020 as 'a lost dystopian masterpiece'. She was known for campaigning tirelessly and successfully for the introduction of the Public Lending Right, which pays royalties to authors when their books are borrowed from public libraries.

Dick also edited several anthologies of stories and interviews with writers, including Ivy and Stevie (1971) and Friends and Friendship (1974). In 1960 she published Pierrot, about the commedia dell'arte.ĭick was a regular reviewer for The Times, The Spectator and Punch. She also wrote literary biography, researching the lives of Colette and Carlyle. For many years, she edited the literary magazine The Windmill, under the nom de plume Edward Lane.ĭick wrote five novels between 19, including the famous An Affair of Love (1953) and Solitaire (1958).

She later became a journalist, working at the New Statesman. In early life, Kay Dick worked at Foyle's bookshop in London's Charing Cross Road and, at 26, became the first woman director in English publishing at P.S. She published seven novels, a study of the commedia dell'arte, and two volumes of literary interviews.Dick was born Kathleen Elsie Dick at Queen Charlotte's Hospital, London, England, UK, but was but raised in Switzerland by her mother, Kate Frances Dick, being educated in Geneva, as well as at the Lycée Français in London. From the 1940s through the '60s, she and her long-term partner, the novelist Kathleen Farrell, were at the heart of the London literary scene. Kay Dick (1915-2001) was the first female director of an English publishing house, promoted to the role at the age of twenty-six and mixing with what she described 'a louche set' that included Ivy Compton-Burnett, Stevie Smith, and Muriel Spark.

“Kay Dick’s mind is a delicate instrument, aware, sensitive, intelligent, alive to every shade of feeling and sensation.” - L. Winner of the 1977 South-East Arts Literature Prize, Kay Dick’s They is an uncanny and prescient vision of a world hostile to beauty, emotion, and the individual. As the menacing “They” creep ever closer, a loosely connected band of dissidents attempt to evade the chilling mobs, but it’s only a matter of time until their luck runs out. Violent gangs roam the country destroying art and culture and brutalizing those who resist the purge. Set amid the rolling hills and the sandy shingle beaches of coastal Sussex, this disquieting novel depicts an England in which bland conformity is the terrifying order of the day. They by Kay Dick / ISBN 9781946022288 / 112-page paperback from McNally EditionsĪ dark, dystopian portrait of artists struggling to resist violent suppression-“queer, English, a masterpiece.” (Hilton Als)