Housespy

by Maureen Duffy

A highly praised British spy thriller by poet and novelist Maureen Duffy. A first edition published by Hamish Hamilton, London. 218 pages.

218 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Maureen Patricia Duffy was a British novelist, poet, playwright, nonfiction author and activist.

Duffy's work often used Freudian ideas and Greek mythology as frameworks. Her writing was distinctive for its use of contrasting voices, or streams of consciousness, often including the perspectives of outsiders. Her novels have been linked to a European tradition of literature which explores reality through the use of language and questioning, rather than through traditional linear narrative. James Joyce in particular, and Modernism in general, are significant influences on her fiction, as is Joyce Cary.

Duffy, with author and activist Brigid Brophy, Michael Levey and two others founded the Writers' Action Group in 1972, which gained more than 700 author members. Their campaign for Public Lending Right (annual payments to authors based on public-library loans of their books) succeeded legally in 1979 after support for it at the 1978 TUC conference. She joined a delegation to meet Prime Minister James Callaghan in 1977. She remained an authority on copyright, intellectual property law and secondary author rights.

Abridged from Wikipedia