Prolific author and pioneering gay rights activist, Maureen Duffy, has sadly passed away at the age of 92. The writer’s death comes just a year after she was awarded the Royal Society of Literature’s inaugural Pioneer Prize, which celebrates women over 60, launched by their president Bernardine Evaristo.
During her career, Duffy penned more than 60 works spanning poetry, plays, novels and non-fiction. She is also known as being one of the first gay women in British public life to be open about her sexuality. Her landmark 1966 novel, The Microcosm is set in the lesbian club, ‘Gateways’, in London and explores the acceptance of lesbians. It was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 1998.
Born in Worthing, Sussex in 1933, Duffy won her first poetry competition aged 17. She graduated from King’s College London, in 1956 having studied English, and the university would later inspire the fictional Queen’s College London featured in her novel Capital; the second work in her London trilogy.
Bernardine Evaristo and Maureen Duffy
It was the early 1960s that Duffy began campaigning for gay rights; coming out publically and speaking on issues faced by the community including the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Throughout the 1970s, she often wrote pieces for the lesbian feminist journal, Sappho, and in 1977, she published The Ballad of the Blasphemy Trial, a poem condemning the infamous trial of the Gay News for blasphemous libel.
She became the first President of the Gay Humanist Group from 1980, and at the 1988 Trade Union Congress (TUC) conference, speaking as the President of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, she succeeded with a motion deploring the passing of Section 28 “as an infringement of the basic right to free speech and expression”.
Duffy also campaigned tirelessly for writers. In 1972, she co-founded the Writers’ Action Group, which led a campaign for a public lending right. This eventually became law in 1979, allowing authors to earn money each time their book is borrowed from a public library. This work led to the establishment of the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) which continues to support authors in payment for secondary uses of their works.
Barbara Hayes, chief executive of the ALCS, said Maureen Duffy was an “extraordinary author” and a “tireless advocate for authors’ rights. For decades, she championed fair remuneration and proper recognition for creators with remarkable passion and conviction, leaving an enduring legacy for writers everywhere.”
“I’ve always been interested in politics and there’s a sort of bloody-mindedness in me that wants to take issues on,” Duffy explained in 2017. “It’s a continuous battle. As well as authors’ rights, I’ve also been a campaigner for gay rights and animal rights. I feel very strongly that you have to stand up and play your part.”
