Katharine Burdekin

Biography

Born Katharine Penelope Cade, July 1896, Spondon, England. Youngest of four children, including Rowena Cade (b. 1893). Married May 1915 to Beaufort Burdekin. Two daughters, born 1917 and 1920. Marriage ended by 1922. Met lifelong female companion in 1926. Died 1963.

Names

• Murray Constantine (pseudonym)
• Kay Burdekin
• Katharine Penelope Cade (birthname)

Bibliography

In the 1930s alone, six published novels; seven unpublished novels (including The End of This Day's Business). Burdekin wrote a total of more than 20 novels before 1956 (when she stopped writing). She also wrote plays, short stories, and poems.

• Anna Colquhoun (1922) London. Burdekin's first novel. Sequel was written but destroyed by Burdekin without being published.
• The Burning Ring (1927).
• St. John's Eve (written 1927; published 1929. Published in US as The Children's Country.) Burdekin's only children's novel. A non-sexist children's novel.
• Two in a Sack (unpublished, written in mid-late 1920s, in galleys 1928).
• The Rebel Passion (1929) New York: William Morrow, 1929 (under name Kay Burdekin) Burdekin's fourth novel; her first utopian novel; she considered it her first mature work.
• The End of This Day's Business (written 1935; published 1989).
• Quiet Ways (1930) London: Thornton Butterworth. Sixth novel. anti-war, feminist.
• Proud Man (written 1933; published 1934 under pseudonym Murray Constantine) London: Boriswood, 1934; New York: The Feminist Press, 1993. Human from utopian future visits 20th century England
• No Compromise: A Political Romance (unpublished, written in mid-1930s). As Murray Constantine. Near future England; fascism on the rise; deals with communism.
• Swastika Night (1937) London: Victor Gollancz, 1937 (under pseudonym Murray Constantine) Old Westbury, NY: The Feminist Press, 1985. Published in German as Nacht der braunen Schatten An anti-Nazi dystopia.
• Children of Jacob (unpublished, written in 1938). As Murray Constantine. Attempts to explain Nazism, through looking at masculine violence from the Old Testament to the present.
• The Devil, Poor Devil as Murray Constantine.
• The Reasonable Hope
• Venus in Scorpio (1940) as Murray Constantine and Margaret Goldsmith. Historical novel about Marie Antoinette; Burdekin's last published book.
• Father to the Man (unpublished; 1940s).

References

• Bonifas, Gilbert. Notes and Queries v. 34 No. 1 (March 1987), p. 59.
• Gorer, Geoffrey. Letter, in Time and Tide, February 12, 1938, p. 204.
• Daphne Patai. "Afterword" to Burdekin's The End of This Day's Business (New York: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1989), pp. 159-190.
• Daphne Patai. "Introduction" to Burdekin's Swastika Night (New York: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1985).
• Daphne Patai. Foreword and Afterword to Burdekin's Proud Man (New York: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1993)
• Daphne Patai. "Orwell's Despair, Burdekin's Hope: Gender and Power in Dystopia." Women's Studies International Forum v. 7, No. 2 (1984), pp. 85-95.
• Review of Swastika Night in Time and Tide, June 26, 1937.

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