Katharine Burdekin

Katharine Penelope Burdekin (née Cade; 23 July 1896 – 10 August 1963) was a British novelist who wrote speculative fiction concerned with social and spiritual matters. She was the younger sister of Rowena Cade, creator of the Minack Theatre in Cornwall. Several of her novels have been described as feminist utopian/dystopian fiction. She also wrote under the name Kay Burdekin and under the pseudonym Murray Constantine. Daphne Patai unraveled "Murray Constantine's" true identity while doing research on utopian and dystopian fiction in the mid-1980s.

Early life Katharine Penelope Burdekin was born in Spondon, Derbyshire in 1896, the youngest of Charles Cade's four children. Her family had lived in Derby for many years and their ancestors include Joseph Wright of Derby.

She was educated by a governess at their home, The Homestead, and later at Cheltenham Ladies' College. Highly intelligent and an avid reader, she wanted to study at Oxford like her brothers, but her parents did not allow it. She married Olympic rower and barrister Beaufort Burdekin in 1915.

Her family moved to Australia, where Katharine started writing. Her first novel, Anna Colquhoun, was published in 1922. Her marriage ended in the same year, and she moved to Minack Head to join her sister. In 1926, she met and formed a lifelong relationship with Isobel Allan-Burns. but she later considered The Rebel Passion (1929) to be her first mature work. The Burning Ring (1927) and The Rebel Passion are both time travel fantasies.

In Proud Man (1934) Burdekin uses the arrival of a hermaphrodite visitor from the future to criticise 1930s gender roles.

Burdekin published her best-known novel, Swastika Night (1937), as Murray Constantine. Reflecting Burdekin's analysis of the masculine element in fascist ideology, Swastika Night depicts a world divided between two militaristic powers: the Nazis and Japan. Burdekin anticipated the Holocaust and understood the dangers presented by a militarised Japan while most people in her society were still supporting a policy of appeasement. A pacifist committed to communist ideals, Burdekin abandoned pacifism in 1938 out of the conviction that fascism had to be fought.

Burdekin had a period of depression in 1938. Her friend Margaret L. Goldsmith tried to assist by giving her research material on Marie Antoinette. The outcome was a historical novel, Venus in Scorpio, co-authored by Goldsmith and Burdekin (as 'Murray Constantine').

She wrote six further novels after World War II, none of which were published in her lifetime. These novels reflect her feminist commitments that became increasingly spiritual. Her unpublished manuscript, The End of This Day's Business, was published by The Feminist Press in New York in 1989;

Burdekin died in 1963. With the growing interest in women's utopian fiction in the last few decades, her work has been the object of considerable scholarly attention. Most early information about her came from Daphne Patai's research. Patai discovered that Burdekin wrote Swastika Night and other feminist speculative fiction in the 1930s that was published under the pseudonym of Murray Constantine. Patai was also involved in their republication.