The Shelf

“I think that it is right and renewing to remember acts of love because, in the brevity of our lives, there is not enough time for loving.”

The “shelf” is a repository in the coroner’s office where Cassandra’s letters to Anne are lodged. And with them is that other letter: the one Anne never posted, the one found in her handbag. It was all so long ago – over twenty years before – but Cass has never been able to forget the passion Anne engendered in her, their brief affair, and the mystery that ended it.

Kay Dick’s most autobiographical novel relates the story of the brief affair she had with a married woman, and portrays much of the homophobia she experienced in 1960s London. The events described are true, her narrator writes, “Though I shall deny it of course.”

Acclaimed at the time of its release for its lucid approach to the uncomfortable proximity between life writing and voyeurism, The Shelf has been long unavailable. This new edition, with an afterword by Eley Williams, brings a pioneering and subversive work of queer literature to a new generation of readers.