Murphy, Clive (b 1935) author and social historian

Administrative/biographical history

Clive Murphy was born in Liverpool in 1935. He was educated and brought up in Ireland where he qualified as a solicitor in 1958. In the same year, he emigrated. to London and eventually settled in Spitalfields in the early 1970s. His Summer Overtures was joint winner of Adam International Review's First Novel Award in 1972. Freedom for Mr. Mildew & Nigel Someone appeared to critical acclaim in one volume in 1975. A series of ten recorded autobiographies, as listed below, followed. Since 1999, Clive Murphy has published ten books of gay, often comic, ribaldry. The tenth, To Hell with Thomas Bowdler, Mrs Grundy and Mary Whitehouse!, was published in 2015.

The Ordinary Lives series, edited by Clive Murphy, includes:

• Deeds of a Good Woman by Beatrice Ali (1976)
• Born to Sing by Alexander Hartog (1978)
• Four Acres and a Donkey: the memoirs of a lavatory attendant by S.A.B. Rogers (1979
• Love, dears! The memoirs of a former chorus girl by Marjorie Graham (1980) (Published in 2013 by Macmillan as Up in Lights)
• Oiky: the memoirs of a pigmanby Len Mills (1984)
• At the Dog in Dulwich: recollections of a poet by Patricia Doubell (1986)
• A Stranger in Gloucester: recollections of an Austrian in England by Mrs Falge-Wahl (1986)
• A funny old quist: the memoirs of a gamekeeper by Evan Rogers (1986)
• Dodo by Dodo Lees (1993)
• Endsleigh: memoirs of a riverkeeper by Horace Adams (1994)

Clive Murphy has also published twelve volumes of ribald rhymes, including:

• Sour Grapes (1999)
• Cave canem (2002)
• Orts and all: more ribald rhymes and gay doggery (2003)
• Lust and malice: ribald rhymes and other verse (2005)
• Sodomy is not enough! Ribald rhymes and other verse (2008)
• Heavenly blue: rhymes more ribald (2009)
• Gay abandon (2011)
• On Pleasure Bent(2013)
• Lock up your sons!(2014)
• To Hell with Thomas Bowdler, Mrs Grundy and Mary Whitehouse! (2015)
• Easy come, easy go, or It takes all sorts (2017)
• Concoctions and Contrivances (2018)

Scope and content

Papers of author and social historian Clive Murphy, including:

• Typescript and handwritten drafts, correspondence and research materials for all of the books in the Ordinary Lives series, including papers on unpublished books in the Ordinary Lives series, 1966-1998.
• Audio tapes of interviews with all subjects in the Ordinary Lives series, including interviews for unpublished books, 1973-1999.
• Typescript and handwritten drafts, correspondence and research materials for all volumes of comic verse, 1998-2015.
• Typescript and handwritten drafts, correspondence and research materials for published and unpublished novels, and short stories, 1964-1998.
• Handwritten diaries, entitled 'The Old Age of Clive Murphy' and an unpublished autobiography covering the dates preceding them, 2003-date.
• 200 photograph albums of personal photographs from holidays, events and day-to-day life around Spitalfields, 1987-2015.
• Ephemera, including pamphlets and leaflets, 1960s-1990s.
• Scrapbooks containing press cuttings and handwitten notes of quotations, n.d.
• Extensive humorous correspondence, mainly in postcard form, with author Francis King, 1997-2011.
• Oversize scrapbooks, mainly in wallpaper sample books, containing miscellaneous press cuttings, 1980-2013 .
• Postcards of male beauty, n.d.;
• Personal and family papers, including correspondence with mother Vera Murphy, childhood diaries, photographs and photograph albums, certificates, childhood matchbox collection and autograph books, c1920s-2000.

Quantity

65 boxes.