Kate Tyte | Contributors to Slightly Foxed literary review magazine

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Kate Tyte worked as an archivist for over ten years, some of them at the Royal College of Surgeons and the Natural History Museum. She now lives in Portugal where she teaches and writes short stories, which have appeared in several magazines and podcasts.

The numbers in square brackets refer to the issue of the quarterly in which the article appears.
The unbracketed numbers refer to the starting page of the article.
For entries in multiple issues of the quarterly, the occurrences are separated by semi-colons.

articles by, [55] 60; [59] 52; [66] 79; [76] 85

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Mr Gryce Meets His Match

Kate Tyte on Anna Katharine Green, That Affair Next Door

Imagine you are at a pub quiz. It’s the literature round and the theme is literary firsts. What was the first novel in English? What was the first detective story? Readers of Slightly Foxed could probably hazard a guess at Robinson Crusoe and The Murders in the Rue Morgue. But what was the first ever piece of detective fiction written by a woman? It’s a question likely to leave most readers stumped. But just in case it ever comes up, the answer is The Leavenworth Case by Anna Katharine Green, published in 1878.

Keeping up Appearances

Kate Tyte on Eve Garnett, The Family from One End Street

Eve Garnett’s children’s novel was first published in 1937, with her own illustrations. At least eight publishers had rejected it on account of its supposed ‘grittiness’. Here was a story about an urban working-class family that detailed the endless struggles of Mr and Mrs Ruggles – a dustman and a washerwoman – to feed, clothe and shoe their seven children. In fact the book was probably the first ever British children’s book with working-class protagonists. Despite publishers’ initial reluctance, it was an immediate success. Serialized by the BBC in 1939, it won the Library Association’s prestigious Carnegie Medal – beating The Hobbit – and has been in print ever since. In a market saturated with stories about boarding-schools, nannies and improbable Swallows and Amazons-type adventures, parents and children alike warmed to the novelty of the Ruggles.

Grinning at the Devil

Kate Tyte on Isak Dinesen, Seven Gothic Tales

Seven Gothic Tales is an apt title. All tales must have a teller, and Dinesen’s seven separate tales – all long, some long enough to be novellas – have multiple storytellers. There are tales within tales within tales, each opening on to the next like a series of Russian dolls. The themes are Gothic: doomed love affairs; the inevitability of fate; super natural forces. There are gloomy monasteries, ghosts, violent murders and bizarre plot twists including a nun who transforms into a monkey.

Trouble at the Convent

Kate Tyte on Aldous Huxley, The Devils of Loudun

Huxley’s The Devils of Loudun (1952) – a book that could easily be subtitled ‘politically motivated witch-hunts and how to avoid them’ – feels horribly relevant. The Devils is about the supposed possession of a convent of nuns, thanks to the alleged witchcraft of a Catholic priest with a sex life that reads like Les Liaisons Dangereuses. It includes exorcisms, torture and Byzantine political manoeuvrings by an untouchable elite.

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