Marion Eleanor Zimmer Bradley (June 3, 1930 – September 25, 1999) was an American author of fantasy, historical fantasy, science fiction, and science fantasy novels, and is best known for the Arthurian fiction novel The Mists of Avalon and the Darkover series. Noted for the feminist perspective in her writing, her reputation has been posthumously marred by her daughter Moira Greyland's accusations of child sexual abuse, and for allegedly assisting her second husband, convicted child abuser Walter Breen, in sexually abusing multiple unrelated children.
Bradley began writing at the age of 17 and later graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Hardin-Simmons University. She co-founded the Society for Creative Anachronism in 1966. She also served as the editor of the long-running Sword and Sorceress anthology series. She was posthumously awarded the World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement in 2000.
In 2014, her daughter Moira accused her of sexual abuse, and it was revealed that Bradley was aware of her second husband, Walter H. Breen's, child molestation activities. In response to the allegations, the publisher of Bradley's digital backlist began donating all income from her e-books to the charity Save the Children. Several science fiction authors have since publicly condemned Bradley.
Biography
Born Marion Eleanor Zimmer on June 3, 1930, she lived on a farm in Albany, New York, and began writing at the age of 17.[1] She was married to Robert Alden Bradley from October 26, 1949, until their divorce on May 19, 1964. They had a son, David Robert Bradley (1950–2008). During the 1950s she was introduced to lesbian advocacy organization the Daughters of Bilitis.[2]
After her divorce, Bradley married numismatistWalter H. Breen on June 3, 1964. They had a daughter, Moira Greyland, who is a professional harpist and singer,[3] and a son, Mark Greyland.[4] Moira's son, RJ Stern, is a college football player who was featured on season 5 of Last Chance U on Netflix.[5]
Bradley and Breen separated in 1979 but remained married, and continued a business relationship and lived on the same street for over a decade. They officially divorced on May 9, 1990, the year Breen was arrested on child molestation charges after a 13-year-old boy reported that Breen had been molesting him for four years.[8] She had edited Breen's book Greek Love (published pseudonymously), which was dedicated to her (named simply as "his wife"), and in 1965 had contributed an article, "Feminine Equivalents of Greek Love in Modern Literature", to Breen's journal The International Journal of Greek Love.[9][10] She allegedly had knowledge of Breen's sexual interests and was said to have accepted his sexual abuse of a 14-year-old boy.[11]
In the late 1950s or early 1960s, Bradley and Walter H. Breen founded the Aquarian Order of the Restoration based on the work of Dion Fortune.[7][12] By 1961 she was formally initiating others, including Ramfis S. Firethorn.[13]: 313 [who?]
Bradley was active in Darkmoon Circle, which was founded in 1978 by several women who were members of her Aquarian Order of the Restoration. Bradley renovated her garage to provide a meeting room for Darkmoon Circle as well as for other local Pagan groups.[14] In 1981 Bradley, Diana L. Paxson, and Elisabeth Waters incorporated the Center for Non-Traditional Religion.[7]
In the 1990s Bradley said she would return to Christianity, telling an interviewer: "I just go regularly to the Episcopalian church ... That pagan thing ... I feel that I've gotten past it. I would like people to explore the possibilities."[15]
In 2014, Bradley's daughter, Moira Greyland, accused her of sexual abuse from the age of 3 to 12. In an email to The Guardian, Greyland said that she had not spoken out before because "I thought that my mother's fans would be angry with me for saying anything against someone who had championed women's rights and made so many of them feel differently about themselves and their lives. I didn't want to hurt anyone she had helped, so I just kept my mouth shut".[16]
Greyland also reported that she was not the only victim and that she was one of the people who reported her father, Walter H. Breen, for child molestation, for which he received multiple convictions.[16][17][18] According to Greyland, Bradley was aware of her husband's behavior although she chose not to report him.[19]
In December 2017 Bradley's daughter published a detailed biography of her mother, including her pedophilia and sexual abuse, in a book entitled The Last Closet: The Dark Side of Avalon.[20]
Additionally, according to Greyland, Bradley assisted Breen (her husband at the time) in accessing and abusing multiple unrelated young boys, knowing he was a pedophile who was engaging in sexual contact with children as young as eight. Greyland states that Bradley and her live-in female partner (whom Greyland refers to as her step-mother) both admitted to knowledge of the abuse and purposefully avoided investigating, questioning, or notifying any authorities. Bradley was also accused of attempting to adopt a child whom Breen was interested in sexually.[21]
In response to these allegations, on July 2, 2014, Victor Gollancz Ltd, the publisher of Bradley's digital backlist, began donating all income from the sales of Bradley's e-books to the charity Save the Children.[22]Janni Lee Simner donated advances and royalties from her two Darkover short stories and, at the request of her husband, Larry Hammer, payment for his sale to Bradley's magazine, to the American anti-sexual assault organization Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.[23]
A number of science fiction authors have publicly condemned Bradley. Among the first was John Scalzi, who within a day of the allegations being made public, described the allegations as "horrific".[24]Hugo Award winner Jim C. Hines wrote that Bradley's positive effect on her readers and associates "makes the revelations about Marion Zimmer Bradley protecting a known child rapist and molesting her own daughter and others even more tragic."[25]G Willow Wilson, who along with Bradley is a fellow World Fantasy Award winner, said she was "speechless".[26]Diana L. Paxson, who collaborated with Bradley on a number of novels and who continued to write novels set in the Avalon Series after Bradley's death, said that she was "shocked and appalled to read Moira Greyland's posts about her mother... I never personally observed, nor had any reason to suspect, that (Bradley) was abusing either of her children."[27]
Literary career
Bradley stated that when she was a child she enjoyed reading adventure fantasy authors such as Henry Kuttner, Edmond Hamilton, C.L. Moore, and Leigh Brackett,[28] especially when they wrote about "the glint of strange suns on worlds that never were and never would be". Her first novel and much of her subsequent work show their influence strongly. At 17, she began her first novel The Forest House, her retelling of Norma; she finished it before her death.[6]
Bradley made her first sale as an adjunct to an amateur fiction contest in Amazing Stories in 1949 with the short story "Outpost". "Outpost" was published in Amazing Stories Vol. 23, No. 12, the December 1949 issue; it had previously appeared in the fanzine Spacewarp Vol. 4, No. 3, in December 1948. Her first professional publication was a short story "Women Only", which appeared in the second (and final) issue of Vortex Science Fiction in 1953.[29] Her first published novel-length work was Falcons of Narabedla, first published in the May 1957 issue of Other Worlds.
Cover of I Am a Lesbian published by Marion Zimmer Bradley under the pseudonym Lee Chapman. Monarch Book, 1962.
Early in her career, writing as Morgan Ives, Miriam Gardner, John Dexter, and Lee Chapman, Bradley produced several works outside the speculative fiction genre, including gay and lesbian pulp fiction novels; I Am a Lesbian was published in 1962. Though relatively tame by today's standards, her novels were considered pornographic when published.[30]
Her 1958 novel The Planet Savers introduced the planet of Darkover, which became the setting of a popular series by Bradley and other authors. The Darkover milieu is a science fantasy fictional world, with science fiction as well as fantasy overtones: Darkover is a lost human colony where psi powers developed to an unusual degree, and work like magic, while technology has regressed to a more-or-less medieval stage. Bradley wrote many Darkover novels by herself, but in her later years collaborated with other authors for publication; her literary collaborators have continued the series since her death.
Bradley took an active role in science fiction and fantasy fandom, promoting interaction with professional authors and publishers and making several important contributions to the subculture. In her teens she wrote letters to the pulp magazines of the time, such as the above-mentioned Amazing Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories. Starting in the late 1940s and continuing in the 1950s and 1960s, she published her own fanzines, including Astra's Tower, Day*Star, and Anything Box. She also co-edited fanzines, including Ugly Bird with Redd Boggs, MEZRAB with her first husband Robert Bradley, and Allerlei with her second husband Walter Breen. Bradley contributed to several other fanzines, including The Gorgon and The Nekromantikon. In the 1970s, as part of the contemporary wave of enthusiasm for J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional world of Middle-earth, she wrote two short fanfic stories about Arwen and published them in chapbook format. One story, "The Jewel of Arwen" (originally published in a different form in the fanzine I Palantir #2, August 1961), appeared in her professional anthology The Best of Marion Zimmer Bradley (1985), but was dropped from later reprints. She continued to contribute to different science fiction and fantasy fanzines and magazines throughout her career.[citation needed][31]
For many years, Bradley actively encouraged Darkover fan fiction. She encouraged submissions from unpublished authors and reprinted some of it in commercial Darkover anthologies. This ended after a dispute with a fan over an unpublished Darkover novel of Bradley's that had similarities to one of the fan's stories. As a result, the novel remained unpublished and Bradley demanded the cessation of all Darkover fan fiction.[33]
Bradley was the editor of the long-running Sword and Sorceressanthology series, which encouraged submissions of fantasy stories featuring original and non-traditional heroines from young and upcoming authors. Although she particularly encouraged young female authors, she was not averse to including stories from men in her anthologies. Mercedes Lackey was one of many authors who first appeared in the anthologies. Bradley also maintained a large family of writers at her home in Berkeley, California. Following Bradley's death, the anthology was edited by Elizabeth Waters and continued until 2019.[34]
Her most famous single novel may be The Mists of Avalon,[35] a retelling of the Camelot legend from the point of view of Morgaine and Gwenhwyfar. It grew into a series of books and, like the Darkover series, the later novels are written with or by other authors and have continued to appear since Bradley's death.[36]
Bradley was posthumously awarded the World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement in 2000.[37]
Songs from Rivendell (a.k.a. The Rivendell Suite): music and arrangements for several poems from the novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien (1960) – included with other Tolkien songs on the CD "The Starlit Jewel" by the Celtic and Early Music Ensemble Brocelïande.
Songs of Darkover by Margaret Davis and Kristoph Klover from Brocelïande accompanied by the filk musicians Cynthia McQuillin and Jane Robinson is derived from the audiobook version of Music of Darkover and features two songs composed by MZB: "The Ballad of Hastur and Cassilda" and "The Outlaw"
Bradley, Marion Zimmer. "Feminine equivalents of Greek Love in modern fiction". International Journal of Greek Love, Vol. 1, No. 1. (1965). Pages 48–58.[10]
Checklist: A complete, cumulative checklist of lesbian, variant, and homosexual fiction in English (1960) and addenda (1961, 1962, 1963).
A Gay Bibliography (1975).
The Necessity for Beauty: Robert W. Chambers & the Romantic Tradition (1974)
Other works
Bradley created several different fanzines, including The Anything Box (2 issues, 1959), Astra's Tower (5 issues, 1947–50), Astra's Tower, Special Leaflet (5 issues, 1952–62), Day*Star (28 issues, 1954–72), Fantasy Ambler (1 issue, 1962), Gemini, Jr. (1 issue, 1951), Gemini FAPA (3 issues, 1951–60), On the Ragged Edge (1 issue, undated), and Catch Trap (at least issues 89–106, early 1960s). She co-edited several other fanzines, including Allerlei (at least 17 issues, 1960–65, with Walter Breen), Anduril (1 issue, 1962, with David Bradley and Paul Zimmer), MEZRAB (7 issues, 1950–52, with Robert A. Bradley), and Ugly Bird (2 issues, 1956–59, with Redd Boggs).
She also contributed to The Ladder and The Mattachine Review. As Elfrieda or Elfrida Rivers, she contributed at least to the underground newspaperThe East Village Other, the neo-Pagan periodical Green Egg and also Sybil Leek's Astrology Journal, where she wrote horoscopes and book reviews and had her own column as well as occasionally worked as editors with her husband Walter Breen.
Pseudonyms
Lee Chapman
John Dexter
Miriam Gardner
Valerie Graves
Morgan Ives
Elfrieda Rivers (also Alfrida Rivers and Elfrida Rivers)
Astara Zimmer (also Astra Zimmer and Astra Zimmer Bradley)
^Mader, Donald (2014). "Walter H. Breen". In Bullough, Vern L. (ed.). Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context. Routledge. pp. 312–321. ISBN978-1-317-76628-5.
^ abZimmer Bradley, Marion (1965). "Feminine equivalents of Greek love in modern fiction". International Journal of Greek Love. 1 (1): 48–58. Tragic denouements in such fiction, when they happen at all, arise either when the older woman fears or rejects such relationships, or when outsiders misunderstand them and break up the affairs, such as in actual cases of either gender.
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