A contentious figure for British feminism, Erin Pizzey (1939-) founded Chiswick Women’s Aid in 1971, which grew to become the national charity against domestic violence, Refuge. After she left Women’s Aid, Pizzey continued to write and lecture about domestic abuse, winning the Nancy Astor Award for Journalism in 1983, as well as penning a clutch of bodice-rippers. The author now refers to herself as a men’s rights advocate and is editor at large of the anti-feminist A Voice for Men website.
Infernal Child is about Pizzey’s dysfunctional, peripatetic childhood and was published when she was still deeply embedded in, and indeed famous for, her work in the domestic violence movement. The printed dedication reads: “To Christopher and to all the mothers, children and staff who have passed through Chiswick Women’s Aid.” As the hand-written inscription suggests, Pizzey promulgated the notion that violence begets violence and, most problematically, that women who experience domestic violence play a role in seeking out aggressive partners.
It seems possible that the Midge of the inscription may just be Midge Decter (1927-), the American neoconservative and anti-feminist journalist, whose The New Chastity and Other Arguments against Women’s Liberation had been published in 1972.
See: Helen Lewis (2020) ‘Feminism’s Purity Wars: Why has Erin Pizzey, once a pioneer of the women’s movement, been written out of its history?’ The Atlantic.