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'Autobiography or fiction? This question has shadowed the work of enigmatic Australian author Eve Langley since her death in 1974. Was her writing the truth, or false, or somewhere in between? What did it mean when she described her father as ‘evil’ and ‘perverted’ in her first published novel The Pea Pickers (1942) and a kindly figure in later, unpublished work? Did she really believe herself to be Oscar Wilde? Was she gender fluid? Eve and her sister (and co-conspirator) June held onto family secrets as if their very lives depended on it. Eve Langley has been in the news since the 1920s and reviewed on both sides of the globe. She was an author, a wife, a mother, a sister, a daughter and a long-term psychiatric inmate. But June, who traversed the Australian countryside dressed as a boy, a willing lifelong companion to her beloved sister, is a lonely anonymous figure. Drawing on contemporary evidence, Eve Langley and the Pea Pickers gives the key players in the author’s life a voice, and the result is a fascinating but ultimately poignant tale of love and loss.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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Eve and Steve : Distinguishing Fiction from Biography
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October no. 436 2021; (p. 52-53)
— Review of Eve Langley and 'The Pea Pickers' 2021 single work biography'In 1942, The Pea Pickers was published by Angus & Robertson in Sydney, garnering high praise for its freshness and poetic invention. A picaresque tale of two sisters who, dressed as boys, earn their living picking seasonal crops in Gippsland in the late 1920s, it impressed Douglas Stewart, literary editor of the Bulletin, with its ‘love of Australian earth and Australian people and skill in painting them’. The author, Eve Langley, was at that time incarcerated in the Auckland Mental Hospital, where she would remain for the next seven years, isolated from her estranged husband and three young children, and from her mother and sister, who were also in New Zealand.' (Introduction)
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Joyful Tale of a Woman Who Wore the Pants
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 24 July 2021; (p. 16)
— Review of Eve Langley and 'The Pea Pickers' 2021 single work biography'Who was Eve Langley? Those who know the name will associate it with a remarkable novel, The Pea Pickers, first published in 1942. It is an exotic tale, set in Gippsland, Victoria where the two main female characters dress up as male farm workers, in order to find work, and survive.' (Introduction)
-
Joyful Tale of a Woman Who Wore the Pants
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 24 July 2021; (p. 16)
— Review of Eve Langley and 'The Pea Pickers' 2021 single work biography'Who was Eve Langley? Those who know the name will associate it with a remarkable novel, The Pea Pickers, first published in 1942. It is an exotic tale, set in Gippsland, Victoria where the two main female characters dress up as male farm workers, in order to find work, and survive.' (Introduction)
-
Eve and Steve : Distinguishing Fiction from Biography
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , October no. 436 2021; (p. 52-53)
— Review of Eve Langley and 'The Pea Pickers' 2021 single work biography'In 1942, The Pea Pickers was published by Angus & Robertson in Sydney, garnering high praise for its freshness and poetic invention. A picaresque tale of two sisters who, dressed as boys, earn their living picking seasonal crops in Gippsland in the late 1920s, it impressed Douglas Stewart, literary editor of the Bulletin, with its ‘love of Australian earth and Australian people and skill in painting them’. The author, Eve Langley, was at that time incarcerated in the Auckland Mental Hospital, where she would remain for the next seven years, isolated from her estranged husband and three young children, and from her mother and sister, who were also in New Zealand.' (Introduction)
