Cirrus@Austlit

'Yarn Spinners was first published by the University of Queensland Press in 2001 with the much shorter subtitle of ' A Story of Letters'. Coming after over a decade of increased attention to the lives and work of Austrlai's earlier women writers, thanks to the impact of femenist literary history and criticism, it was perhaps less necessary then to spell out just what the story was about. In epilogue Marilla North noted some ofthe fruits of the revival of interest in cusack work. Her play Morning Sacrifice (1943) was about to be produced by the Sydney Theatre Company and there was to be a reprint of her novel Say No to Death (1951). During the 1988 Bicentenary there had been reprints of the novels she wrote with Miles Franklin, Pioneers on Parade (1939), and Florence James, Come in Spinner (1951). Many of the letters in Yarn Spinners relate to the writing and publication of these two jointly- authored works. Today, while some of Cusack's novels can be ordered from Allen and Unwin as print on demand titles, they are not readliy available in bookshops, and she has been largley forgotten again.' (Introduction)