Helen Vines Helen Vines i(A98459 works by) (a.k.a. Helen Margaret McDonald Vines)
Gender: Female
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

Works By

Preview all
1 4 y separately published work icon Eve Langley and 'The Pea Pickers' Helen Vines , Clayton : Monash University Publishing , 2021 21004567 2021 single work biography

'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her father as ‘evil’ and ‘perverted’ in her first published novel The Pea Pickers (1942) and a kindly figure in later, unpublished work?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.

1 y separately published work icon Redefining Eve Langley: Eve Langley and her Editors Helen Vines , Hobart : 2000 Z1307122 2000 single work thesis This thesis explores the relationship between Eve Langley and her editors at Angus & Robertson after the publication of her first novel, The Pea Pickers. The chief sustenance of this relationship was letter writing. In 1977, the Mitchell Library purchased the collected letters, which cover the period from October 1941 to July 1975. This thesis argues that these letters offer a perspective on Langley's life which challenges the problematic profile drawn by Joy Thwaite's biography, The Importance of Being Eve Langley. The letters also reveal the editorial process of Australia's foremost editors.
X