y separately published work icon Edens Lost single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 1969... 1969 Edens Lost
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

Located in the Blue Mountains in the late 1930s, this compelling story has as its centre a wealthy upper middle class family, the St. James. The focus is on Eve, the mother, and the two daughters, Stevie and Bea, and a young man who becomes a frequent visitor to the St. James' household; taken in by Eve after the death of his guardian, Angus Weekes cannot resist becoming involved in the ultimately tragic patterns of their lives. The story is told from the viewpoints of Angus (part one), Bea (part two) and Eve (part three).

Adaptations

form y separately published work icon Edens Lost Michael Gow , ABC Television (publisher), ( dir. Neil Armfield ) Australia Birmingham : Central Independent Television ABC Television , 1988 Z1167993 1988 series - publisher film/TV Summer Locke Elliott's story, located in the Blue Mountains in the late 1930s, has as its centre a wealthy, upper-middle-class family, the St Jameses. The focus is on Mrs St James and her daughters Stevie and Bea, as a young man, Angus, becomes a frequent visitor to the household. Like the novel, the screenplay is structured in three parts. Episode 1 ('Angus') is the most Gothic and melodramatic in structure and tone; Episode 2 ('Bea') is the most naturalistic; and Episode 3 ('Eve') is the most concentrated and formally rigorous. Edens Lost is essentially a story of the unsatisfiability of female desire and the inability of the women ever to articulate this desire.

Notes

  • Dedication: For Marie
  • Epigraph: Where the apple reddens / Never pry - / Lest we lose our Edens, / Eve and I. / Browning, 'A Woman's Last Word'

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Harper and Row ,
      1969 .
      Extent: 279p.
      Edition info: 1st ed.
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Harper and Row ,
      1969 .
      Extent: [14], 281, [1]p.p.
      Note/s:
      • Proof copy of 1st edition. Author's name has been transposed from head of title. Light green paper wrappers with black print on cover; inscription by author on p.[1].
    • London,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Michael Joseph ,
      1970 .
      Extent: 256p.
      ISBN: 071810790X
    • New York (City), New York (State),
      c
      United States of America (USA),
      c
      Americas,
      :
      Fawcett Publications ,
      1972 .
      Alternative title: Edens Lost : A Novel
      Extent: 224p.
      Note/s:
      • 'A Fawcett Crest book.'/ '... reprinted by arrangement with Harper & Row, Publishers.'
    • Harmondsworth, Middlesex,
      c
      England,
      c
      c
      United Kingdom (UK),
      c
      Western Europe, Europe,
      :
      Penguin ,
      1974 .
      Extent: 271p.
      Reprinted: 1986
      ISBN: 0140035281
Alternative title: Der Apfel rötet sich in Eden : Roman
Language: German

Other Formats

  • Also sound recording, large print.

Works about this Work

‘The Writers’ Picnic’ : Genealogy and Homographesis in the Fiction of Sumner Locke Elliott Shaun Bell , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 17 no. 2 2018;

'Like many mid-century authors, Sumner Locke-Elliott fled Australia for more welcoming shores. From his first novel Careful He Might Hear You (1963), Locke-Elliott laid the foundations for a fictional self-authorship that suffused his writing with biographic detail and themes of origin, place and time. Despite his long absence from Australia and his naturalisation as an American citizen, his final novel and fictional coming out in Fairyland (1990) returns readers to the homophobic Sydney of his childhood. This blurring of biographic and fictional detail within the representational space of childhood creates an embodied literary network that connects Australia of the 1930s & 1940s and New York of the 1980s & 1990s, merging literary corpus and authorial life. Taking up this sense of presence, absence and connection, I argue that Locke-Elliot’s representation of childhood is a nostalgic point of interface that generatively refigures his oeuvre as an embodied queer and transnational literary network.' (Publication abstract)

'But Even Memory Is Fiction' : The (Fictional) Life and (Self ) Writing of Sumner Locke Elliott Shaun Bell , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 75 no. 2 2016; (p. 172-192)
'Shaun Bell recuperates Lock-Elliott from his common status as footnote or aside in accounts of literary networks, to identify common figures and set pirces across his oeuvre, as a ways of reading of his 'construction of self through nostalgia, art and life.' (Editorial, 7)
Writer Crushed by the Sexual Constraints of the Pre-War World Dennis Altman , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 6-7 April 2013; (p. 18-19)

— Review of Edens Lost Sumner Locke Elliott , 1969 single work novel
Careful, He's Made Himself Heard at Last Susan Wyndham , 1990 single work criticism biography
— Appears in: The Australian Magazine , 16-17 June 1990; (p. 4)
The Man Who Won't Come Back Michele Field (interviewer), 1989 single work interview
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 28 February 1989; (p. 102-103)
Writer Crushed by the Sexual Constraints of the Pre-War World Dennis Altman , 2013 single work review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 6-7 April 2013; (p. 18-19)

— Review of Edens Lost Sumner Locke Elliott , 1969 single work novel
Careful, He's Made Himself Heard at Last Susan Wyndham , 1990 single work criticism biography
— Appears in: The Australian Magazine , 16-17 June 1990; (p. 4)
The Man Who Won't Come Back Michele Field (interviewer), 1989 single work interview
— Appears in: The Bulletin , 28 February 1989; (p. 102-103)
Gow Bows Out as the Messiah Janet Hawley , 1988 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 12 March 1988; (p. 67)
'But Even Memory Is Fiction' : The (Fictional) Life and (Self ) Writing of Sumner Locke Elliott Shaun Bell , 2016 single work criticism
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 75 no. 2 2016; (p. 172-192)
'Shaun Bell recuperates Lock-Elliott from his common status as footnote or aside in accounts of literary networks, to identify common figures and set pirces across his oeuvre, as a ways of reading of his 'construction of self through nostalgia, art and life.' (Editorial, 7)
‘The Writers’ Picnic’ : Genealogy and Homographesis in the Fiction of Sumner Locke Elliott Shaun Bell , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 17 no. 2 2018;

'Like many mid-century authors, Sumner Locke-Elliott fled Australia for more welcoming shores. From his first novel Careful He Might Hear You (1963), Locke-Elliott laid the foundations for a fictional self-authorship that suffused his writing with biographic detail and themes of origin, place and time. Despite his long absence from Australia and his naturalisation as an American citizen, his final novel and fictional coming out in Fairyland (1990) returns readers to the homophobic Sydney of his childhood. This blurring of biographic and fictional detail within the representational space of childhood creates an embodied literary network that connects Australia of the 1930s & 1940s and New York of the 1980s & 1990s, merging literary corpus and authorial life. Taking up this sense of presence, absence and connection, I argue that Locke-Elliot’s representation of childhood is a nostalgic point of interface that generatively refigures his oeuvre as an embodied queer and transnational literary network.' (Publication abstract)

Last amended 23 Dec 2010 10:40:25
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