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Autobiography or fiction? This question has shadowed the work of enigmatic Australian author Eve Langley since her first novel,
The Pea Pickers, was published in 1942. Almost immediately after, Eve was committed to a mental asylum in Auckland where she remained for more than seven years, separated from her three young children. Hailed as a tour de force,
The Pea Pickers was based on Eve's real-life experiences in the 1920s and tells the story of two feisty sisters who wander the Australian countryside dressed as men seeking work and adventure. But woven subtly into this brilliant and funny coming-of-age story is the portrait of a complex family constellation: a masculine mother, an evil father, the narrator's adoring sister, and a perplexing heroine who adopts the name of Steve Hart, one of the Ned Kelly gang who was known to masquerade as a woman. Drawing on contemporary evidence,
Eve Langley and The Pea Pickers offers a biography that unravels the life and the fiction, and the result is a fascinating and ultimately poignant tale.
About the author
Eve Langley's editor, the famous Beatrice Davis, declared that 'the personal side of Eve's life was coloured with madly poetic aberrations that would make any biographer pale if he wanted to get to the facts'. For 20 years, Helen Vines has trawled the archives to establish what most have viewed as an impossible task: separating the facts from the fiction of Eve Langley's life. Helen is a writer and editor who has been published in industry, education and union journals including Australian Educator and HR Monthly. Her first published creative essay was in Island Magazine and she co-authored Status and Reward: The History of Industrial Representation of Professional Engineers in Australia 1946-1996 with Brian Lloyd. Helen was raised on a farm in Drumborg, deep in the Western District of Victoria. She attended Heywood High School and Hamilton College, took an Honours Arts degree and Diploma of Education at the University of Melbourne, and an MA and PhD at the University of Tasmania. She has raised three wonderful children.
