Eve Langley and the Pea Pickers

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her father as ‘evil’ and ‘perverted’ in her first published novel The Pea Pickers (1942) and a kindly figure in later, unpublished work?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

“Eve Langley's strange story, in all its contradictory versions, its secrets and silences, has baffled many literary sleuths. Helen Vines disentangles facts from fantasies with patience and sensitivity. The author of that much-loved story of outback Australia The Pea Pickers emerges as a tragically flawed yet resilient writer whose distinctive talents came to being within a tempestuous life. -- Brenda Niall”

Eve Langley’s strange story, in all its contradictory versions, its secrets and silences, has baffled many literary sleuths. Helen Vines disentangles facts from fantasies with patience and sensitivity. The author of that much-loved story of outback Australia The Pea Pickers emerges as a tragically flawed yet resilient writer whose distinctive talents came to being within a tempestuous life.

-- Brenda Niall

Such skilful literary detective work. Helen Vines untangles fact and fiction in her search for the truth about Eve Langley, one of twentieth-century Australia’s most astonishing and misunderstood writers. This sensitive biography teases apart the myths surrounding a writer who never escaped the complicated legacy of her dazzling first novel. In doing so, Eve Langley and The Pea Pickers furthers our understanding of the relationship between family trauma, mental illness and creativity.

-- Cathy Perkins

For more than a decade, Helen Vines trawled the archives to accomplish what many 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 (1996) with Dr Brian Lloyd. Helen completed a BA (Hons) and DipEd at the University of Melbourne, and an MA and PhD at the University of Tasmania. She has raised three wonderful children: Chloë, Harry and Bonnie.

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.

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