Ann quin
Encyclopedia
Ann Quin was a British writer noted for her experimental style. The author of Berg (1964), Three (1966), Passages (1969) and Tripticks (1972), she committed suicide in 1973 at the age of 37, the same year as B.S. Johnson (to whom she is often compared). More recently Stewart Home
has written in admiration of her work, which remains largely overlooked, although Berg was adapted for film in 1989 as Killing Dad starring Denholm Elliott
and Richard E. Grant
.
Quin is associated with a loosely-constituted circle of 'experimental' authors in Sixties Britain, headed by B.S. Johnson and including Stefan Themerson
, Rayner Heppenstall
, Alan Burns and Eva Figes
.
Quin came from a working-class family and was educated at the Convent of the Blessed Sacrament. She trained as a shorthand typist and worked in a solicitor's office, then at a publishing company when she moved to Soho and began writing novels. Her first, Berg, was published by John Calder
in 1964. Visibly influenced by Virginia Woolf
and other female British modernists, as well as the French nouveau roman
, the powerful opening line - "A man called Berg, who changed his name to Greb, came to a seaside intending to kill his father..." - set the tone for a dark, psychological farce set in Quin's home town, which became the most critically acclaimed for her four novels.
Berg was followed by Three (1966), Passages (1969) and Tripticks (1972), in which Quin continued her formal experimentation, although without making the same critical impact as she had with her debut. She committed suicide in 1973, drowning herself by swimming out into the sea off Brighton's Palace Pier, weeks before the death of her contemporary B. S. Johnson.
Despite a complete re-print of her works by the Dalkey Archive Press, Quin's critical stock has rather declined since the Sixties, although contemporary non-mainstream authors such as Stewart Home
and Lee Rourke
have cited her work as influential.
Stewart Home
Stewart Home is an English artist, filmmaker, writer, pamphleteer, art historian, and activist. He is best known for his novels such as the non-narrative 69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess , his re-imagining of the 1960s in Tainted Love , and earlier parodistic pulp fictions Pure Mania, Red...
has written in admiration of her work, which remains largely overlooked, although Berg was adapted for film in 1989 as Killing Dad starring Denholm Elliott
Denholm Elliott
Denholm Mitchell Elliott, CBE was an English film, television and theatre actor with over 120 film and television credits...
and Richard E. Grant
Richard E. Grant
Richard E. Grant is a Swaziland-born British actor, screenwriter and director. His most notable role came in the film Withnail and I. He holds dual British and Swazi citizenship.-Early life:...
.
Quin is associated with a loosely-constituted circle of 'experimental' authors in Sixties Britain, headed by B.S. Johnson and including Stefan Themerson
Stefan Themerson
Stefan Themerson was a Polish, later British poet, novelist, film-maker, composer and philosopher.-Early life:Stefan Themerson was born in Płock in what was then the Russian Empire on 25 January 1910 and died in London on 6 September 1988....
, Rayner Heppenstall
Rayner Heppenstall
John Rayner Heppenstall was a British novelist, poet, diarist, and a BBC radio producer.-Early life:...
, Alan Burns and Eva Figes
Eva Figes
Eva Figes is an English author.Figes has written novels, literary criticism, studies of feminism, and vivid memoirs relating to her Berlin childhood and later experiences as a Jewish refugee from Hitler's Germany. She arrived in Britain in 1939 with her parents and a younger brother...
.
Quin came from a working-class family and was educated at the Convent of the Blessed Sacrament. She trained as a shorthand typist and worked in a solicitor's office, then at a publishing company when she moved to Soho and began writing novels. Her first, Berg, was published by John Calder
John Calder
John Mackenzie Calder is a Canadian and Scottish publisher who founded Calder Publishing in 1949.-Biography:John Calder was a friend of Samuel Beckett, becoming the main publisher of his prose-texts in Britain after the success of Waiting for Godot on the London stage in 1955-56...
in 1964. Visibly influenced by Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
and other female British modernists, as well as the French nouveau roman
Nouveau roman
The nouveau roman is a type of 1950s French novel that diverged from classical literary genres. Émile Henriot coined the title in an article in the popular French newspaper Le Monde on May 22, 1957 to describe certain writers who experimented with style in each novel, creating an essentially new...
, the powerful opening line - "A man called Berg, who changed his name to Greb, came to a seaside intending to kill his father..." - set the tone for a dark, psychological farce set in Quin's home town, which became the most critically acclaimed for her four novels.
Berg was followed by Three (1966), Passages (1969) and Tripticks (1972), in which Quin continued her formal experimentation, although without making the same critical impact as she had with her debut. She committed suicide in 1973, drowning herself by swimming out into the sea off Brighton's Palace Pier, weeks before the death of her contemporary B. S. Johnson.
Despite a complete re-print of her works by the Dalkey Archive Press, Quin's critical stock has rather declined since the Sixties, although contemporary non-mainstream authors such as Stewart Home
Stewart Home
Stewart Home is an English artist, filmmaker, writer, pamphleteer, art historian, and activist. He is best known for his novels such as the non-narrative 69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess , his re-imagining of the 1960s in Tainted Love , and earlier parodistic pulp fictions Pure Mania, Red...
and Lee Rourke
Lee Rourke
Lee Rourke is a writer and editor. He is the author of the short story collection Everyday and the novel The Canal published by Melville House Publishing...
have cited her work as influential.