The Years That The Locust Hath Eaten
by
Marjorie Quinn
Marjorie
Quinn was one of the
founding members of the Fellowship of Australian Writers (FAW), which was
formed in 1928. Her contact with the leading lights of Australian literature
came through her uncle, the well known poet Roderic Quinn,
and her father, P E Quinn, who was a journalist, author and NSW parliamentarian in
the early days after Federation.
She
wrote poetry and prose in Australia, San Francisco and Hollywood for the next
forty years, and in the 1960s, crippled by arthritis, embarked on her memoirs,
titled The Years That
The Locust Hath Eaten, with funding from a Commonwealth Literary Fund
grant. After decades languishing as an unpublished manuscript, it will be
available in December 2011 from Australian Scholarly Publishing. Purchase a copy here.
The
memoirs reveal a new insight into the era of Henry Lawson, Mary Gilmore, Norman Lindsay
and Miles
Franklin.
Read some samples of Marjorie Quinn's work and stories from the Memoirs.
The previously unknown memoirs of Marjorie Quinn were found by her family in a back shed
clean up after the death of MarjorieÕs cousin Noreen Quinn, who meticulously
transcribed her dictation and typed up a carbon copied manuscript. Deborah McMahon, and her sister Kathryn Berryman found the
manuscript and took on the project of restoring, editing and publishing this
important chronicle of Australian literary history.
Deborah and Kathryn (pictured) write in the Foreword to
the book:
É
Now, it is a precious project to us.
Our mother Eileen Berman, is the youngest and
last living member from that generation of Irish Australians. She is now 88 years old and we
had often been told as children some of the stories that we have seen come to
life in MarjorieÕs manuscript. It
is all the more important to us because the manuscript was found accidentally
and rescued from a pile of boxes earmarked for the ÔTip,Õ when the house of our
Aunts was being cleared out. The
papers were stored at the back of the garage in old water-damaged cardboard
boxes. This manuscript was begging
to be published!
The FAW newsletter, Writers Voice, recently
reviewed the Memoirs, which will be officially launched in December 2011.
Cover Art
