White Topee is the sequel to Langley's autobiographical novel, The Pea-Pickers, which features in first-person narrative the adventures of two young women, 'Steve' and 'Blue', who seek excitement, love and 'poetry' in rural Gippsland.
About the author
Eve Langley (1 September 1904 – circa 1 June 1974), born Ethel Jane Langley, was an Australian-New Zealand novelist and poet. Her novels belong to a tradition of Australian women's writing that explores the conflict between being an artist and being a woman.
Langley first made a name for herself as a writer in New Zealand in the 1930s where, with Douglas Stewart, Gloria Rawlinson and Robin Hyde, her poetry was regularly published in magazines.[2] McLeod writes that she was "by the late thirties known in New Zealand literary circles as a promising poet". She continued to be published as a poet after her return to Australia, with her poems appearing in magazines like The Bulletin. One of her poems, "Native-born", regularly appears in Australian anthologies. Her journalism and short stories were also published in the 1930s and 1940s, and occasionally in the 1950s.
While Langley wrote consistently throughout her life, she had only two novels published in her lifetime. Ten other novels are held in the Mitchell Library in manuscript form. She wrote actively during her twenties – journals, letters, poems and stories – and some of these writings were used in her semi-autobiographical novel, The Pea-Pickers, which was published in 1942. The Pea-Pickers has been described as "a fanciful, autobiographical, first-person narrative of the adventures of two young women, 'Steve' and 'Blue' who seek excitement, love and 'poetry' in rural Gippsland". Her second novel, White Topee, is a sequel. Langley often referred to herself as 'Steve' in her journals.
This edition
- Format : 269 pages, Paperback
- Published: January 1, 1989 by Sirius
- ISBN: 9780207162831 (ISBN10: 0207162832)
- Language: English
