The Precarious Writing of Ann Quin

by Nonia Williams

Overview

Ann Quin's innovative, versatile oeuvre made a vital contribution to 1960s and '70s British experimental writing. While contemporaries praised her vivid and energetic prose, a sustained and in-depth study of Quin has so far been absent from scholarly reassessment of this literary era. As the first comprehensive appraisal of her writing and life, this book redresses that critical neglect, aims to recuperate Quin as a key female experimental writer of the twentieth century, shows how the precarious possibility of her writing is its essential attribute, and demonstrates the lasting importance of her work. Its combination of scholarly analysis and archival expertise investigates her life, writing and forms of experimentation to convey precisely what is striking and significant about Quin.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474464055
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	08/01/2025
Edition description:	73,316
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Nonia Williams is a Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature at the Universityof East Anglia. Recent publications include ‘(Re)turning to Quin: An Introduction’ in Women: A Cultural Review (2022); ‘“Designing its Own Shadow”: tracing Ann Quin’s reiterative experimental processes’ (2021); ‘About/Of Madness: Ann Quin's The Unmapped Country’ in Textual Practice (2020) and British Avant-Garde Fiction of the 1960s (EUP, 2019).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; Vignette: Quin’s dark archive; Introduction: Ways in to Quin; Vignette: A bedsit room of her own; 1. Berg: Shifting Perspectives, Sticky Details; Vignette: That same sea; 2. Three: A Collage of Possibilities; Vignette: ‘Have you tried it with three?’; 3. Passages: Unstable Forms of Desire; Vignette: Moving onwards; 4. Tripticks: Impoverished Style as Cultural Critique; Vignette: Breakdown, breakthrough; 5. The Unmapped Country: Unravelling Stereotypes of Madness; Afterword: Where next?; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

Nonia Williams’ compelling argument secures Ann Quin’s place among the pantheon of late 20th century experimental writers, particularly women writers. Lucidly written and organized, impeccably researched, with the advantage of Williams’ access to Quin’s letters, this book will interest scholars and students of modernism, feminism, women writers, and experimental literature.

Ellen Friedman