The Precarious Writing of Ann Quin

Nonia Williams

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This is the first full scholarly appraisal of the distinctive British experimental writer, Ann Quin.
  • Provides a much needed full and in-depth critical appraisal of Ann Quin.
  • Recuperates this important but neglected British experimental woman writer.
  • Written by the world expert in the field.
  • Grounded in original archival research that illuminates our understanding of Quin’s life and work.
  • Responds to and participates in burgeoning critical and popular interest in Quin.
  • Enriches and extends the wider scholarly reappraisal of experimental writing of the period.

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.

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

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, The College of New Jersey
Nonia Williams is a Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature at the University of 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).

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