Eve Langley - Career

Career

Langley first made a name for herself as a writer in New Zealand in the 1930s where, with Douglas Stewart, Gloria Rawlinson and Robyn Hyde, her poetry was regularly published in magazines. 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.