Ann Quin (1936 – 1973) was a British writer noted for her experimental style. She published four novels in her lifetime: Berg (1964), Three (1966), Passages (1969), and Tripticks (1972). She also wrote short stories and fragments (as well as memoir, poetry, and radio and television plays).
She’s been called “a rare breed in British writing: experimental, working class and a woman.” She grew up going to a parochial school, but left her home and school at the age of 17. In “Leaving School – XI,” a memoir essay, she describes her “sense of sin” and “great lust to find out” that took her to London, where she worked as a secretary by day and wrote novels by night.
Her first novel, Berg, is her best known and was, some say, influenced by Virginia Woolf, Anna Kavan, and other British modernists, as well as the French nouveau roman. Its opening line, “A man called Berg, who changed his name to Greb, came to a seaside town intending to kill his father...” set the tone for a dark, psychological farce set in an unnamed seaside town that clearly resembles Brighton.
According to published accounts, she suffered from mental illness and was treated with electro-shock therapy. According to a police report, a witness saw her undress and walk into the water off the beach at Brighton in the UK one evening in August of 1973. Her body was found in the water off Shoreham the next day.
Portrait by Oswald Jones/Bridgeman
