On a day which began with Eve finding her children ‘half naked and purple with cold … crying on their bed’, she was visited by a detective. He was there to ask questions because ‘La Gauss’, the old woman who let rooms to the family, had accused Eve’s husband of stealing. Langley let him know that she wrote everything down, including all of La Gauss’s lies, and that she would one day make a book of it. He is surprised that she could write of her life in these parts, and waves ‘his hand toward the ferns and gorse on the hill outside’. Eve replied, ‘The tragedy of life down here would amaze you. I have everything down sympathetically, and someday it shall be published.’

And she was half right. Except for poems and other short works Langley’s ten books about her life in New Zealand were not published – until now. Lucy Frost has edited seven of the Mitchell Library manuscripts, reducing just under 3000 pages to 300 odd. And what a fabulous job she’s done. Frost has rectified the balance on Eve Langley which Joy L. Thwaite in her 1989 (in most ways excellent) biography The Importance of Being Eve Langley had weighted towards Eve the blighted genius, pathetic mad Eve, self-destructive Eve.