A NEW collection of Ann Quin’s short stories is published this week, 45 years after she committed suicide. EDWIN GILSON learns about the life of the writer and how her upbringing in Brighton inspired her bold, experimental fiction

IT WAS an August morning on Brighton beach, 1973, and one of the most talented British writers of her generation was about to take her life.

Ann Quin had suffered from debilitating bouts of mental disturbance since she was a child, but, in the months before her suicide, she had much to be positive about.

While she was never a household name, her experimental book Berg – set in a fictional seaside town closely resembling Brighton – had been well-received in literary circles and she was about to begin a creative writing course at the University of East Anglia. Mental health has no face, however, and beneath it all Quin was in pain more than anyone could have known.

“Quin had severe episodes of mental distress intermittently throughout her life, even before she began her writing career,” says Jennifer Hodgson, an academic and critic who has edited a new collection of the author’s work. The Unmapped Country: Stories and Fragments is released on Friday.

“The episodes were mostly managed but they seemed to become more painful as she got older,” says Hodgson. However, Quin was only a relatively young 37 when she died.

Hodgson spent seven years tracking down Quin’s lost stories, getting in touch with her ex-boyfriends and even contacting old friends the author had lived with in a New Mexican commune. That should give you a hint of Quin’s desire for exploration – she also spent time travelling around California, New York and Europe, which inspired her writing.

While Quin underwent courses of electroconvulsive therapy and periods in psychiatric hospitals to treat her mental illness, Hodgson’s research led her to believe the writer was generally in a better place before that tragic August morning. “When I read her old letters, it seemed like her life towards the end was on an upswing,” she says. “There was no cause and effect there.”

Quin was born into a working-class, religious family in Brighton in 1936. Her mother was of Scottish descent and her father, an opera singer, of Irish. As a young girl was educated at the Convent of the Blessed Sacrament, an experience she would later document in her short story Leav ing School – XI, included in Hodgson’s collection.

She expresses scepticism about the perceived black and white nature of religion, writing that “limbo always made more sense”. Later, she talks about trying to conjure up the devil on the Downs. The sense of disconnection and not belonging would come to characterise her writing.

Hodgson says that Quin was “obsessed with the isolation of human beings” and some of the stories in The Unmapped Country are almost painful to read. “She had a sense of never quite fitting in,” adds Hodgson. “There was a feeling of exile from her life [in Brighton] but then when she was travelling she had a longing and nostalgia for England. Nowhere ever really felt like home for her.”

Having said that, Hodgson believes that something about Brighton, and the seaside in general, suited Quin’s restless character. She spent a lot of time in the public library and, In Leaving School – XI, writes fondly of trips to the Theatre Royal Brighton. She also recalls writing a sonnet in her youth called The Lost Seagull – “about gulls being damned souls”. Clearly, the city captured her imagination.

“The idea of the seaside being a place where inhibitions fall away was huge for Quin,” says Hodgson. “She was always trying to live outside of normal limits and capture that in her writing, and, in the 1950s and 60s, the seaside was the place to do that.

“In some ways it’s difficult to imagine her coming from anywhere else but the seaside.” Hodgson points to Brighton Rock as an example of how the freedom to be found in Brighton can turn unsavoury, and the same was true of Quin’s vision of the city.

Her novel Berg, published in 1964, is a dark and sometimes disturbing story that leans heavily on the imagery of Brighton. “People have said that the unnamed city of Brighton is almost a character in the novel,” says Hodgson. “In literature, seasides are often seen as places where violent and gruesome things happen. Berg has lots of those seaside boarding houses where dodgy characters do dodgy deals.”

Quin worked as a secretary while writing Berg. She took the same role at the Royal Academy of Art in London at one point, but was always drawn back to the coast (if not Brighton then Cornwall, where she also stayed for a period).  Hodgson believes Quin would have received more acclaim in her own time if her work was less experimental.

“She was working in ways that were more interesting than the mainstream,” she says. “English novels are expected to do certain things and there has been a historic hostility towards experimentalism.”

There are obvious parallels between Quin and Virginia Woolf and not just that both writers committed suicide in Sussex. They shared a desire to test the limits of literature – and their own creativity – with their bold fiction. That in mind, why has Woolf become a national treasure and Quin been overlooked up to now?

“Quin was pretty weird and out there,” says Hodgson. “Someone like Woolf can fit into a national tradition whereas Quin was taking influence from the States and the continent. She died young and there was nobody around to protect her legacy. She was just forgotten about.”

It is hugely gratifying for Hodgson, then, that she has played such a big role in reviving interest in Quin. “I never actually thought the book would come out because it took so long and it was difficult to find the stories” she says. “But I’m delighted that it is.”

Quin may not yet have the profile of the more famous writers to have lived in Brighton. But, in a city full of blue plaques, should she join the likes of Charles Dickens, Winston Churchill and ABBA to be commemorated for her contribution to Brighton culture? Unsurprisingly, Hodgson is very keen on the idea.

“Totally! She’s a really significant figure and a rare thing – an outward-looking, working-class, freewheeling female writer. You should definitely have a plaque for her.”

The Unmapped Country: Stories and Fragments by Ann Quin and edited by Jennifer Hodgson is released on Friday, published by And Other Stories. It will be available in all good bookstores or by visiting andotherstories.org