Evadne Price
| Eva Grace Price Dabelstein Fletcher Attiwill | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | Eva Grace Price 28 August 1888 Merewether, New South Wales, Australia |
| Died | 17 April 1985 (aged 96) Sydney, Australia |
| Pen name | Evadne Price, Helen Zenna Smith |
| Occupation | actress, writer |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Citizenship | British |
| Period | 1908-1985 |
| Genre | Children's, Romance |
| Notable works | Not So Quiet: Stepdaughters of War |
| Spouse | 1: Henry A. Dabelstein (1909-19??) 2: Charles A. Fletcher (1920-1924) 3: Kenneth Andrew Attiwill (1939-1992) |
Evadne Price, née Eva Grace Price (28 August 1888 – 17 April 1985), was an Australian-British writer, actress, astrologer and media personality. She also wrote under the pseudonym Helen Zenna Smith.
She is now best remembered for her World War I novel Not So Quiet (published in America as Stepdaughters of War) which adapts the style of Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front to depict the experiences of British female ambulance drivers. During her lifetime she was known for her many romance novels, some of which were serialised in national newspapers, as well as for her children's books starring the popular character Jane Turpin. In the nineteen-fifties, she became a regular performer on television, as a storyteller and as an astrologer. For twenty-five years she published a monthly astrology column in SHE magazine.
Evadne Price's account of her own early life is full of contradictions. There is considerable evidence that she was born Eva Grace Price on 28 August 1888 in Merewether, New South Wales, Australia (NSW Registry of BDM cert. no. 1888/032162). In "SHE Stargazes" Evadne gives her birth date as 28 August (p. 82). Evadne's claim to have British parents is also unreliable, as BDM records show that they were both born in NSW, Australia. Her father, Jonathan Dixon Price, was a miner. He died in 1921, not, as Evadne claimed, during her teens.
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography follows the Times obituarist in accepting her own claim that she was born at sea in 1896 but there is no birth certificate to support this, and she can not be found in the 1901 or 1911 British census listings.
The article "Newcastle Girl is Film Writer" (Newcastle Morning Herald, 20 June 1939, p. 6) reports that Evadne Price/Helen Zenna Smith was born in Merewether and attended the Junction School in Merewether.
In July 1902 Eva Price obtained a bursary at the Maitland High School and in 1903 she attended the Largs Public School near Maitland. She performed in the end-of-year school concerts at these establishments, giving recitations (as reported in the Maitland Daily Mercury).
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