(March 17th, 1936 — August 27th, 1973)

Ann Quin was a British writer known for her avant-garde experimental style of writing.

Quin was born in Brighton. Her father was an opera singer, who left the family, and she was raised by her mother alone. In her school years, she was educated at a Roman Catholic convent school until the age of 17.

Trained as a typist, she immediately began work at solicitor’s office, and then moved on to a publishing house. At the publisher’s, she was a manuscript reader and secretary to the foreign publishing rights manager. After this, she moved to Soho and began writing novels.

In the year before she wrote her first novel, she had an affair with a famous fascist author, Henry Williamson.

In 1966, Berg was published and became the most critically acclaimed of her novels. In the next eight years, she wrote four novels and several unpublished shorter works and fragments. However, Quin had been suffering from bouts of mental illness for some time and had undergone unsuccessful electro-shock therapy. At least one nervous breakdown was documented.

In 1973, she drowned herself off of Brighton’s Palace Pier. For some time after her death, her work fell into obscurity, despite being an influence on many authors.