Helen Zenna Smith (1888–1985)
Author of Not So Quiet: Stepdaughters of War
About the Author
Series
Works by Helen Zenna Smith
Two Women in His House 1 copy
The Wrong Mrs. Sylvester 1 copy
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Price Dabelstein Fletcher Attiwill, Eva Grace
- Other names
- Price, Evadne
Smith, Helen Zenna
Price, Eva Grace (birth name) - Birthdate
- 1888-08-28
- Date of death
- 1985-04-17
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- Australia
UK - Birthplace
- Merewether, New South Wales, Australia
- Place of death
- Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
- Places of residence
- London, England, UK
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia - Education
- Junction School, Merewether, New South Wales, Australia
Maitland High School
Largs Public School - Occupations
- actor
journalist
novelist - Relationships
- Attiwill, Kenneth (husband)
- Organizations
- Romantic Novelists' Association
- Short biography
- Eva Grace Price was born on 28 August 1888 in Merewether, New South Wales, Australia, of British descen. Her father, Jonathan Dixon Price, was an Australian miner. Fiction abounds in the autobiographical details supplied by own Evadne Price. She claimed that she lied about her age, when her father died, and she went on stage to support herself and to travel alone to England. She said that she was born on 1896 at sea, on an ocean liner during a travel to Australia, or later that she was born on 1901 in Sussex, England.
On 28 August 1909 in Sydney, she married Henry A. Dabelstein, a German-born actor. After moved to England to acting, she decided reinventing herself, changing her name to more evocative "Evadne". On 1920 in London, she married Charles A. Fletcher, and changed her acting career by journalism, writing a column for the Sunday Chronicle and other newspapers. Her husband was Captain in the 3rd Devonshire Regiment, and died on 1924 in Sudan.
On 1928, she started to writing books, children's stories and romance novels, under the pseudonym Helen Zenna Smith, she also wrote two novelized books, about ambulance drivers in World War I. On 1939 in Kent, she married Kenneth Andrew Attiwill, an Australian writer. During World War II, she was the war correspondent for The People from 1943, covering the Allied invasion and all of the major war stories through the Nuremberg Trials. Her husband was a POW in Japan, and was presumed dead for two years.
Her career as novelist took her into playwriting, radio scriptwriting and screenwriting. She also had a parallel career as a night astrologer during the early years of British television. When she and her husband retired to their native Australia in 1976, she wrote the monthly horoscope column for Australian Vogue. She also appeared weekly on the ITV Central evening news magazine show with a 5 minute astrological. Evadne Price died on 17 April 1985 in Sydney, Australia at 96. She had an unfinished autobiography that she named "Mother Painted Nude".
Members
Reviews
A remarkable book that describes the horrors of war: it contains so much that is real and cruel and pointless. In the backdrop are those back at home flag-waving and promoting the war effort. Anyone reading this book will see the futility of war.
The best anti-war novel I have read. It's not trying to be a masterpiece through poetic language and philosophy about war; instead, it's a story told through the eyes of a 21 year old ambulance driver who quickly learns about the realities of war. The writing is simple, but the story - and the emotions it brings out - is dark and haunting.
After reading Helen Zenna Smith’s powerful answer to Erich Maria Remarque’s classic novel, All Quiet on the Western Front, I am sitting in stunned silence. This author, who is fairly obscure and unread, wrote with such passion about the conditions under which the Volunteer Aide Detachment (VAD) ambulance drivers worked, that it’s hard to believe she didn’t work in that capacity herself. Instead, she relied on the diaries of Winifred Young, who did serve in France.
Helen Smith, the novel’s protagonist, comes from an upper-class English family and is expected to do her part in the war. At her mother’s urging, she volunteers to be an ambulance driver and is assigned to live with five other like-minded women. The bulk of the book features the experiences of these young women. Their average age is twenty-one.
As the story unfolds, the horror of these experiences is brought to light in glaring detail. Their parents, who paid for their passage, their uniforms and a steady stream of supplies including carbolic body belts to keep the lice at bay, seem to be quite willing to sacrifice their daughters to this very dangerous job. As the story opens, it’s plain that the lice are no small obstacle. They are all covered with the little red bites and succumb to the endless scratching as they lay in their “flea bags” (sleeping bags) and try to sleep. I say try because they get very little chance to experience the luxury of the dreamless, uninterrupted sleep that we all hope for. They usually spend their nights responding to the blare of the Commandant’s whistle, notifying them that they need to race to their ambulances and drive to the front to pick up the maimed bodies of the latest victims of this bloody war. It’s a grueling life, highlighted by a vindictive leader, near-starvation rations, harrowing races through snow and darkness in ambulances they have to maintain themselves and a shocking realization of what these women tolerated to do their jobs.
There is one part of the story where, in her mind, Helen is inviting her mother and a co-worker who both recruit young women for the VAD and yet have no idea what is happening in France, to come along with her in her ambulance. It is the most emotionally draining passage I’ve ever read. Here’s a small part of it:
”See the stretcher bearers lifting the trays one by one, slotting them deftly into my ambulance. Out of the way quickly, Mother and Mrs. Evans-Mawnington---lift your silken skirts aside…a man is spewing blood, the moving has upset him, finished him…He will die on the way to the hospital if he doesn’t die before the ambulance is loaded. I know…All this is old history to me. Sorry this has happened. It isn’t pretty to see a hero spewing up his life’s blood in public, is it? Much more romantic to see him in the picture papers being awarded the V.C., even if he is minus a limb or two. A most unfortunate occurrence!” (Page 91)
The book was eye-opening in its bluntness, heart-breaking in its passionate espousal for the anti-war movement and brave in exposing the upper class society for their relentless recruiting of unsuspecting and naïve young people. Very highly recommended.… (more)
Helen Smith, the novel’s protagonist, comes from an upper-class English family and is expected to do her part in the war. At her mother’s urging, she volunteers to be an ambulance driver and is assigned to live with five other like-minded women. The bulk of the book features the experiences of these young women. Their average age is twenty-one.
As the story unfolds, the horror of these experiences is brought to light in glaring detail. Their parents, who paid for their passage, their uniforms and a steady stream of supplies including carbolic body belts to keep the lice at bay, seem to be quite willing to sacrifice their daughters to this very dangerous job. As the story opens, it’s plain that the lice are no small obstacle. They are all covered with the little red bites and succumb to the endless scratching as they lay in their “flea bags” (sleeping bags) and try to sleep. I say try because they get very little chance to experience the luxury of the dreamless, uninterrupted sleep that we all hope for. They usually spend their nights responding to the blare of the Commandant’s whistle, notifying them that they need to race to their ambulances and drive to the front to pick up the maimed bodies of the latest victims of this bloody war. It’s a grueling life, highlighted by a vindictive leader, near-starvation rations, harrowing races through snow and darkness in ambulances they have to maintain themselves and a shocking realization of what these women tolerated to do their jobs.
There is one part of the story where, in her mind, Helen is inviting her mother and a co-worker who both recruit young women for the VAD and yet have no idea what is happening in France, to come along with her in her ambulance. It is the most emotionally draining passage I’ve ever read. Here’s a small part of it:
”See the stretcher bearers lifting the trays one by one, slotting them deftly into my ambulance. Out of the way quickly, Mother and Mrs. Evans-Mawnington---lift your silken skirts aside…a man is spewing blood, the moving has upset him, finished him…He will die on the way to the hospital if he doesn’t die before the ambulance is loaded. I know…All this is old history to me. Sorry this has happened. It isn’t pretty to see a hero spewing up his life’s blood in public, is it? Much more romantic to see him in the picture papers being awarded the V.C., even if he is minus a limb or two. A most unfortunate occurrence!” (Page 91)
The book was eye-opening in its bluntness, heart-breaking in its passionate espousal for the anti-war movement and brave in exposing the upper class society for their relentless recruiting of unsuspecting and naïve young people. Very highly recommended.… (more)
8 
brenzi | 11 other reviews | Aug 12, 2014 |
brenzi | 11 other reviews | Aug 12, 2014 | Lists
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Statistics
- Works
- 38
- Also by
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- Members
- 292
- Popularity
- #80,152
- Rating
- 3.7
- Reviews
- 13
- ISBNs
- 7
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- Favorited
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In this division, drawn exclusively from the "better" classes, the narrator constantly contrasts her protected, genteel upbringing with the brutality of this world; she reads the proud letters from her mother, vaunting her daughter's noble self sacrifice (and virtue signalling to all her middle class friends) with the actual experience..which she can never tell her. And wonders how her cohorts will fit back into society, as they return no longer innocent and chaste but brutalized and all-knowing...
Bombs, inedible food, exhaustion, horrendous injuries, a leaving behind of Edwardian morals, a b**ch of a cxommander...and death, constantly.
Very evocative writing.… (more)