by Elizabeth Lhuede

A post in our 2025 series featuring works published in 1935 (or by authors who died in 1935).

Last year my colleague, Whispering Gums (WG), unravelled the mystery of “J. M. Stevens”. Stevens turned out to be not one person, but two, sisters Jane Marianne and Joan Marguerite. The less prolific younger sister Joan had, unhelpfully for the archivist, married a John Stevens in 1920. Her sister Jane was remembered as a “writer of short stories and nature studies”, and WG featured her story, “The Butterfly Symphony”. This year, we turn to Joan.

Joan Marguerite Stevens was born in January 1887 into a Queensland literary family, the head of which, her father Ernest James Stevens, was both managing director of the Brisbane Courier and a career politician. Her mother was Mrs Ada Constance Stevens, of the Jacksons, a pioneering Victorian pastoral family. Joan was one of five girls, including her sister Jane Marianne, mentioned above, and Maymie Ada Hamlyn-Harris, also a writer. Hamlyn-Harris was convenor of the Lyceum Club and published several books of verse. In 1920 Joan married John F Stevens and the couple had one daughter and three sons.

According to her obituary, Joan was an invalid for many years before her death in 1944 at the age of 57. Compared to her sister Jane’s output, hers was small. AustLit lists only four of her works: a novel, This Game of Murder, published posthumously in 1944, two short stories published in the 1920s, and a poem, “Evening at Scarborough” (1935). Apparently Joan had a second novel accepted for publication, but there’s no sign of it having appeared in print. The fact that she shared initials with her more-widely published sister Jane makes tracing further output difficult, but it would be wonderful if a manuscript of the second novel turned up one day.

Her modest poem, “Evening at Scarborough”, published in 1935, is a charming evocation of nature.

~

Evening at Scarborough

The sleepy sun is drowsing in the West.
And evening draws her veils across the sky—
A trail of wild sea birds intent on rest.
Across the wrinkled sea swift homeward fly.

The clustered tents like mushrooms on the shore,
Are gay with sounds of city folk set free;
Awhile for them the strident urban roar
Is lost amid the ripple of the sea.

Now darkness comes moth-winged among the trees;
Primroses glow dew-drenched amid the grass;
A thousand insect voices on the breeze—
Hush! Lady Night is now about to pass.

— Joan M. Stevens.

~

References
“About people” [brief review of This Game of Murder], The Telegraph, 17 Aug 1944: 5. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/189865082
“Death of Mrs J. Stevens” [obituary], Telegraph, 31 May 1944: 4. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/191527246
Joan Marguerite Stevens: AustLit entry 28221652.
“Queensland Notes” [wedding notice], The Australasian, 7 Feb 1920: 42. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/140235904 

Works
Stevens, Joan M. “An Urgent Call”, The Daily Mail, 5 Apr 1925: 8. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/218255096
— “Evening at Scarborough” [poem], Sunday Mail, 20 Jan 1935: 22. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/97843772
— “Glorious Mementoes” [correspondence], The Australian Women’s Weekly, 25 Apr 1936: 19. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/46463761?
— “Love and a Licence”, Sunday Mail, 6 Nov 1927: 16. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/99925482
— “Our Paper Man”, The Daily Mail, 8 Mar 1925: 8.  https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/219078452
— This Game of Murder. (1944). Sydney: Condor Publications. [available at State Library of NSW]

Elizabeth Lhuede has a PhD in Australian Poetry from Macquarie University. In 2012, she instigated the Australian Women Writers Challenge as a contribution to overcoming gender bias in the reviewing of works by Australian women. More recently she has focused on bringing to light the life and works of forgotten Australian women writers.