Forever to Remain is a 1948 novel by E. V. Timms, the first in his Great South Land Saga series of novels. He wrote it intending to be the first in a 12-part series of novels. It is set in West Australia, where Timms had spent some of his childhood. Timms had written a numner of historical novels but this was his first with an Australian setting.[1][2]
The initial print run was 20,000 copies, which was considered "colossal" in Australian publishing at the time.[3]
It was published in Britain as The Violent Years.
Plot
In 1831, a ship London Lass sails from London to Swan River settlement in Western Australia.
Reception
The Sunday Times said "It is grand writing, the author's facile pen building array of persons full of human emotions, some of them coarse, others refined, but all so artistically portrayed that they take on the cloak of reality in the reader's mind."[4]
The Brisbane Telegraph called it "a lusty piee of Australian historical novel writing."[5]
nouel writing
Radio adaptation
1949 serial
The novel was adapted for radio in 1949 as a serial where it was read out by an actor.[6]
1952 serial
The novel was adapted for radio again in 1952 as nine thirty-minute episodes for the ABC. This version was recorded in Adelaide.[7][8] Timms himself did the adaptation.[9] Stafford Dyson directed.[10]
^"BOOK REVIEWS". Sunday Times (Perth). No. 2629. Western Australia. 11 July 1948. p. 3 (Sunday Times MAGAZINE). Retrieved 10 March 2024 – via National Library of Australia.
^"Author to have 2 serials running". The Sun. No. 13, 193. New South Wales, Australia. 13 May 1952. p. 20 (LATE FINAL EXTRA). Retrieved 10 March 2024 – via National Library of Australia.
^"Two E. V. Timms Novels for Radio", ABC Weekly, 14 (20 (17 May 1952)), Sydney: ABC, nla.obj-1663808466, retrieved 10 March 2024 – via Trove