New Zealand literature
New Zealand literature is literature, both oral and written, produced by the people of New Zealand. It often deals with New Zealand themes, people or places, is written predominantly in New Zealand English, and features Māori culture and the use of the Māori language. Before the arrival and settlement of Europeans in New Zealand in the 19th century, Māori culture had a strong oral tradition. Early European settlers wrote about their experiences travelling and exploring New Zealand. The concept of a "New Zealand literature", as distinct from English literature, did not originate until the 20th century, when authors began exploring themes of landscape, isolation, and the emerging New Zealand national identity. Māori writers became more prominent in the latter half of the 20th century, and Māori language and culture have become an increasingly important part of New Zealand literature.
New Zealand literature has developed into a major part of modern New Zealand culture through a growing readership, financial support and publicity for writers through literary awards and fellowships, and the development of literary journals and magazines. Many New Zealand writers have obtained local and international renown over the years, including the short-story writers Katherine Mansfield, Frank Sargeson and Jacquie Sturm, novelists Janet Frame, Patricia Grace, Witi Ihimaera, Maurice Gee, Keri Hulme and Eleanor Catton, poets James K. Baxter, Fleur Adcock, Selina Tusitala Marsh and Hone Tuwhare, children's authors Margaret Mahy and Joy Cowley, historians Michael King and Judith Binney, and playwright Roger Hall.
History
Early works: pre-1870
n settlers began arriving in New Zealand in the late 13th or early 14th century, and became known as Māori developing a distinct culture, including oral myths, legends, poetry, songs, and prayers. Public speaking on the marae, a communal and sacred gathering place, was a particularly important part of Māori culture, and performance was a key part of the oral tradition; for example the karanga as part of the pōwhiri. The first book published in Māori language was in 1815 called A korao no New Zealand; or, the New Zealander's first book; being an attempt to compose some lessons for the instruction of the natives, printed in Sydney and written by Thomas Kendell in collaboration with Tuai, a young chief. Kendell, chief Hongi Hika, his nephew Waikato and linguist Samuel Lee developed a systematic written form of Māori language at Cambridge University in England in 1820. The first printing press arrived in New Zealand in 1834, and the first book printed in New Zealand was a Māori translation of a catechism in 1830 by William Yate, Ko Te Katikihama III.As European settlers arrived in the country, they collected many Māori oral stories and poems, which were translated into English and published, such as Polynesian Mythology by George Grey and Maori Fairy Tales by Johannes Andersen. These stories, such as those about the god Māui, became widely known among the non-Māori population of New Zealand as well as the Māori people. A foundation was also laid for future Māori literature through Māori newspapers, Māori histories and literature associated with Māori religions, such as the Rātana and Pai Mārire movements.
In the 19th century, most Pākehā New Zealanders saw themselves as British, and most publications were written by British authors for a British audience. While the first uses of the term "New Zealand literature" appeared in the 1860s, it was used in an aspirational sense; it took time for a distinctly New Zealand literature to develop. Early New Zealand books were generally narratives of visits and travel to New Zealand, such as A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 by Augustus Earle or Station Life in New Zealand by Mary Anne Barker, or scientific works such as The New Zealanders Illustrated, a rare book by natural history artist George French Angas and A History of the Birds of New Zealand by ornithologist Walter Buller. Early expressions of New Zealand identity in literature included, notably, Old New Zealand by "a Pakeha Maori" and Erewhon by Samuel Butler, which drew on the author's experiences of living in Canterbury for five years.
Maoriland movement: 1870–1914
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, New Zealand nationalism began to emerge, with Pākehā writers adopting Māori stories and mythology. The term "Maoriland", proposed and often used as an alternative name for New Zealand around this time, became the centre of a literary movement in which colonialist writers were inspired by and adopted Māori traditions and legends. They were encouraged by a widespread belief among settlers that the Māori were a dying race who would not survive contact with Europeans. Māori themselves were not creators or proponents of Maoriland work.For example, Thomas Bracken's book Musings in Maoriland included the poem "New Zealand Hymn", which later became the New Zealand national anthem under the title "God Defend New Zealand". Bracken and other poets such as Jessie Mackay and Arthur Henry Adams published poems about the Māori rangatira Te Rauparaha, while Alfred Grace, Jessie Weston, and others wrote fictional short stories and novels with Māori themes. New Zealand's fourth premier, Alfred Domett, wrote an epic poem, Ranolf and Amohia: A South-Sea Day-Dream, which was over 100,000 words long and described a romance between a shipwrecked European man and a Māori woman. In 1901, William Satchell launched a magazine called The Maorilander, and the leftwing labour journal The Maoriland Worker ran from 1910 to 1924.
Colonial romances were popular, for example the works of Louisa Baker, Ellen Ellis, Edith Searle Grossmann and others, as were books about the New Zealand Wars, typified by The Rebel Chief: A Romance of New Zealand, by Hume Nisbet. The popular English children's author G. A. Henty wrote Maori and Settler: A Tale of the New Zealand Wars. Lady Barker wrote two books about life in New Zealand; Station Life in New Zealand and Station Amusements in New Zealand, and her husband Frederick Broome wrote Poems from New Zealand.
Maoriland culture was artificial and grounded in romance rather than reality; as academics Jane Stafford and Mark Williams have said, "Maoriland signifies an effort to deny the real presence of Maori in New Zealand in favour of a mythologised or decorative presence". For this reason, the term is now seen as archaic and colonial. By the time of the First World War, apart from a few individuals such as James Cowan and Rudall Hayward, the movement had largely ended. The term has been adopted in current times by the Māoriland Film Festival, an organisation in Ōtaki that promotes indigenous storytelling on screen.
Early 20th century: 1914–1939
New Zealand literature continued to develop in the early 20th century, with notable writers including the poet Blanche Edith Baughan and novelist Jane Mander. New Zealand's most famous and influential writer in these years was the short-story writer Katherine Mansfield, who left New Zealand in 1908 and became one of the founders of literary modernism. She published three collections of stories in her lifetime: In a German Pension, Bliss and Other Stories and The Garden Party and Other Stories. She died in 1923, having "laid the foundations for a reputation that has gone on to grow and influence the development of New Zealand literature ever since". Another notable early writer was Ursula Bethell, whose first poetry collection was published in 1929; her poetry is ascribed by the Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Literature in English as having "a plainness and spareness which distinguishes it from the more ornamented verse the country had previously produced". Edith Joan Lyttleton, who wrote as G.B. Lancaster, was New Zealand's most commercially successful writer in this period, known for her epic colonial romances. Herbert Guthrie-Smith's Tutira: The Story of a New Zealand Sheep Station was New Zealand's first significant environmentalist publication, and remains a classic of ecological writing; Michael King said in 2003 that it is "still the best example of this genre."By the 1930s, New Zealand writing was starting to become established, assisted by the growth of universities and small publishers. Notable works included Man Alone by John Mulgan, an influential classic describing an isolated and alienated New Zealand man, influenced by the Great Depression, Show Down by Margaret Escott, and Frank Sargeson's short story collection, A Man and His Wife. It was common at this time for writers, like Mansfield, to leave New Zealand and establish careers overseas: including Mulgan, Dan Davin, who joined the Oxford University Press, and journalist Geoffrey Cox. Ngaio Marsh, who divided her time between New Zealand and England, wrote detective fiction in the 1930s and was known as one of the "Queens of Crime". After the Depression, foreign theatre companies stopped touring New Zealand, which led to the establishment of a thriving amateur dramatic scene and playwrights such as Isobel Andrews achieving success through competitions held by the New Zealand Branch of the British Drama League.
Writing was still largely a Pākehā endeavour at this time; many Māori were living in rural areas and recovering from the loss of their land and language, depopulation, and educational challenges. Te Rangi Hīroa and Āpirana Ngata wrote non-fiction and collected Māori songs and chants for publication, but there were limited opportunities for Māori in written literature.
Second World War and subsequent years: 1939–1960
From 1941, New Zealand writing gained an international audience through John Lehmann's periodical, Penguin New Writing. A local version was produced between 1942 and 1945. In 1945, Frank Sargeson edited an anthology of short stories by New Zealand writers, called Speaking for Ourselves, published by Caxton Press in New Zealand and by Reed & Harris in Melbourne, Australia. It received favourable reviews and writer Janet Frame later remembered how the stories in the collection "overwhelmed me by the fact of their belonging". In 1945, Allen Curnow published the anthology A Book of New Zealand Verse 1923–45, which marked the beginning of New Zealand literature's post-colonial and nationalist phase; Charles Brasch compared it to "a hard frost" that "killed off weeds, and promoted sound growth", and said it "set a standard not for poetry alone but for all the arts". Curnow and Brasch were just two of their generation of poets who began their careers with Caxton Press in the 1930s, and had a major influence on New Zealand poetry; others in the group were A. R. D. Fairburn, R. A. K. Mason and Denis Glover. Their poems can be contrasted with the work of South African-born Robin Hyde, who was excluded from this nationalist group, but whose novel The Godwits Fly was considered a New Zealand classic and continuously in print until the 1980s. In 1946, the New Zealand Literary Fund was established to provide subsidies and scholarships for local publishing and writing.It was in the 1950s that, as historian and poet Keith Sinclair said, "New Zealand intellect and imagination came alive". By the 1950s there were a wide range of outlets for local literature, such as the influential journal Landfall, and the bilingual quarterly Te Ao Hou / The New World, which from 1952 to 1975 was a vehicle for Māori writers. Janet Frame's first novel, Owls Do Cry, was published in 1957, and she became the most acclaimed and well-known New Zealand novelist of the 20th century. Her work often drew on her experiences in psychiatric hospitals and featured stylistic experimentation and exploration of social conditions.
A new generation of young New Zealand poets eventually emerged, in particular the "Wellington Group", which rejected the nationalism of Curnow and the other Caxton poets. They argued that New Zealand poets could now focus on universal themes, rather than the New Zealand identity. James K. Baxter was the most famous and prolific of these poets, and is widely regarded today as the definitive New Zealand poet. Baxter was a controversial figure who was known for his incorporation of European myths into his New Zealand poems, his interest in Māori culture and language, his religious experiences, and the establishment of a commune at Jerusalem, New Zealand. Other members of the Wellington Group included Alistair Te Ariki Campbell and Fleur Adcock; the scholars C. K. Stead and Vincent O'Sullivan also became well known for their poetry around this time.