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. 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 (1855) by George Grey and Maori Fairy Tales (1908) 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.

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 (1832) by Augustus Earle or Station Life in New Zealand (1870) by Mary Anne Barker, or scientific works such as The New Zealanders Illustrated, a rare book by natural history artist George French Angas (1847) and A History of the Birds of New Zealand (1872) by ornithologist Walter Buller. Early expressions of New Zealand identity in literature included, notably, Old New Zealand by "a Pakeha Maori" (Frederick Edward Maning) and Erewhon by Samuel Butler, which drew on the author's experiences of living in Canterbury for five years. They were encouraged by a widespread belief among settlers that the Māori were a dying race who would not survive contact with Europeans.

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 (1896), by Hume Nisbet. The popular English children's author G. A. Henty wrote Maori and Settler: A Tale of the New Zealand Wars (1890). Lady Barker wrote two books about life in New Zealand; Station Life in New Zealand (1870) and Station Amusements in New Zealand (1873), and her husband Frederick Broome wrote Poems from New Zealand (1868).

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.

Early 20th century: 1914–1939

thumb|[[Katherine Mansfield|left|upright]]

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 (1911), Bliss and Other Stories (1920) and The Garden Party and Other Stories (1922). She died in 1923, having (in the words of C. K. Stead) "laid the foundations for a reputation that has gone on to grow and influence the development of New Zealand literature ever since". 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 (1921) 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. 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. 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; 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 (1938) 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".

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. 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. In 1964, Hone Tuwhare, the first Māori poet to be distinguished for English poetry, published his first book, No Ordinary Sun, and in 1966 Jacquie Sturm became the first Māori writer to appear in a major anthology of New Zealand short stories. Witi Ihimaera published a collection of short stories (Pounamu, Pounamu) in 1972, followed by his first novel Tangi in 1973. His later novel Whale Rider (1987) was adapted into an internationally successful film in 2002. Grace was the first Māori woman writer to publish a short story collection (Waiariki) in 1975 and has since received international awards and acclaim for her books for adults and children.

thumb|227x227px|[[Karlo Mila MNZM]]

A 1985 article published in the literary journal Landfall by Miriama Evans noted recognised but "largely unpublished" Māori writers: Ani Hona (Te Aniwa Bisch) who received a Literary Fund grant in 1977, Rowley Habib who held the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship in 1984, Bub Bridger who received a grant to attend the First International Feminist Book Fair (London) in 1984, and Bruce Stewart, who received grants from the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to represent New Zealand at The Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies Conference in Fiji in 1985. The Māori owned independent publisher Huia Publishers was established in 1991 by Robyn Bargh to platform Māori writers and perspectives.

Māori literature is closely connected to Pasifika literature. Notable Pasifika (Pacific Islander) writers with connections to New Zealand include Albert Wendt, Alistair Te Ariki Campbell, Karlo Mila, John Pule, Lani Wendt Young, Courtney Sina Meredith, Oscar Kightley and Selina Tusitala Marsh. Wendt is known for Sons for the Return Home (1973), which describes the experiences of a young Samoan man in New Zealand, and his later novels and short-story collections have formed the foundations for a Pasifika literature in English. In the 1960s, two young novelists, Maurice Shadbolt and Maurice Gee, both became well known for their traditional, socially realistic novels featuring New Zealand politics and history. The feminist movement in the 1970s and 1980s was the context for many women writers who emerged in that period, including Fiona Kidman, Marilyn Duckworth and Barbara Anderson, who wrote works exploring and challenging gender roles.

thumb|Crime novelist [[Paul Cleave is one of New Zealand's most successful crime writers]]

New Zealand fiction has grown exponentially since the mid-1970s, due to a growing readership locally and internationally, creative writing courses such as the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University of Wellington, and financial support through literary awards and scholarships. Internationally successful New Zealand writers include Elizabeth Knox, known for The Vintner's Luck (1998) and her other diverse fiction, Emily Perkins, Fiona Farrell, Damien Wilkins, Nigel Cox and crime novelist Paul Cleave.

Non-fiction

New Zealand has a significant non-fiction tradition, with natural history, colonisation, Māori/Pākehā relations, childhood and identity being recurring themes. Important autobiographical works by New Zealand writers include trilogies by Frank Sargeson in the 1970s (Once is Enough, More than Enough and Never Enough!), Janet Frame in the 1980s (To the Is-land, An Angel at my Table and The Envoy from Mirror City), and C. K. Stead's two-part series South-west of Eden (2010) and You Have a Lot to Lose (2020).

Much of New Zealand's significant non-fiction is historical in nature. James Belich is known for his writing on the New Zealand Wars. Judith Binney is known for her biography of Te Kooti, Redemption Songs (1995) and her history of Tūhoe, Encircled Lands (2009). Linda Tuhiwai Smith's 1999 academic work Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples has been an important contribution to Māori and indigenous research.

Historian Michael King began his career writing biographies about notable Māori people, including biographies of Te Puea Hērangi (1977) and Whina Cooper (1983). In the mid-1980s, aware of the importance of allowing Māori voices to speak, he wrote about what it meant to be a non-Māori New Zealander in Being Pākehā (1985), and published biographies of Frank Sargeson (1995) and Janet Frame (2000).

Recent essay collections by Asian New Zealand writers include All Who Live on Islands (2019) by Rose Lu and Small Bodies of Water (2021) by Nina Mingya Powles.

Children's and young adult literature

thumb|[[Margaret Mahy and her winning book The Moon & Farmer McPhee at the 2011 New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards|left|upright]]

Margaret Mahy and Joy Cowley both had their first children's books published in 1969. Both became prolific and beloved authors, and have made a significant contribution to New Zealand children's literature. Mahy won the Carnegie Medal twice in the 1980s and in 2001 she won the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the world's most prestigious children's literature award. Cowley is internationally known for her children's educational books for children learning to read, as well as for her picture books, children's fiction, and young adult novels. Other well-known authors for young children include Lynley Dodd (known for her picture books featuring small dog Hairy Maclary), Patricia Grace, Kāterina Mataira (a leading Māori language author), Gavin Bishop (known particularly for illustration) and Peter Gossage (known for his picture book retellings of Māori myths and legends). The 1970s and 1980s saw a shift away from New Zealand nationalism and the rise of confident young poets, often influenced by American writing and counterculture and writing about personal relationships; poets included Ian Wedde, Bill Manhire, Cilla McQueen, Elizabeth Smither, Sam Hunt and Murray Edmond. Cilla McQueen and Hunt are both well known for their performance poetry. In 1985, Ian Wedde and Harvey McQueen edited and published a new edition of The Penguin Book of New Zealand Verse, which included poetry in Māori, a first for a New Zealand poetry anthology. Since then, New Zealand poetry has become more diverse and more difficult to characterise by theme.

thumb|238x238px|[[Selina Tusitala Marsh ONZM]]

The National Library of New Zealand appoints a New Zealand Poet Laureate. Recent laureates include Selina Tusitala Marsh (2017–2019), David Eggleton (2019–2022) and Chris Tse (2022–2025). Other notable contemporary poets include Robert Sullivan, known for his first collection Jazz Waiata (1990) and more recent work including the collection Shout Ha! to the Sky (2010), Hera Lindsay Bird, known for her popular autobiographical and provocative work, and Karlo Mila, whose work addresses both personal and political issues such as concerns of identity, migration, and community, some of which is included in the collections Dream Fish Floating (2006) and Goddess Muscle (2020).

Playwriting

The 1960s saw significant developments in New Zealand playwriting, and the country's first professional theatre, the Downstage Theatre, opened in Wellington in 1964. Playmarket was also founded in 1973 to represent and market New Zealand playwrights and their work. Bruce Mason was the country's first professional playwright. His one-person show The End of the Golden Weather (1962), about a boy's loss of innocence in Depression-era New Zealand, was performed widely throughout New Zealand, and he explored Māori themes and the disintegration of Māori identity in The Pohutakawa Tree (1960) and Awatea (1969). New Zealand also has a tradition of independent theatre with companies creating original plays and collective works, including the Red Mole theatre group (1970s–2002), Barbarian Productions in Wellington (led by Jo Randerson), the Christchurch Free Theatre, the work of poet Murray Edmond with the Living Theatre Troupe, and the early work of Paul Maunder with the Amamus Theatre.

Literary awards

In the early 20th century, literary competitions in New Zealand were hosted by newspapers and magazines, and the university colleges hosted some literary prizes such as the Macmillan Brown Prize. In the 1940s the government-run New Zealand Literary Fund began to offer state-sponsored literary prizes in a wide range of genres. The first private literary award was the biennial Katherine Mansfield Memorial Award, a short-story competition organised by the New Zealand Women Writers' Society and funded by the Bank of New Zealand, which became available in 1959; this award ran until 2015. The Ngaio Marsh Awards are awarded annually for the best New Zealand mystery, crime and thriller fiction writing.

, the annual Ockham New Zealand Book Awards offer five principal prizes: fiction (currently known as the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction), general non-fiction (sponsored by Royal Society Te Apārangi), illustrated non-fiction, poetry (currently known as the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry) and Te Mūrau o te Tuhi Māori Language Award for books written entirely in te reo (Māori language). These annual awards have changed names several times due to different sponsors over the years, and were created in 1996 from the amalgamation of the Montana Book Awards (previously the Goodman Fielder Wattie Awards, running from 1968 to 1995) and the government-run New Zealand Book Awards (running from 1976 to 1995). Stand-alone festivals include Going West (established in 1996), WORD Christchurch (established in 1997), the Hokianga Book Festival and the Whanganui Literary Festival. The small town of Featherston is one of 22 recognised book towns in the world and holds a Featherston Booktown event annually in May. Former literary festivals include New Zealand Book Month, which ran from 2006 to 2014. The Verb festival in Wellington in 2019 held a panel event where three out of five panellists were writers of Chinese heritage, Rosabel Tan, Gregory Kan and Chen Chen; writer Nina Mingya Powles said she thought this was the first time that had happened in New Zealand and that this felt like a "groundbreaking moment" for Chinese New Zealand writers. the New Zealand Mountain Film & Book Festival focusing on adventurous sports and lifestyles (held every two years in Queenstown in July), the readers and writers' week at the Taranaki Arts Festival (held every two years in July and August), and the Nelson Arts Festival Readers and Writers week (held annually in October). In 2020 and 2021 many literary festivals were disrupted or cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Literary journals and periodicals

thumb|Cover of The New Zealand Illustrated Magazine in May 1900, a short-lived periodical (1899–1905)

Early New Zealand literary journals included The Triad (founded by Charles Nalder Baeyertz in 1893 and closed in 1926), The New Zealand Illustrated Magazine (founded in Auckland in 1899 and closed in 1905) and Art in New Zealand (founded by Charles Allan Marris in 1928 and closed in 1946). The short-lived magazine Phoenix, published in 1932 by students at the University of Auckland and edited by James Bertram and R. A. K. Mason, was an early outlet for New Zealand nationalist writers such as Brasch and Curnow. Left-wing artist Kennaway Henderson founded the fortnightly magazine Tomorrow in 1934, which was influential in shaping New Zealand nationalist literature and literary criticisms, but was shut down by the government as subversive in 1940.

In 1947, Caxton Press began publishing the quarterly journal Landfall, edited by Charles Brasch; it is still published today on a twice-yearly basis. Brasch's successor as editor, Robin Dudding, left Landfall in 1972 to set up a competing journal called Islands, and some of Landfalls key contributors switched their allegiance to this new journal; Landfall did not recover its status as the leading literary journal of New Zealand until the editorship of David Dowling in the early 1980s.

The magazine New Zealand Listener was founded by the government in 1939 to publish radio listings, but extended its brief to cover current affairs, opinion, and literary works. Among the writers featured in the magazine over the years were Maurice Duggan, Noel Hilliard, Keith Sinclair, Maurice Shadbolt, Fiona Kidman, and Joy Cowley, and poets James K. Baxter, Allen Curnow, Ruth Gilbert, and Ruth France. In 1990, the magazine was privatised and subsequently became more of a lifestyle magazine, although it continues to have a focus on literary works. The New Zealand School Journal was founded by the New Zealand Department of Education in 1907 and has been published by a private firm since 2013; since the 1940s it been known for the high quality of its children's literature.

References

Bibliography

External links

New Zealand Electronic Text Centre
New Zealand literature at the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre
New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre
Read NZ Te Pou Muramura