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New Zealand and the Colonial Writing World, 1890-1945

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New Zealand and the Colonial Writing World, 1890-1945 A DUAL EXILE? NEW ZEALAND AND THE COLONIAL WRITING WORLD, 1890-1945 Helen K. Bones A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History at the University of Canterbury March 2011 University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand 1 Contents Contents ............................................................................................................... 1 Index of Tables ................................................................................................... 2 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................... 3 Abstract ............................................................................................................... 4 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 5 PART ONE: NEW ZEALAND AND THE COLONIAL WRITING WORLD 22 Chapter One – Writing in New Zealand ................................................. 22 1.1 Literary culture in New Zealand ................................................. 22 1.2 Creating literature in New Zealand ..................................... 40 Chapter Two – Looking Outward ............................................................. 59 2.1 The Tasman Writing World ................................................. 59 2.2 The Colonial Writing World ................................................. 71 Chapter Three – Leaving New Zealand ................................................. 99 3.1 Assumptions ......................................................................... 99 3.2 Reality ....................................................................................112 PART TWO: LITERARY EXILES? NEW ZEALANDERS IN LONDON 130 Chapter Four – ―A book is a book, all the world over‖ ....................... 130 4.1 Failure or exile? ........................................................................130 4.2 Coping with the real London ............................................... 153 Chapter Five – The Colonial Writing World advantage ........................179 5.1 New perspectives ....................................................................... 179 5.2 Antipodean advantages ........................................................... 188 Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 204 Appendix A ........................................................................................................... 213 Appendix B ........................................................................................................... 246 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................... 251 2 Index of tables 2.1: Books by New Zealand authors 1890-1935 ................................................. 72 2.2: Books by New Zealand authors 1890-1945 ................................................. 72 2.3: Content of books by New Zealand authors 1890-1945 ..................................... 88 2.4: Content of novels by New Zealand authors 1890-1945 ..................................... 89 3.1: The movements of New Zealand writers 1890-1945 ................................... 114 3.2: Writers who left New Zealand: Length of trip and destination ....................... 114 3.3: New Zealand writers 1890-1945: Reasons for leaving New Zealand for more than two years ........................................................................................................... 127 4.1: Location of author and place of publication ............................................... 155 4.2: Location of author and place of publication: novels ................................... 156 4.3: Trips overseas taken by New Zealand authors 1890-1945 ....................... 157 4.4: Frequency of book production ........................................................................172 4.5: Average frequency of production (books/year) vs length of time overseas 173 5.1: Departure and arrival statistics for 1920 ........................................................... 186 5.2: Author location vs. book content 1890-1945 ................................................199 3 Acknowledgements This research was undertaken with the invaluable financial assistance provided by a University of Canterbury Doctoral Scholarship. Concurrently with this, I was the inaugural recipient of the Edward Gibbon Wakefield Doctoral Scholarship in 2008 which allowed me to spend a year as a Visiting Graduate Student at Christ Church, Oxford. This scholarship was endowed to honour the memory of Edward Gibbon Wakefield and his descendants and their role in the founding of the Canterbury Settlement. The scholarship also recognises the ties between Christ Church, Oxford and Christchurch, New Zealand. My deepest thanks go to the Wakefield Trust and the Canterbury Association for allowing me this opportunity. Thank you also to the members of the House, in particular the Graduate Common Room, for contributing to what was an amazing year. I consulted the archives and books of many collections throughout this enterprise, from the British Library to the Hocken Collection, and encountered many helpful librarians and archivists. In particular I would like to acknowledge the help of the staff of the Macmillan Brown Library who continued to cheerfully supply my many obscure requests throughout job uncertainties and the aftermath of earthquakes. Most vital to the successful completion of this thesis was the extensive and tireless help of my supervisors, Dr Chris Connolly and Professor Patrick Evans. Patrick inspired an interest in New Zealand literature from my first year at university, and continued this expert guidance in all things literary throughout the course of this project. Chris spent many hours distilling the essence of my ideas and informing me what it was I was actually trying to say on many occasions. I would also like to acknowledge my colleagues in History at the University of Canterbury, staff and postgraduate students—it has been a very difficult few years including renovations, restructuring and earthquakes but the support and encouragement from all sides has never wavered. Finally, thank you to my flatmates, family and friends (particularly my team of proofreaders) for putting up with me these few years and supporting or distracting me when necessary! 4 Abstract It is commonly thought that New Zealand writers before World War II suffered from a ―dual exile‖. In New Zealand, they were exiled far from the publishing opportunities and cultural stimulus of metropolitan centres. To succeed as writers they were forced to go overseas, where they endured a second kind of spiritual exile, far from home. They were required to give up their ―New Zealandness‖ in order to achieve literary success, yet never completely belonged in the metropolitan centres to which they had gone. They thus became permanent exiles. This thesis aims to discover the true prevalence of ―dual exile‖ amongst early twentieth-century New Zealand writers. Using both quantitative and qualitative analysis, it argues that the hypothesis of ―dual exile‖ is a myth propagated since the 1930s by New Zealand‘s cultural nationalist tradition. New Zealand writers were not exiles because of the existence of the ―colonial writing world‖—a system of cultural diffusion, literary networks and personal interactions that gave writers access to all the cultural capital of Britain through lines of communication established by colonial expansion. Those who went to Britain remained connected to New Zealand through these same networks. The existence of the colonial writing world meant that the physical location of the writer, whether in New Zealand or overseas, had far less impact on literary success than the cultural nationalists assumed. 5 Introduction Historians and literary critics over the years have been all too easily seduced by the notion that early twentieth-century New Zealand was a cultural vacuum. They have accused New Zealand‘s Pākehā inhabitants of having only a watered down version of British culture, with no definable culture they could call their own. This supposedly caused difficulties for those absorbed in the task of writing about New Zealand, for the British literary tradition did not give them the words and concepts required to express New Zealand attitudes and describe the New Zealand environment. All their efforts achieved, according to the writer and critic Allen Curnow, was ―colonial fragment and fantasy‖, and the land remained ―like the America of Robert Frost‘s poem, ‗unstoried, artless, unenhanced‘‖.1 This cultural emptiness forced writers to leave or risk being forever condemned to pen derivations of British writing with perhaps mention of a tui for local reference. As the story continues, the solution, or at least the identification of the problem, is said to have come in the 1930s with the arrival on the scene of a group of writers who roundly dismissed the dominant, imported culture as ―inauthentic‖. This group has been called the ―Phoenix generation‖ by Patrick Evans, because of its association with the journal Phoenix, which was created by members of the Auckland University College Literary Club in 1932. Phoenix was said to encompass the aims of ―cultural nationalism‖,2 an ideology that required the pursuit of autochthony in art and literature. Its major advocate in New Zealand in the late 1930s and 1940s
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