The role of New Zealand literature in shaping the nation

Literature has a powerful influence on the development of a nation, it can both reflect society and influence it. New Zealand has produced influential and internationally respected authors like Katherine Mansfield and Janet Frame. They are remembered for their striking use of language, a strong New Zealand focus, and their reflections on the interior life.

Janet Frame

Janet Frame is one of New Zealand’s most honoured writers. She died in 2004, and C. K. Stead in his article The Gift of Language explored what made her writing significant:

Its special genius is in the language – simple, direct, with glittering clarity (something she shares with Katherine Mansfield), and full of brilliant images … Janet Frame’s novels have never quite been bestsellers, either in New Zealand or abroad; but she has always earned huge respect. The broader public has been more interested in her life than in the subtleties of her writing. She came from poverty and deprivation, through family disasters and her own suicidal depressions and mental breakdown, to become New Zealand’s best-known author. I think what is essential and durable in her work is a tragi-comic vision, bleak in its implications but full of life, courage and humour in its expression. New Zealand has lost an icon, but we have not lost the books she wrote nor the letters and records of an exemplary life.

Katherine Mansfield

Katherine Mansfield is considered one of the best proponents of short story writing. She was born in Wellington in 1888 (her birthplace now has historic place status). Though she lived in Europe after 1908, she always reflected her feelings about New Zealand, her home. The longer I live the more I turn to New Zealand, Mansfield wrote to her father in 1922. She thought about New Zealand as a pioneer, growing nation: A young country is a real heritage though it takes one time to recognise it. But New Zealand is in my very bones. Vincent O’Sullivan’s biographic listing and Roger Robinson’s entry on critical response are both useful for exploring Mansfield’s connections with New Zealand, and the country's interaction with her writing.

Mansfield has been a constant inspiration for New Zealand writers. Actress Danielle Cormack performed in The Case of Katherine Mansfield from 18 January to 3 February, 2007 at Wellington theatre, Downstage. Cathy Downes, formerly director at the Court Theatre, wrote and performed seasons of the play in New Zealand and overseas during the late seventies right up until the early nineties.

Themes

There are certain themes and ideas that pervade New Zealand literature. The perception of masculinity in New Zealand has been influenced by works like John Mulgan's Man alone and evocations of the good keen man can be seen in the writings of Sam Hunt, Ronald Hugh Morrieson and Barry Crump.

A sense of magic and wonder is often at play in New Zealand literature, with novelists like Margaret Mahy and Elizabeth Knox experimenting with fantasy and altered realities.

Cultural issues and the interplay of Māori and Pakeha, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, have been expressed by authors such as Keri Hulme (her novel The Bone People famously won the Booker Prize in 1985), Witi Ihimaera, Alistair Te Ariki Campbell and poet Hone Tuwhare.

There have been many other writers who have influenced our perception of New Zealand and New Zealanders. A good resource to find out more is The New Zealand Writer Files - the most substantial section of the New Zealand Book Council website. The area contains more than three hundred and fifty pages, with a single page devoted to each particular New Zealand writer. At the heart of the site are 150 author entries reprinted from the Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature.

Important writers featured include James K. Baxter, Frank Sargeson and Maurice Gee.

New Zealand literature resources

On this web site

• New Zealand Book Month - features links to resources on New Zealand literature, booklists and literary prizes

Our Internet Gateway recommends

• Books, Reading and Literature - our guide to the best web sites
• Article from the 1966 Encyclopedia of New Zealand on New Zealand literature
• New Zealand authors - listing of biographical notes on New Zealand authors from the New Zealand Book Council site

Browse the resources in our libraries

To find information about New Zealand literature, search on the subject ‘New Zealand Literature’, then narrow it down by century (i.e. New Zealand literature - 21st century). Other useful headings:

• New Zealand literature - history and criticism
• New Zealand fiction