Denis Glover's place in New Zealand literature is assured. Along with R.A.K. Mason, A.R.D. Fairburn and Allen Curnow, he was one of those who revitalised New Zealand poetry in the 1930s. The Magpies still takes the prize as New Zealand's most-often-reprinted poem. In founding the Caxton Press, Glover turned this country's publishing industry in a new direction, making it possible for poetry and fiction of high quality to reach a wider readership.
But regrettably, there's the negative side to the man. As Sarah Shieff makes clear in her introduction to Letters of Denis Glover, "drunkenness and a deep vein of self-destructiveness … cost him almost everything: his first wife and only child, the Caxton Press, and a subsequent job at Albion Wright's Pegasus Press." Alcoholism, erratic behaviour and his womanising were accompanied by a decline in his writing.
From an archive of 3000 letters, Shieff has chosen 500, an exemplary exercise in selection and editing. There's no denying Glover's literary brilliance. Between 1942 and 1944 he writes letters about his war experience in the Royal Navy, including his time aboard HMS Onslaught, escorting convoys to Murmansk, and his role in the D-Day landings. This is excellent, vivid, colloquial reportage, which he was later able to turn into publishable narrative.
But with his closest friends, Glover readily expresses his prejudices. He never likes Catholics — which feeds into his contempt for James K. Baxter in his Catholic phase — and makes slurs about Jewish people. He usually belittles women writers (Robin Hyde, Eileen Duggan) and appears to be particularly allergic to Katherine Mansfield, whom he calls "our much ravished clever schoolgirl".