NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather forecasts

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
    • The Great NZ Road Trip
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
    • Cooking the Books
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • What the Actual
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / New Zealand

Anthology of NZ Literature: Gaps in the story

By Andrew Stone
News Editor·NZ Herald·
30 Nov, 2012 04:30 PM6 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

The Auckland University Press volume is an ambitious effort to collect New Zealand's significant writing in a single edition.

The Auckland University Press volume is an ambitious effort to collect New Zealand's significant writing in a single edition.

Doorstop anthology of Kiwi writing being talked about as much for what it doesn't contain as for what it does.

At 2kg, the Anthology of New Zealand Literature is a contender for the heavyweight publication of the year.

Even before its launch on Thursday night, it had become - courtesy of advance copies and a gossipy literary community - one of the most talked-about new books, as much for what it doesn't contain as for what it does.

The Auckland University Press volume is an ambitious effort to collect New Zealand's significant writing in a single edition.

It opens with Charles Heaphy's record of an interview with Te Horeta, who saw James Cook arrive in 1769, and closes with Andrew Johnston's 2007 poem Sol. From just last year year there is an extract from Hamish Clayton's 2011 debut novel Wulf.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

In between the anthology's 1162 pages, the editors tick off works by most of the big names of New Zealand literature, reprint famous documents - the 1835 Declaration of Independence and the Treaty of Waitangi - include whimsical flourishes - baking hints from the Edmonds Sure to Rise cookery book and an entry on soil from Yates' 1897 Gardening Guide - and chart the striking breadth of contemporary New Zealand writing.

Editors Jane Stafford and Mark Williams - Victoria University English lecturers and husband and wife - stretch beyond the printed word by including five black-and-white illustrated pages from cartoonist Dylan Horrocks' Hicksville. The cartoon strip appears in a chapter drawn from the 1990s, a section the editors call "playful" - "where the real and the fantastic collapse in on one another".

Elsewhere readers will find songs, book extracts, letters, journal entries, fiction, non-fiction and poetry.

They will not, however, find anything from Janet Frame, Alan Duff or Vincent O'Sullivan. Duff, author of Once Were Warriors and O'Sullivan, a poet and retired Victoria University English professor, both declined permission to include their work. In Frame's case, the trust which owns her copyright and publishers AUP could not reach agreement on "how to represent Frame's work".

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

AUP director Sam Elworthy says he "worked pretty hard" to get agreement to include these authors but in the end had to "respect the author's right to decide where and how their work gets published".

Other writers though, were omitted by the editors. Readers will not be treated to material from Shonagh Koea, poet Peter Bland, writers Bruce Jesson or Tony Simpson, novelists Tina Shaw, Chad Taylor, Laurence Fearnley, Sarah Quigley, Stephanie Johnson or Charlotte Grimshaw (though they will find her father C.K. Stead.) From three dames there is nothing: Anne Salmond, Judith Binney and Ngaio Marsh. New Zealand's only literary knight James McNeish is absent.

Michael King doesn't make the cut, nor does Roderick Finlayson, who engaged with Maori issues 50 years before King wrote about a bicultural land. Not surprisingly, the selections have stirred vigorous discussion in literary and publishing circles, as much for the inclusions as the omissions.

One academic critic said the editors were like boundary riders, deciding who was in the herd and who wasn't, and felt the fat collection was light on writing about war, sport and satire and passed over some milestone speeches, such as Peter Fraser's at the founding of the United Nations.

Discover more

Kahu

Close-up view of NZ history up for sale

30 Nov 04:30 PM
Entertainment

Janet McAllister: A year of getting to know one another

07 Dec 11:22 PM
Opinion

Bryan Gould: Maori issues matter to Pakeha too

09 Dec 04:30 PM
Opinion

Dr Elizabeth Rata: Treaty no longer symbol of national unity

12 Dec 04:30 PM

Tony Simpson, president of the New Zealand Society of Authors, says while the society did not have an "official position", the absence of some authors would raise eyebrows in the literary community.

Simpson, author of The Sugarbag Years, the award-winning oral history of the 1930s depression, and a dozen other works dealing with New Zealand's social, political and cultural history, said: "Any selection is likely to be arbitrary but I am surprised at some of the omissions and inclusions."

He imagined the anthology - "which I would most kindly describe as eccentric" - would be met with a "gnashing of teeth" by many writers.

"It is indicative to me of a problem which bedevils New Zealand writing. People can't make up their mind what the word literature means. To publish an anthology and not include first rank non-fiction writers like Michael King suggests this is an old-fashioned perception of what constitutes New Zealand literature."

Auckland poet Peter Bland - winner of the 2011 Prime Minister's prize for poetry but absent from the AUP collection - thinks the $75 anthology is designed to become a university text.

Of the inclusion of documents - one extract is from the 1954 Mazengarb report on 'moral delinquency' - Bland remarked: "I think that's what they call post-modernism."

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Yorkshire-born Bland wonders if the editors felt he wasn't a "proper Kiwi" to warrant inclusion.

In an email, Sir James McNeish, whose fictional diary Lovelock was nominated for the Booker Prize in 1986, wrote that he was honoured to be in such good company as those omitted from the collection.

"If all these writers have been left out, I cannot but think - to rephrase one of his maxims - what Gore Vidal might have said: "New Zealand society, literary or lay, tends to be humourless. What other culture could have produced an academic anthology such as this and not seen the joke?"

Dunedin-based Philip Temple, a winner of the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement for non-fiction, felt the collection was weighted too heavily towards graduates of Bill Manhire's Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University.

He said it ignored some terrific writing about mountaineering and sport and could not sustain the claim on the dust jacket that "for years to come this anthology will be our guide to what's worth reading and why".

For his part, publisher Elworthy accepts every anthology "has some voices that aren't there" and by nature would be incomplete.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

He says the editors wanted to create a "conversation" and show readers there were different strands of writing in New Zealand worth following.

Said Elworthy: "Great anthologies offer just one path into a country's literature - they are 'a knife through time' as the editors say. Lose the knife, include all your friends, and you'll produce a handy doorstop but not a great book.

"At 1200 pages, this anthology is a big old waka with 'a multifarious collection of crew and passengers', as the editors write. But it's just one rather interesting, illuminating path through New Zealand writing. There are other paths and people should take them."

Despite the price, Elworthy was confident the book would find an eager market, and noted the Australian equivalent - the Macquarie PEN Anthology - became a "bestseller". (It was also met with a barrage from critics angry that little drama was included.)

Elworthy contended the time was ripe for a New Zealand anthology: "We've just taken a big pile of great New Zealand writing to the world at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Our contemporary writers are flourishing."

• Anthology of New Zealand Literature. Edited by Jane Stafford and Mark Williams (Auckland University Press, RRP $75).

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Giveaway: The Weekend Herald has four copies to give away, courtesy of Auckland University Press. To be in the draw, tell us the title of Hamish Clayton's book. Send your answer, with name and address details, to Weekend Herald contest, PO Box 3290, Auckland.

Save

    Share this article

Latest from New Zealand

New ZealandUpdated

'About time': Residents sick of 'boy racers' back Govt plan to toughen laws

11 May 06:06 PM
New Zealand

'Life and death': Northland road safety plea as toll hits eight

11 May 05:00 PM
New Zealand

'It’s been a long time coming': Artist couple open studio in Far North

11 May 05:00 PM

One tiny baby’s fight to survive

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from New Zealand

'About time': Residents sick of 'boy racers' back Govt plan to toughen laws

'About time': Residents sick of 'boy racers' back Govt plan to toughen laws

11 May 06:06 PM

Ministers announced the changes in Rotorua on Sunday, alongside Mayor Tania Tapsell.

'Life and death': Northland road safety plea as toll hits eight

'Life and death': Northland road safety plea as toll hits eight

11 May 05:00 PM
Future of Napier-Wairoa train line still uncertain

Future of Napier-Wairoa train line still uncertain

11 May 05:00 PM
'It’s been a long time coming': Artist couple open studio in Far North

'It’s been a long time coming': Artist couple open studio in Far North

11 May 05:00 PM
Connected workers are safer workers 
sponsored

Connected workers are safer workers 

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • What the Actual
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven CarGuide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP