Vibrant with Words: The Letters of Ursula Bethell ed Peter Whiteford Victoria University Press, $49.95, ISBN 0864735049 Editor Peter Whiteford, a senior lecturer in the English Department at Victoria University, has done Ursula Bethell proud with this generous selection of…
Toss Woollaston: A Life in Letters ed Jill Trevelyan Te Papa Press, $59.99, ISBN 0909010072 The first thing you notice about this handsomely produced volume from Te Papa Press is the title Woollaston, in large red letters, running down the…
Letters from the Bay of Islands: The Story of Marianne Williams ed Caroline Fitzgerald Penguin, $39.95, ISBN 0143019295 It is always the detail of the past that brings it most sharply to mind. William Colenso’s observation in the 1880s that…
The Penguin Book of New Zealand Letters ed Louise Lawrence Penguin, $34.95, ISBN 0143018663 Oh friends, friends – where would we be without them? Sometimes they move far away, as did Charlotte Bronte’s school friend and confidante Mary Taylor, who…
Tom’s Letters. The Private World of Thomas King, Victorian Gentleman Margot Fry Victoria University Press, $39.95, ISBN 0864733917 One of many challenges facing the biographer of 19th Century New Zealanders can be the lack of intimate letters or diaries. The vagaries…
Spark to a Waiting Fuse: James K Baxter’s correspondence with Noel Ginn 1942-1946 ed Paul Millar Victoria University Press, $49.95, ISBN 086473400X I began this book thinking that a shorter one might have been enough for a smallish collection of…
Dear Peggy: Letters to Margaret Garland from her New Zealand Friends Peter and Dianne Beatson (ed) Sociology Department, Massey University $35.00 ISBN 0 95836254 8 Peggy Garland came out to Wellington in 1947 with a young family and an unsatisfactory,…
The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield: Volume 3, 1919‑1920 Vincent O’Sullivan and Margaret Scott (eds), Clarendon Press, $110.95 It is only in fiction that illness makes people saintly. In real life, invalids are cantankerous, depressive and manipulative. To be close…
The Selected Letters of Mary Hobhouse Shirley Tunnicliff (ed), Daphne Brasell Associates Press, Wellington, 1992, $24.95 Mary Hobhouse came to New Zealand, arriving in March 1859, as the wife of the first Anglican Bishop of the province of Nelson. She…