The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1889. NEW ZEALAND LITERATURE

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 2302, 14 December 1889, Page 2

The Ashburton Guardian. Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1889. NEW ZEALAND LITERATURE

Very few people are aware of the large number of works which have been published m New Zealand and about New Zealand, and it will surprise most people to learn that a mere enumeration of all the authors who have written about the colony or have published works m the colony, with the titles of their works, ' itself requires a volume of 235pp of letter-press. Bach a volume has just been issued from the Government printng press, typography and binding being, like everything that bears Mr Didsbury's imprint, unexceptionably good, and the compilation reflecting the greatest possible credit for painstaking conscien tious work upon the librarian of the General Assembly, to whom the authorship is evidently to be attributed. First wo have a chronological catalogue commencing with Tasman's journal of his 4)scoveries, published m 1674, Harris, collection of voyages and travels 1702-5, 1711, and 1744= ; works by Valentijn, Brosses, Callender, Dalrymple, Hawkeswortb, Parkinson, Captain Cook, Forster, Bowman, Crozet, Ledyard, Kippis,Labillard iere, Vancouver, Collins, Savage, Burney, Nicholas, Dillon, Beechey, Earle, D'Urville, Bnrby, the Wakefields, Owen, Ward and many others, 1744 to 1840; after which and down to 1889, the list closing with " Colonial Couplets," by G. P. Williams, and W. P. Reeves, there are no less than 150 pages of titles embracing hundreds of works by hundreds of authors. Of these 206 are about New Zealand generally, 55 relate to particular provinces or portions of the colony, and 17 to adjacent islands, while 84 are records of discovery and exploration. Then there are 98 devoted to description and physical geography, 74 |o the geology of the colony, 68 to its Flora, the same number to its Fauna, no lens than 266 to the Maoris, their ethnology, language, religion, and history, and their relations with Europeans ; 59 relate to missions m New Zealand, 76 to the history of the colony, 17 to biography, 21 to emigration, 118 to colonisation and settlement, and 158 to questions of Government, land administration, the relations of the colony with the Imperial Government, the industries of the colony, public works, education, health resorts, statistics, bibliography, etc. Altogether the names of the different authors alone, given m the catalogue, total up to no less than 616, so that the reader who wishes to learn all about New Zealand has ample facility for doing bo, and indeed a wide range of choice.