The Evening Star SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1927. NEW ZEALAND BOOKS.

Evening Star, Issue 19658, 10 September 1927, Page 6

The Evening Star SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1927. NEW ZEALAND BOOKS.

The booksellers of New Zealand are doing a bold thing. Next week will bo known throughout the Commonwealth and dominion as “ Australian and New Zealand Authors’ Week,” when special displays will be made of books by native authors. But Las this country books enough of the kind to show? The answer will bo given next week. Australia, evidently, does not despise our literary output, because it is including New Zealand, authors in its displays. There is no anthology of Australian verse winch does not include New Zealand contributions, or that would not lose much of its worth if such were omitted Australia has some larger poets than we have yet produced, even if they are small by English standards of the past', but it has not so many poets to the-square mile. In prose the case is different. There are probably a few score of persons in the cities on ‘ the other side ” writing novels who in New Zealand would be writing only for the newspapers. It is a complaint in the Commonwealth that a prejudice exists against works written by all but a few older Australians. Probably it is less a prejudice than indifference, based on ignorance. The man who wants a novel as good as Hardy’s or Galsworthy’s will not get it from an Antipodean author, but most buyers of novels do not want them as good as that. If what is required is an exciting or amusing story to wile away a few hours, perhaps, of a holiday and please friends afterwards, he will get it from Bernard Cronin or Miss Sheila MacDonald —the latter a New Zealand native—done as competently as by Le Queux or Kate Douglas Wiggin, and it is fair that ho should remember his homo writers, who, as well as their competitors, have to live.

Sings E. S. Hay: My pipe is small, but I will labor hard That nought but melody shall issue v thence, and not a few New Zealand writers of verso have been rewarded —although not pecuniarily—for that diligence. Of prose literature .in the highest sense, even more emphatically, perhaps, than of verse literature, it may he said that neither Australia nor New Zealand has yet much to show. This although Mary Gilmore’s ‘ Hounds of the Road ’ would be fine writing for any English or Scottish doyen of letters; and we have at least one New Zealand essayist not to be despised. Neither this country nor Australia has a writer yot who has been able to do for Banka Peninsula or Kapunda what Blackmore lias dono for Devon or Barrie for Thrums: A literature that shall ho truly expressive of national sentiments and distinctiveness takes a long time to form. Canada, with its nine millions of population and an older history than ours, bears the reproach of leaning almost entirely on the United States and Britain for its daily literary food, and the conditions in the United States could bo terribly opposed to literary aspirations as recently as the lifetime of Edgar Allan Poo. But no country can be in the final sense a nation till a literature which reflects its life and ideas and of which it can bo proud has been formed. It becomes, therefore, a duly of patriotism to give the best assistance to those who may help to form it.

What have our New Zealand writers done so far? A low novelists, from an early time, have gone Home and held their own in at least the secondary ranks of popular authors. Harriot Watson was a New Zealander by education. Mr Hugh Walpole would give us a larger name if wo could claim him to the same extent, hut he was only born in Auckland. Katherine Mansfield reached perhaps beyond his flight, and died too soon. Domett, our largest poet, was not a New Zealander born. Sir William Harris, who is one, turns translations of Catullus and Horace which the literary stars treat with great respect. Miss Maud P.eacocke writes a pleasant type of girls’ stories with a New Zealand atmosphere almost as well as that could be done; Miss Edith Howes has her own field, in which she has won favor with more than New Zealand readers; Miss Edith Lyttelton (“G. B. Lancaster”), Miss Jane Mander, and Miss Eosmary Rees are novelists of at least more than average capacity; Mr Arthur Adams, born at Lawrence, has some clever works of fiction to his credit; Mr Charles R. Allen is an artist in fantasy; and within the last few months Mr Hector Bolitho’s ‘ Solemn Boy ’ has won praise from the highest critics. The Maori talgs of Miss Mona Tracey and stories of Miss Esther Glenn show quite unusual promise. Mr Pembor Reeves * and Mr James Cowan make a good beginning for our historians, and the scenic studies of Miss B. E. Baughan and Nature studies of Mr GutlirieSmith are not to bo forgotten. Of “ books which are not books,” to quote Charles Lamb’s saying, hut which -are invaluable as sources of information on the New Zealand subjects with which they deal—handbooks on wheat growing and potato growing, and compilations on Maori customs—we have good store. They are not important in any literary sense, but they are to the. farmer and student. The compulsion we are under to use those New Zealand works, which have their field necessarily to themselves, should make it easier to treat others on their merits.