THE GUMDIGGER
Sir-"A.M.," in a* very generous review of The Gumdigger, remarks of William Satchell’s Land of the Lost that "Mr. Reed mentions this book briefly . . . . and apparently does not think much of it.’ May I be permitted to say that any quarrel I may have with the book is based, not on its merits as literature-although to my mind it is somewhat melodramatic-but on its depiction of the gumfields and the gumdigger, To an old digger its descriptions of the gumfields are hardly convincing, and the reader gains the impression that the gumdiggers themselves were, in general, as some of the characters say, "the dead-beats of the world," and "the ‘scourings and scum of humanity." Any digger of the eighties and nineties knows that, while many were ne’er-do-wells and dissipated their earnings, many others were hard-working men of a fine type, and not a few graduated from the gumfield to farms and businesses, There was but little serious crime. As an old-time digger, of whom there are now few left, it is my hope that The Gumdigger may assist, in howevet slight’ degree, in providing a little firsthand background material for some future great novel of the gumfields, and there is probably no one who could write this better than "A.M."
A. H.
REED
(Dunedin).
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19490812.2.12.8
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 529, 12 August 1949, Page 20
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216THE GUMDIGGER New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 529, 12 August 1949, Page 20
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