"... A history of the Alexander Turnbull Library"--P. vi.

The works of Katherine Mansfield (1888-1923), one of England's most gifted short story writers, have influenced over eight decades of writers. A friend to Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, and Bertrand Russell, Mansfield left a literary legacy collected in The Garden Party, In a German Pension, and numerous anthologies. Biographies appearing after her death idealized her, but Meyers sets the record straight in his assessment of the author's life and career, revealing a woman with a self-destructive disdain for convention and respectability. Born and raised in New Zealand, Mansfield threw herself into several love affairs with men and women before living with literary critic John Middleton Murray. Meyers chronicles their tempestuous relationship (one that mixed abuse with devotion) and the years she fought a losing battle with tuberculosis.

"But this scholarly achievement was in many ways matched by the part he played in the intellectual and cultural life of New Zealand in his time. A prolific writer and critic he became committed to making New Zealand a more lively and civilised place to live, and through his work at Victoria University, his teaching, his involvement with the New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties and the New Zealand Historic Places Trust - among many such organisations - his influence was far reaching." "Drawing on J.C. Beaglehole's own writing, especially his sparkling unpublished letters, the author has woven together all the aspects of his father's life into an immensely readable narrative. The two chapters on Beaglehole's work on James Cook create a picture of the historical scholar at work, and give the book an international significance."--BOOK JACKET.

Publisher description

Includes reports of the government departments.

Leaving the Highway was the first critical study of some of New Zealand's major novelists: Janet Frame, Keri Hulme, Witi Ihimaera, Maurice Gee, Ian Wedde, and C. K. Stead. Here Mark Williams concentrates on their important works to explore how deeply rooted anxieties about New Zealand's bicultural situation and national identity are articulated in New Zealand fiction.

This groundbreaking new book outlines current developments in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Australian and New Zealand serials bibliography. Researchers have been hampered by the lack of access to lists and contents of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century serials, including newspapers, and the chapters of this book discuss in some detail the progress being made on projects in this area. Other chapters deal with the contribution of the National Centre for Australian Studies to Australian studies and Australian bibliography. The importance of this center lies in its role in improving access to source and other material of Australian origin or interest of specific use to researchers. There are also accounts of current trends in serials bibliography, online newspaper services, current research projects in Australian studies, sports bibliographies, and newspaper and periodical bibliographies in Australia and New Zealand. Bibliographers, librarians, publishers, rare book dealers, as well as students, will find this book to be helpful and enlightening.

Sir Joseph Heenan, the most illustrious of all its secretaries, called the Department of Internal Affairs 'the mother of all departments'. A rather more earthy Australian friend of his called it the 'guts department'. In a sense, both were right. Written with liveliness and colour, illustrated with photographs, anecdotes and rich detail, The Mother of All Departments brings to life the history of the first and most important agency of government in nineteenth-century New Zealand. It traces the evolution of the Department of Internal Affairs from its genesis as the Colonial Secretary's Office in 1840 to the present day. Having spawned the Public Works, Justice, Health, Housing and Social Welfare departments it nonetheless still retains an extraordinary array of functions, each a small but integral part of a smoothly running democracy. Internal Affairs plays a significant role in some of the controversial issues of our day including citizenship, the reform of local government, royal visits, and the regulation of gambling and lotteries.