Authors’ papers at the Turnbull Library
Use this guide to research the history of writing in New Zealand and literature in general, and explore the collections held by the Library associated with various writers and authors including Katherine Mansfield, Keri Hulme, Avis Acres and Albert Wendt.
What are authors’ papers?
Authors’ papers can be defined as the drafts, annotated copies, proofs, and notes which are generated in the creation of an author’s new work, plus all the surrounding papers and archives which accompany these works and the author’s writing life. Examples of authors’ papers include:
literary drafts
research notes
diaries
notebooks
personal and professional correspondence
photographs
newspaper articles
audio-visual material
printed items
Group of Wellington writers in the study of Pat Lawlor's home. Subjects include Oliver Gillespie, Pat Lawlor, and Alan Mulgan. Photograph taken about 1935 by S P Andrew Studio [detail]. Ref: 1/1-018216-G. Alexander Turnbull Library.
Using authors' papers for your research
The guide will connect you with collections relating to authors of your interest. This may be with a singular focus on studying someone like Katherine Mansfield or it may be a broader interest like Children's Literature. You may be wishing to analyse one specific piece of manuscript text for comparison purposes, or you may be working on a biography where you are delving into the complete life of your subject.
Guide — Researching Katherine Mansfield
Guide — Researching Children's Literature
The Manuscripts Collection holds extensive collections of authors’ papers which include both the writer's manuscripts and their personal and family papers. However, there are many collections that may only comprise a single written work. Then there are other collections where the writer is included on the catalogue because they have corresponded with the main creator of a collection or have appeared as a subject in a letter, photograph, or oral history.
Authors also appear in the collections of business records relating to publishers, bookshops, agents as well as in organisations of writers’ groups and literary societies. It must also be noted that a writer's papers may be split across multiple repositories within Aotearoa and internationally, so it is worth conducting an internet search to locate other collections when undertaking a large research project.
Using some of the suggested database search techniques in this guide will help you interrogate the Library's unpublished collections.
Published monographs and serials are part of the New Zealand and Pacific Collection but are not specifically covered in this guide.
Authors’ manuscripts and archives are held within the Manuscripts Collection and more information about the Collection can be found in the general Manuscripts Collection page.
Portrait of Nelle Scanlan ca 1934. Ellen Margaret Scanlan MBE was a New Zealand journalist and novelist. Her most famous novels were the Pencarrow series of four novels, published between 1932 and 1939. Ref: 1/2-022990-F. Alexander Turnbull Library.
Terminology
Below we describe the terminology used when we talk about authors’ papers.
Literary papers, writers’ papers and authors’ papers
The terms literary papers or archives, writers' papers and authors' papers are used interchangeably by collecting repositories around the world to describe their holdings relating to the work of writers in one genre or another. Literary papers is one of the most commonly used terms as it is directly associated with the concept of literature.
Literature itself is a prestigious term as it favours one form of writing over another. There are many definitions and debates about what is considered literature. One definition is that literature represents the aesthetic excellence of a writer's work that is considered to be of superior or lasting artistic merit. Literature can also be seen as criticising and affirming cultural values.
The term ‘writing’ defined
The term writing is used in this guide to specifically refer to the work of authors. Some genres of writing in our Collection include poetry, prose, play scripts, essays and articles in both fiction and non-fiction formats. Much of an author's output can be considered literary work, as well as work that may not have risen to the bar of being defined as literature.
Writing areas not covered in this guide are private diaries (colonial, shipboard, military, farm life), family correspondence, genealogical histories, and general record keeping which have all been created for private purposes with no eye towards publication.
Fiction and non-fiction
Authors’ works include both fiction and non-fiction material. Fiction writers include authors working as novelists, short story writers, poets, dramatists, lyricists, autobiographers, and children's writers. This genre also includes writers working in the fields of popular fiction, romance, and erotic fiction.
Non-fiction writers include the work of historians, journalists, bibliographers, biographers, and sports writers. Also, in the non-fiction section are works on literary criticism and scholarship, leisure activities and hobbies. Some authors like Robin Hyde, Vincent O’Sullivan, Ian Wedde and Karl Stead work across both fiction and non-fiction writing as well as working within many types of genres. The further you dig into the Collection the more authors you will discover.
Allen Curnow, Denis Glover, Bob Lowry and an unidentified friend, seated in front of a movie hoarding in Christchurch. Photographed by an unknown photographer in about 1948. Ref: PAColl-2146-008. Alexander Turnbull Library.
History of collecting authors’ papers at the Turnbull
Alexander Horsburgh Turnbull began to collect the unpublished and draft works of noted English writers in the nineteenth century to accompany his private collection of works published internationally and in New Zealand. Today the Alexander Turnbull Library holds an extensive collection of authors’ papers and archives relating to the creative works of authors and their personal and professional lives, including English and international writers as well as New Zealand, Māori and Pasifika writers.
The Library's holdings include collections from both notable authors as well as authors who are not so well known, and yet others who have been all but forgotten. The early collections of authors’ papers held by the Library generally relate to British authors. Over time New Zealand writers became more prominent and now they are our prime focus along with collecting the works of Pacific authors.
The first writers’ manuscripts were collected by Alexander Turnbull himself. Known as a bibliophile Turnbull also collected literary drafts when they aligned with his preferred collecting areas. One early example was the purchase in 1907 from Bernard Quaritch booksellers in London of the poem At a Dog's Grave and other papers by the English poet, playwright, novelist and critic Algernon Charles Swinburne.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
This poem was originally published in 1904 in the poetry volume A Channel Passage and Other Poems. The papers accompanying this poem comprise a copy of a letter from the London bookdealer Bernard Quaritch to Turnbull offering him the manuscript; a newspaper cutting in which the poem figures; and a photograph of, and a note by, E S Williard, the former owner. This provenance information is useful for researchers and is often difficult to obtain.
Algernon Charles Swinburne — A Channel Passage and Other Poems
George Gissing
Turnbull also purchased the manuscript for George Gissing's novel Our friend the charlatan. Gissing was an English author, and this novel was published in 1901, two years before his death. Turnbull purchased this manuscript in 1915 for £75.00. This preliminary draft now held by the Library is titled The coming man.
George Gissing — Our friend the charlatan
George Gissing — The coming man
William Shenstone
Another acquisition relates to the eighteenth-century English poet and landscape gardener William Shenstone. The single volume the Library holds is A Collection of poems transcribed & Corrected from Original Mss… This manuscript was purchased in 1916. In 1952 this collection was edited by Ian A Gordon and published by the Clarendon Press as Shenstone's miscellany, 1759-1763.
William Shenstone — Collection of poems transcribed & corrected from original MSS
William Shenstone — Shenstone's miscellany, 1759-1763
Alexander Turnbull died in 1918 and bequeathed his collection to the Crown. The Alexander Turnbull Library opened in 1920 under the direction of the poet and historian Johannes Andersen as the first Chief Librarian (1919-1937). This newly established research library continued to acquire authors' papers by donation and purchase and this tradition continued under the second Chief Librarian Clyde Taylor (1937-1963) and continues to this day.
Katherine Mansfield
During this period in 1957, the Library made its most substantial literary acquisition, purchasing Katherine Mansfield's personal papers from John Middleton Murray. Since then, the Library has acquired further Mansfield material and we are now the foremost archive for Mansfield material in the world. The balance of the Mansfield literary papers was gifted by Jane Warner Dick to the Newberry Library in Chicago in 1959.
Newberry Library's Katherine Mansfield Collection
Turnbull Library's Katherine Mansfield Collection
Thirteen years later in 1970, the Library purchased its first tranche of papers from the short story writer and novelist Frank Sargeson. This decade saw a renewed interest in collecting literary papers driven by the new Chief Librarian Jim Traue (1972-1990) and an international demand for new literary collections.
Manuscripts curator, Glen Barclay, Professor Ian Gordon and Chief Librarian, Mr C R H Taylor, looking at the journals of Katherine Mansfield, which have just arrived at the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, 1958. Ref: EP/1958/0805-F. Alexander Turnbull Library.
Collecting now and into the future
Since the close of the Second World War American universities began acquiring authors' papers from around the world at increasing rates. Britain and the Commonwealth countries were slow to ward off this challenge to their literary archives and it wasn't until the 1980s that Britain belatedly began to purchase their own writers' papers for their national libraries and archives.
At the Turnbull Library our authors’ collections began to grow and in the 1990s the Library started actively collecting women writers including the papers of Eileen Duggan, Robin Hyde, and Dame Judith Binney. Aligned to this is an effort to be more proactive in collecting the work of Māori and Pasifika writers.
The Library's Collection also holds other archives which supports writers’ papers like those of
literary groups and societies
bookseller's archives
literary agents and appraisers
publishers' records and
literary festivals’ material
As the Library approaches the quarter mark of the twenty-first century, we still endeavour to collect authors papers and new areas for collecting include immigrant authors’ works and those voices from authors we may not have heard from before.
Donating material to the Alexander Turnbull Library
Archival storage of bound manuscripts, including some authors' papers, at the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington.
Authors’ papers held across formats and collections
Authors’ papers are predominately located within the Manuscripts Collection. However, author-related materials can also be located across most collections in the Library. As mentioned earlier the New Zealand and Pacific Collection has all New Zealand publications collected under Legal Deposit by the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa. Small-run self-published works are often collected by the Library if they fall within the Library's published collections guidelines.
New Zealand and Pacific Collection
Collecting plan for the New Zealand and Pacific Collection
Photographic
The Photographic Archive complements the Manuscripts Collection as many authors’ papers include photographs, both private and public. If a writer includes family-based material, then there are often family photographs in a collection. Public photographs may include promotional portraits for a new book or newspaper articles. If the writer is at a book reading or book launch, there may be photographs of a recitation. Sometimes writers were photographers themselves and we may have also collected their original photographs.
Ephemera
Sometimes authors travelled the country together on reading tours and posters and pamphlets may have been created to promote these events. Such material is regarded as ephemera and could have been collected in our Ephemera Collection. Other types of ephemeral items may be book catalogues, festival programmes, flyers, and postcards.
Rare books and fine printing
This Collection includes printed works, particularly those printed before 1801 but also rare and valuable items up to the mid-20th century; medieval, early renaissance, some modern manuscripts; and fine-printed items dating from the late 19th century to the present day. This may include machine-printed items which have special design features combined with a limited print run.
Rare books and fine printing Collection
Sound and music
The Oral history and sound Collection includes oral interviews with authors and the Archive of New Zealand music has collected sound recordings of writers’ readings, particularly poetry readings.
Oral history and sound Collection
Archive of New Zealand music
Drawings, paintings and prints
In the collection of Drawings, Painting and Prints there are sketches and portraits of famous New Zealand writers as well as sculptured busts of notable writers created by Anthony Stones.
Drawings, paintings and prints Collection
Cartographic
The Cartographic Collection is useful if you are wanting an overview of the places authors have lived in, particularly in early colonial New Zealand.
The Library collects electronic materials relating to authors and these include anything from e-publications to literary websites. All electronic items sit within their relevant collection formats. For example, an author's emails will be held alongside any hardcopy literary drafts and collected under an ATL-Group record in the Manuscripts Collection.
Two new curatorial areas that may also produce results for searches on authors are the Cartoons and Comics Collection and the Contemporary Voices Archive.
Cartoons and Comics Collection
Contemporary Voices Archive
Begin your research
The best place to start your research is often with secondary resources. A general research topic across different writing genres may be started by consulting a book like Terry Sturm's (Editor) The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature in English. This book provides a wonderful overview of writing in Aotearoa up until 1991. From it you will also obtain the names of authors you may wish to take a specific interest in.
The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature in English
This may lead you to biographies, autobiographies and scholarly works and histories that use primary resources. By checking the citations on the primary sources, you may find references to unpublished collections and manuscripts, some of which may be held by the Alexander Turnbull Library.
The Library holds large collections of unpublished primary source materials. These are searchable and requestable through the Library’s unpublished catalogue Tiaki. The catalogue uses keyword searching and specific thesauri. Specific thesauri searches can be conducted for names, places, subjects, material types and iwi/hapū.
If you know the name of the author you wish to research then a name search is a good place to start, which queries the names database.
Turnbull Archival Catalogue (Tiaki) of unpublished collections
Portrait of author Witi Ihimaera photographed by Reg Graham in the late 1990s. Ref: PAColl-6458-1-10. Alexander Turnbull Library.
Searching for authors' papers in the catalogue
Name search
By inserting an author in the Name: box, the Turnbull Archival Catalogue (Tiaki) will retrieve every catalogue record that has that name attached to it. The returned list can be sorted further by the Sort: function. Please be aware that this search interrogates all curatorial formats and not just the Manuscripts Collection.
Also, the items displayed will vary from a single item to a complete collection group. It is up to the researcher to determine the relevance of the reference matches to their research and patience is often required when large numbers of results are displayed.
Tip: A Name search on Robin Hyde as an example, will show the preferred search term for her which is her original birth name Iris Guiver Wilkinson.
The Library's unpublished database Tiaki showing the subject and name search boxes.
Subject search
Another excellent search is by subject. This searches the subjects database. By inserting a subject term in the Search: box, Turnbull Archival Catalogue (Tiaki) retrieves all linked catalogue records to your search word. The term Authors is the preferred search term here. It returns 63 subject headings. The term Writers can also be used, but as this is not the preferred term for Authors it will return fewer results.
Subject headings
By clicking into any of these fields you can begin to refine your search area, for example, Authors, Māori.
By clicking into the single catalogue heading Authors this will return over a thousand record items to consult across all formats. It will also reveal broader search terms like Artists and narrower search terms like Dramatists.
Literature is another popular search term to use when looking for different types of writing genres. Some literature headings can be very specific like Country life in literature for example. This search only reveals two collections of interest. When searching like this the broader the search term the more likely you are to get more results.
Other specialist search areas are searches by Places, Iwi/Hapū, Type of Material, and the general Keyword Search.
Keyword search
Keyword Search is very useful when you wish to search across all the collections as widely as possible. This includes information across all fields and will retrieve the greatest number of results. Use the quotation marks button " " to search for an exact phrase. A search on Authors here returns over 3000 items.
It must also be remembered that not every item or collection has been fully catalogued to incorporate all the authority terms that are available in the Turnbull Archival Catalogue (Tiaki). This is why a Keyword Search is so important if you are not obtaining the results you might have expected.
Other exact searches can be conducted using Title and Reference Number if you know this information. Filters also help by refining a search by Digital Content if there are electronic files or digitised content available. There are many photographs of writers digitised within the Collection including this photograph of the New Zealand Women Writers’ Society taken in 1957.
Members of the New Zealand Women Writers' Society, 1957. Photograph taken for the Evening Post newspaper of Wellington by an unidentified staff photographer. Ref: EP/1957/3033-F. Alexander Turnbull Library.
Using materials from the collections
There are numerous ways you can use and view items from our collections depending on whether you are at the Library or viewing online.
View original items at the Library
Original materials can be viewed in the Katherine Mansfield reading room, the Library’s secure reading room for Alexander Turnbull Library collection items. You will need to register and request the material in advance of your visit.
The collections are kept safe in climate-controlled storage, but they can be retrieved at your request. You will need to register as a reader with our published or unpublished catalogues.
Find more information about registering and requesting
View published materials at the Library
Published materials (articles, books, journals) appear across both the Alexander Turnbull Library and the National Library collections. Published items can be requested through the National Library catalogue to be consulted in the Library’s reading rooms.
View surrogates or digitised material
To protect the collections the library has made surrogates that can be used in place of the originals. The Library has microfilmed some materials which are available in the Katherine Mansfield Reading Room. Some materials have been digitised and are available on our website in the "Gallery" tab.
National Library website gallery tab
Special conditions for viewing
If you have special conditions where you would like to be able to see the originals please contact the Library in advance through our Ask A librarian service and our Curators will decide if an exception can be made see Ask A librarian.
Research copies
For personal use, you can make research copies of the collections at the Alexander Turnbull Library and National Library of New Zealand. You can use your own device (phone, tablet, camera) or by using the Reading Room resources. The Library also offers an Imaging Service where you can purchase high-resolution digital images or research copies see — Making copies.
If access restrictions apply to material
Some material has access restrictions, so you may need to seek the permission of the donor, curator, or Chief Librarian before you can view it. Some items have use restrictions. This means some material can only be viewed at the Library, while others may need special clearances before it can be published elsewhere. See our information on Access and use restrictions.
Copyright applies
New Zealand copyright law applies to all the collections in the Library. In regard to New Zealand authors, copyright applies to anything written by an author up to fifty years after their death.
Authors’ papers held in other New Zealand institutions
Several libraries and repositories in Aotearoa have research archives with collections of authors’ papers. Many have online catalogues to help you with your research. Some have digital collections that can be accessed remotely.
Examples of larger repositories include the following:
Auckland City Libraries (Sir George Grey Special Collections)
Auckland University Library (General Library Special Collections)
Other collections of authors’ papers can be housed in religious archives, family history centres, school archives, galleries, museums, government, and council archives. Many New Zealand authors’ collections are held privately by individual collectors or an author’s family.
Some collections can also be located in foreign libraries. An example of this is Katherine Mansfield’s papers which are held in the Alexander Turnbull Library and at the Newberry Library in Chicago.
Many New Zealand authors have international reputations including Eleanor Catton and Witi Ihimaera.
Authors’ annotated first editions. The Library's copies of Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries and Witi Ihimaera’s The Whale Rider. Alexander Turnbull Library.
Author profiles
There are over 600 authors and associated writer organisations and businesses catalogued in the Library’s unpublished database Turnbull Archival Catalogue (Tiaki). Our collections include both living and deceased authors. For some authors, we hold their complete literary papers and for others we may only hold a few pieces of correspondence from them to family, friends, and colleagues.
Below is a selection of eleven noted authors representing some of the types of writers whose works we hold, including writers who are English, Māori, Pākehā, Pasifika, women, men, lesbian, gay, poets, novelists, playwrights, historians, journalists, and children’s writers.
This list is arranged in chronological order by birth date. These entries include a brief biography with links to collections and resources of interest.
Search Turnbull Archival Catalogue (Tiaki) the Library's database of unpublished collections
William Golder (1810-1876)
William Golder was born in Lanark, Scotland. He arrived in Port Nicholson on 'Bengal Merchant' in 1840, with his wife and two daughters. Golder published the first collection of poetry in New Zealand (The New Zealand Minstrelsy, 1852) and he was also the first amateur printer who was not a missionary. He had published one volume of poetry before leaving Scotland and published four more in New Zealand. Returning to Scotland in 1876 after the death of his wife, he died shortly after in Govan.
L to R: William Golder portrait photograph. Golder family genealogy page. [Detail] Golder's name as it appears on a letter alongside 29 other named steerage passengers on the Bengal Merchant dated Port Nicholson, 14 March 1840. Ref: fMS-Papers-12194. Alexander Turnbull Library.
William Golder resources
Golder is catalogued six times in the Turnbull Archival Catalogue (Tiaki). The most prominent collection is the two microfilm copies of the Golder family diaries, Micro-MS-0895.
Two original poems by Golder are in the collection of Thuringisches Staatsarchiv Gotha, MS-Papers-6830.
There are also two oral history recordings by Brian Opie where he talks about Golder’s The New Zealand Minstrelsy OHColl-0389-01.
His life and work can be further studied on the New Zealand Electronic Text Centre website
Patricia Golder 'The Golders of Upper Hutt and Hukunui' (Wellington, 2000)
See also NZ National Bibliography, Part 1, pp 396-397, and
Eileen May Duggan (1894-1972)
Eileen Duggan was born in Marlborough to Irish parents (John Duggan and Julia Begley). She studied at Tuamarina Primary School, Marlborough High School, Teachers’ Training College, and Victoria University College in Wellington. Duggan worked sporadically as a secondary school teacher and assistant lecturer at Victoria University College.
Full-time writing became her main source of income for almost fifty years. Renowned as a poet she also wrote a weekly column for forty years in the Catholic periodical the New Zealand Tablet, using the pseudonym Pippa. Duggan was the first New Zealand author to gain an international reputation as a poet and was renowned for writing in the Georgian style of verse.
She was admitted to the Gallery of Living Catholic Authors in 1939, appointed an OBE in 1937, and made an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1943. In the early 1950s she stopped writing poetry and passed away at Calvary Hospital, Wellington, on 10th December 1972.
Eileen May Duggan, circa 1940. Photograph taken by Eileen Deste. Mrs E. Buckley Collection (PAColl-4008). Ref: 1/4-049917-G. Alexander Turnbull Library.
Eileen Duggan resources
Duggan is catalogued nearly one hundred times in the Turnbull Archival Catalogue (Tiaki). Many of these collections are in the papers of authors she wrote to throughout her career. There is a small number of photographs. The main collection is her own personal papers which were donated to the Library by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Wellington in 2022, PAR-44958. Also of particular interest are the files on Duggan’s work in Patrick Lawlor’s collection, 77-067-2/3.
Iris Guiver Wilkinson (Robin Hyde, 1906-1939)
Iris Wilkinson was born in Cape Town, South Africa but came to Wellington, New Zealand a month after her birth with her family. Her family lived in Newtown, Melrose, Berhamphore and Northland. She attended Berhampore Primary School and Wellington Girl's College. She also studied part-time at Victoria University while training as a journalist for the Dominion newspaper in Wellington. Wilkinson covered the Parliamentary Press Gallery as part of her work as a journalist. Over her short career she worked on various newspapers around New Zealand.
In 1925 Wilkinson adopted the name Robin Hyde as a pseudonym after the death of her son with the same name. As a writer she published 10 books between 1929 and 1939 together with articles, poetry, and prose. In 1929 her first volume of poetry, The Desolate Star, was published. She journeyed to China and Hong Kong where she received a pass to visit the war zone and continued to write both journalism and non-fiction work. Hyde travelled on to England in 1938. Her life-long ill health and overwork contributed to her suicide in Kensington, England in 1939. She was survived by son Derek Arden Challis (1930-2021).
Chinese travel documents, 1938. Part of — Challis, Derek Arden, 1930-2021: Papers relating to Robin Hyde. Ref: MS-Papers-9110-171. Alexander Turnbull Library.
Robin Hyde resources
Hyde’s main collection of literary papers (over 260 items) are located within her son’s collection, Derek Arden Challis: Papers relating to Robin Hyde, MS-Group-1648.
Challis has also deposited a collection of photographs of his mother with the Library, PA-Group-00226.
See DNZB (Vol 4, 1921-1940, p246-247, H41), where the choice of name entry is under Robin Hyde.
See Robin Hyde's entry in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography on Te Ara
Terence (Terry, T.P.) Power McLean (Sir, 1913-2004)
Terence Mclean was born in Wanganui in 1913. He attended various primary schools in Hastings and secondary school at New Plymouth Boys’ High. McLean worked as a journalist and author covering many New Zealand sports, particularly rugby. He commenced as a journalist on the Auckland Sun in 1930, subsequently working on the Hastings Tribune, New Zealand Observer, Taranaki Daily News and Evening Post (Wellington).
After World War II (serving as Major in the 22nd Infantry Battalion in Italy) he joined the New Zealand Herald (Auckland) as sports editor in 1946. For the next 30 years he accompanied most All Blacks teams overseas and visiting sides in New Zealand, writing a series of 32 tour books and other books on rugby. McLean covered over 100 All Blacks tests as a journalist.
In 1940 he married Carol Margaret Coyle, and they had three children. He retired from the Herald in 1978 but continued writing weekly columns in various newspapers. He received an MBE for services to sporting journalism in 1978 and a Knight Companion NZOM for services to sporting journalism in 1997. McLean was inducted into the International Rugby Hall of Fame in 2007. He died in Auckland in 2004.
L: Terry McLean, newly enlisted with 22 Battalion, 1942. Ref: PAColl-10107-4-01. R: McLean's notebooks used to record games as they happened. In these cases, they refer to games between the All Blacks and South Africa in 1956 and 1960. Ref: MSX-8713 and MSX-8720. Alexander Turnbull Library.
Terence McLean resources
McLean’s personal papers, diaries and research notebooks comprise 33 volumes and 15 folders, MS-Group-1953.
There is also a photographic collection with nearly 300 photographs at PA-Group-00852.
Thyra Avis Mary Acres (nee McNeill) (1910-1994)
Avis Acres was born in Wellington, one of four children. Her family moved to Auckland, and she was educated at St Cuthbert's College, Epsom. Acres was a successful children's writer and illustrator. Her cartoon strip 'Star Babies' was published by the Auckland Star in the 1920s. She also worked as a relieving teacher and children's furniture decorator, wrote a series of articles for the Forest and Bird Society magazines, and illustrated Christmas cards for the Ornithological Society.
Acres was especially known for a series called The adventures of Hutu and Kawa (published in the 1950s), showing two babies with hair and skirts like pōhutukawa flowers. In 1956 she published Opo the Gay Dolphin. She married George (Bob) Acres in 1935. They had no children, she died in Tauranga in 1994.
Avis Acres photographed with one of her paintings in 1993 by an unknown photographer. From the collection of Wendy Johnstone. Ref: PA12-2208. Alexander Turnbull Library.
Avis Acres resources
Acres’ personal collection comprises her literary drafts and business papers, MS-Papers-5397.
The Library also holds Acres’ original children's book illustrations, sketchbooks with watercolour paintings, pencil sketches, and photographs, ATL-Group-00207.
See Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, Volume 5
See also her biography entry in Penguin Author Series and the Te Ara Online Biography
Patricia Frances Grace (nee Gunson) (1937-)
Patricia Grace is of Ngāti Toa, Ngāti Raukawa and Te Ati Awa descent, and is affiliated to Ngāti Porou by marriage. She was born in Wellington and attended St Mary’s College and Wellington Teachers’ Training College. Grace became a teacher at age 25, and then started writing magazine articles then short stories, novels, and children’s books. Whilst teaching and writing she also raised her family of seven children with her husband Kerehi Waiariki Grace.
Grace is an aspirational figure in the rise and development of Māori fiction. She was the joint co-ordinator of the Ngāti Pōneke history, Silent Migration and has since won many national and international awards, including the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize for fiction, the Deutz Medal for Fiction, and the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. Grace received in 2007 a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for her services to literature. Grace was also the recipient of honorary doctorates in literature from Victoria University of Wellington in 1989 and the World Indigenous Nations University in 2016.
Patricia Grace portrait (1986) from the collection of Kenneth Fleming Quinn (ATL-Group-00559). Ref: 1/4-089327-F. Alexander Turnbull Library.
Patricia Grace resources
Grace is an example of an author where the Library does not hold the author’s literary or personal papers. She is catalogued as a contributor in the collections of a number of other writers’ papers but is most represented in the Oral History Collection, where the Library holds over twenty oral history tapes that include interviews or readings by Grace. Oral histories include Writer’s Day OHint-0013-040 and interviews about Ngāti Pōneke OHint-00600-11.
Albert Wendt (1939-)
Albert Wendt was born in Samoa in 1939. He is the son of Henry Alalu, the Ali'i of the Tuaopepe Aiga. He has German heritage through his great-grandfather. Wendt came to New Zealand on a scholarship in 1952 and attended New Plymouth Boys' High School, then Ardmore Teacher's College. He started creative writing during this period. He also studied at Victoria University of Wellington, graduating with an MA in History with a thesis about the Mau, Samoa's independence movement.
Wendt works across writing mediums as a novelist, poet, short story writer and editor. His first published novel was Sons for the Return Home in 1973. He is also a visual artist and painter. Wendt returned in 1965 to Samoa, becoming headmaster of Samoa College. In 1974 he moved to Fiji, where he taught at the University of the South Pacific becoming professor of Pacific literature and pro-vice-chancellor. In 1977 he set up the University of the South Pacific Centre in Samoa.
He has worked with the Pacific Islands literary journal Mana and was appointed Professor of English, University of Auckland in 1987. In 2013 Wendt was awarded Member of the New Zealand Order and in 2015 became a patron of the New Zealand Book Council.
Albert Wendt. Image by Raymond Sagapolutele, used by permission. Source: Poet Laureate blog
Albert Wendt resources
Wendt’s literary collection comprises 450 folders of manuscripts, 119 electronic documents and four photographs. The papers include literary drafts of stories, poems, and novels, as well as writing notebooks, correspondence, business documents, teaching material and newspaper cuttings, ATL-Group-00142.
Wendt has also written to many other authors, some of whose work we also hold in our Collection, including Alistair Campbell, 91-046-1/11.
Judith Mary Caroline Binney (nee Musgrove) / Te Tōmairangi o Te Aroha (Dame, 1940-2011)
Judith Mary Caroline was born in Australia in 1940. She attended Auckland University, graduating with a Master of Arts in 1965. She published her thesis Legacy of Guilt: A Life of Thomas Kendall in 1968 and taught in the Auckland University History Department from 1966 to 2004, before retiring as an Emeritus Professor. Binney worked as a historian, academic and writer throughout her career. She is best known for her well-regarded books on early missionary Thomas Kendall, Tuhoe leader Rua Kenana, the 'Nga Morehu' (oral history of a group of Tuhoe women), the life history of Te Kooti Rikirangi Turuki, and her Tuhoe/Urerewa history Encircled lands.
Her histories often deal with Māori responses to colonisation in Aotearoa. In 1997 she was made Companion of NZ Order of Merit and a Fellow of Royal Society in 1998. In 2006 she was made a Distinguished Companion of NZ Order of Merit. The name Te Tomairangi o te Aroha was bestowed upon her by Ngai Tuhoe at Waikirikiri Marae in Ruatoki during the blessing of her book Encircled Lands in 2009. Binney was married twice, first to painter Don Binney and later to Sebastian Black. She died in Auckland in February 2011.
Judith Binney portrait (1985) from the collection of Kenneth Fleming Quinn (ATL-Group-00559). Ref: PAColl-D-1626. Alexander Turnbull Library.
Judith Binney resources
Binney has an extensive collection at the Library which encompasses 563 folders of research papers, approximately 2000 photographs, 250 sound recordings and audio tapes, and electronic documents see ATL-Group-00190.
Binney is represented in many other collections including the oral history collection of the University of Auckland – Archive of Māori and Pacific Music where Binney was the interviewer, ATL-Group-00215.
See Dominion Post obituaries (Saturday, February 19, 2011, A25)
Phillip Anthony Mann (1942-2022)
Phillip Mann was born in Northallerton, Yorkshire, England in 1942. He completed an Honours Degree at the University of Manchester in 1966, then completed a Master of Arts Degree at the Humboldt State University, California in 1968. He was married to Nonnita Rees and together they had two children. Mann worked as an actor, theatre director, university academic and writer of short stories, plays and science fiction. He has published eleven science fiction novels, the first was The Eye of the Queen (1982), and his final novel Chevalier & Gawayn (2022). In 1970 he was the founding lecturer in Drama Studies at Victoria University, Wellington, and then became Artistic Director of Downstage Theatre 1985-1986.
From 1977 to 1979 Mann and Nonnita Rees worked as sub-editors for the New China News Agency in China. In the late 1990s Mann worked as a freelance theatre director, full-time novelist and in 2010 was the recipient of the Sir Julius Vogel Award for services to Science Fiction. In 2017 he was awarded the New Zealand Order of Merit for his services to theatre and literature. He died in Wellington in September 2022.
Phillip Mann when he was a student at the University of Manchester, ca 1966. From the private collection of Phillip Mann and Nonnita Rees. Used by permission.
Phillip Mann resources
Mann’s collection of papers contains extensive literary drafts and research material relating to both theatre and science fiction in analogue and electronic formats, MS-Group-0896.
There are also many programmes and posters relating to Mann’s theatre productions in the collection of Downstage Theatre, including Eph-C-DOWNSTAGE.
Noel M Virtue (1947-)
Noel Virtue was born in New Zealand and raised in Lower Hutt, Waikato, and Auckland. His early career was spent as a zookeeper at the London Zoological Society and the Welsh Mountain Zoo. He later became a novelist who also produced several books of autobiography. Among his published works are The Redemption of Elsdon Bird, (1987) and Once a Brethren Boy, (1995).
He has been published in New Zealand and internationally and his work has been recognized and nominated for many awards and prizes. His autobiographical works show how his early family experiences, his homosexuality, and his time spent living and working in the United Kingdom, were all significant to his development as a writer.
Noel Virtue portrait (c1980s – 1990s) from the collection of John A Zeigler (PA-Group-00530). Ref: PACOLL-9583-3. Alexander Turnbull Library.
Noel Virtue resources
Virtue’s literary papers include business and personal correspondence, literary drafts, workbooks and reviews, MS-Group-0878.
He is also represented by a collection of sound and video recordings and in the collections of other authors’ papers as a letter correspondent, OHColl-0575.
Keri (Kerry) Ann Ruhi Hulme (1947-2021)
Keri Ann Ruhi Hulme (Kāi Tahu, Kāti Māmoe) was born in Christchurch in 1947, the eldest of six children. She studied at Brighton Primary School, Aranui High School in Christchurch, and briefly at Canterbury University.
Hulme began writing as a teenager and was published in magazines, journals, and anthologies before establishing herself as an author of volumes of poetry, short stories, and novels. In 1977, Hulme received the Bank of New Zealand Katherine Mansfield Short Story Award. Her first collection of poetry The Silences Between (Moeraki Conversations) was published in 1982.
Her novel the bone people was first published in 1983 by the Spiral Collective to national and international acclaim. the bone people won the New Zealand Book Award for Fiction in 1984 and then the prestigious international Booker Prize in 1985. Hulme was the first writer to win the Booker Prize with their debut novel. In 1986 her volume of short stories The Windeater - Te kaihau was published by Victoria University Press in Wellington. Her second volume of stories Stonefish was published by Huia Publishers in 2004. Hulme died at Waimate in December 2021.
Group portrait including Keri Hulme standing on the far right smoking a pipe outside the Women’s Gallery, Harris Street, Wellington. Also, in the photograph are from left are Marian Evans, Allie Eagle, Nancy Peterson, Juliet Batten, Anna Keir, Heather McPherson, Bridie Lonie, Bridget Eyley, and Claudia Pond Eyley. Photograph taken by Fiona Clark, probably in January 1980. From the collection of Des Ryan (PAColl-0756). Ref: PAColl-0756-1. Alexander Turnbull Library.
Keri Hulme resources
Hulme’s collection of personal papers is held by the Macmillan Brown Library at the University of Canterbury. There are however many personal papers at the Library where Hulme is both a subject of and a contributor to a literary collection, particularly the Spiral Collective and Women’s Gallery collections.
The Library holds oral history recordings with Hulme, OHint-0013-150, and she is also mentioned in promotional ephemera items. The most recent acquisition by the Library of a work of Hulme’s is her original typescript for her Booker Prize-winning novel the bone people, ATL-Group-00788. We also hold letters from Hulme to her childhood pen-friend Ann Brayne in England during the 1960s, MS-Papers-12781.
Useful secondary sources
New Zealand verse / collected by W.F. Alexander and A.E. Currie. 1882-1957;
London: Walter Scott Pub. Co., 1906.
The Penguin history of New Zealand literature / Patrick Evans. 1944- , Auckland, N.Z. : Penguin, 1990.
The bookmen's dominion : cultural life in New Zealand, 1920-1950 / Chris Hilliard. Auckland, N.Z. : Auckland University Press, 2006.
New Zealand literature : a survey / E.H. McCormick. 1906-1995. London: Wellington N.Z.: O.U.P., 1959
An anthology of twentieth century New Zealand poetry / selected by Vincent O'Sullivan. Auckland N.Z. : Oxford University Press, 1987
The Oxford companion to New Zealand literature / edited by Roger Robinson, Nelson Wattie. Melbourne Vic. ; Auckland N.Z. : Oxford University Press, 1998
A dictionary of New Zealand biography / edited by G. H. Scholefield. 1877-1963; New Zealand. Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington, N.Z. : Dept. of Internal Affairs, 1940
The Oxford history of New Zealand literature in English / edited by Terry Sturm. Auckland, N.Z. : Oxford University Press, 1998
New Zealand studies : a guide to bibliographic resources / J.E. Traue.1932-
Stout Research Centre (Wellington, N.Z.), Wellington N.Z. : Victoria University Press.
Acknowledgments
Research guide created by Seán McMahon, June 2023
Image research guidance by Natalie Marshall
Reviewed by Jared Davidson, Paul Diamond, Natalie Marshall, Anthony Tedeschi, and Julie Fenwick
Edited by Jay Buzenberg