Colonial New Zealand literature in the global marketplace: Then and now

Abstract

ABSTRACTContemporary commentators frequently portrayed 19th-century New Zealand as the most British colony. Indeed, the majority of settlers came from the British Isles and actively sought to replicate a British way of life on the so-called periphery of empire. A defining element in the construction of colonial culture was the continued participation in anglophone print culture through reading and writing. Until recently, colonial New Zealand writing has been dismissed as a minor variant of English literature that included nothing significant about the place it was produced in and, instead, relied on conventions imported from Europe. Only in the last two decades have revisionist critics reinvigorated the discussion of early New Zealand writing. This article reviews the complicated emplacement of colonial New Zealand literature by discussing its critical reception as well as its national and international publishing trajectories, and how these have problematized the conception of an early “national” canon of New Zealand literature.