New Zealand Electronic Text Collection: New texts from the NZETC (November 2009)

We're happy to announce a number of texts made recently available online at the NZETC website.

These texts are a bit of a varied bunch, but include the following notable works:

Te Kāhui Kura Māori
The second issue of a born-digital journal of post-graudate Māori Writing.
A Book in the Hand: Essays on the History of the Book in New Zealand
Originally published in 2000 by Auckland University Press who, along with the authors, have kindly permitted us to make this important book available online.

There are some fascinating works in this collection, including Donald Kerr's essay on George Gray's book-collecting habits, Peter Lineham's look at the production of the 1887 second edition of the Maori bible, and Terry Sturm's survey of the publishing history of G. B. Lancaster, one of New Zealand's most successful authors who is little-remembered these days.

For those with a more bibliographic bent, there is Jocelyn Cumming's article on the conservation of the 1827 East India Pilot, Peter Hughes' history of printer Bob Lowry and the Pelorus Press, and Margery Blackman's work on the art and craft of bookbinder Eleanor Joachim.

For others more interested in literature itself, there is Patrick Sandbrook's essay on Robin Hyde, and Lawrence Jones observations on the shifts in generational attitudes that occured in the 1930s when writers such as Denis Glover, R.A.K Mason, and A. R. D. Fairburn were taking over from the older, established order of writers such as Alan Mulgan and Charles Marris.
The Manuscript Diary of James Brogden, August 1871 – December 1872
James Brogden was approached in 1871 by Julius Vogel to construct the railway network that he envisioned for New Zealand, and Brogden's diary recounts many observations of his travels through New Zealand, negotiations with New Zealand public officials, and the resulting process of railway construction. Often candid, Brodgen's diary entries reveal the difficulties and frustrations he faced when dealing with both the physical and political geography of New Zealand.

The original manuscript of this diary resides in the National Library of Wales, and we are pleased to be able to make the digital version (including fascimilie images of the manuscript diary pages) available online with the assistance and encouragement of David Budgett, a relative of James Brogden.

James Brogden eventually went bankrupt, at least in part because of difficulties with the arrangements negotiated for the construction of New Zealand railways. As David phrases it in his introduction, "the diary then is written by an optimistic and vigorous man who has worked hard and successfully on the industrial development of his part of South Wales and hopes to do something similar in New Zealand. His story after that was less happy"
Jerzy Podstolski's 1972 translation of Sygurd Wiśniowski's 1877 Polish novel Tikera; or, Children of the Queen of Oceania
The NZETC Nineteenth Century novel collection includes many literary curios, to which we now add this novel. Written by an adventuring Polish writer who had some acquaintance with the country, having lived here in 1864-5 though not visiting the novel's settings of the Waikato, the Bay of Plenty, or New Plymouth, Tikera was originally published in 1877, with this version being translated from the 1956 Warsaw edition of Dzieci królowej Oceanii by Jerzy Podstolski, a Senior Lecturer at the former Library School in Wellington. This edition originally appeared with a very enlightening commentary by Dennis McEldowney which however, because of copyright considerations, we have not been able to make available on the website.

Sydney Parkinson's A Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas
Sydney Parkinson was employed by Joseph Banks as a botanical artist sailing with Cook on his first voyage to New Zealand, and he recorded his many impressions both in literary and visual form.
Parkinson unfortunately died of dysentry during the first voyage, and his diary was eventually edited and published by his brother, becoming a runaway bestseller of the time. Being a facsimilie of a 1784 reprint, the journal contains features such as an early vocabularly of the Maori language, and a number of early images of New Zealand and its inhabitants.

There are also a number of works which add further to collections that we've been developing in the last few years: