5. Readers and Reading
The purpose in generating print culture items is that they are read. This
chapter discusses the development of attitudes to reading and literacy in
New Zealand, opening with a survey of literacy programmes and resources
within the formal education system from the 19th century through to the
present day. This is complemented by the following section 'Creating an
interest in print culture' which reviews ways in which a range of
organisations, including the book trade itself, works towards increasing the
general level of interest in reading.
'Recognition and rewards
of success' identifies incentives for writers and the trade through literary
prizes and awards, and also looks at the development of literary criticism
and reviewing of New Zealand creative literature in English. A slightly
different approach is taken in 'Changing trends and special needs' which
surveys a broad spectrum of 'different' publications from comics to artists'
books, and from talking books to luxury editions and CD-ROM products.
The final section of this
chapter covers the major New Zealand access tools, which fill multiple roles
in the print culture context. Bibliographies, indexes and general reference
works are not only a publishing category of their own (and one worthy of
detailed study), but they also provide a necessary infrastructure through
which access is gained to print culture records and publishing history. They
are valuable resources for researchers, who are readers of a special sort.
Reading and literacy
Before 1877
The teaching of reading and education generally in New Zealand was
sporadic and uneven in the first years of the 19th century. Samuel
Marsden opened the first mission school for Mäori in 1816 in
the Bay of Islands, and before 1840 there were also Wesleyan and
Catholic mission schools. C.L. Bailey in A Documentary
History of New Zealand Education (1989) points out there were
'hordes' of children on the ships of the New Zealand company, 195 on the
Bolton alone, with some desultory schooling
but, though clergymen were given free passage for services rendered,
schoolteachers were not.
Most schools were
established by churches or private individuals and privately run and
paid for. In the 1850s provincial governments were given responsibility
for education, but only Nelson and Otago set up education systems, and
in 1858 Nelson abolished fee-paying in favour of a household levy.
Reading was dependent on the reading books used in Britain which were
brought by settlers, and Hugh Price's essay 'Reading books and reading
in New Zealand schools 1877-1900' (1987) notes the most widely used were
the religious and didactic Irish National Readers. From 1867 New Zealand
booksellers began to import the graded series of Royal
Readers , published by Thomas Nelson of Edinburgh to meet the
needs of the British Revised Code of 1862 which
varied teachers' payment according to the examination success of their
pupils. Parents were required to buy one reader per year, and promotion
from class to class was based almost entirely on success in reading.
Demand for literacy
among Mäori was very strong in the early part of the 19th
century. M.P.K. Sorrenson in 'Maori and Pakeha' in The
Oxford History of New Zealand (1981, p.170) estimated that by
1845 about half of adult Mäori could read a little in
Mäori. Readers for Mäori speakers appeared very early:
in 1815, A Korao no New Zealand or the New Zealander's
First Book , a glossary and phrase book; Ratari , lists of phonetic sound groups in Mäori and
words in 1834; and from 1839 William Colenso printed a series of readers
and lesson sheets in Mäori at the Waimate Mission. Most of the
Mäori readers printed in the 1840s and 1850s were produced by
mission presses.
He
Puka Ako i te Korero Maori (1841) is a wordlist of South Island
Mäori compiled by James Watkin and He Korero
Tara mo te Kura (1851) is a collection of fables. He Pukapuka Whakaako mo te Kura , printed at St.
John's College in 1852, is a typical example of the mission-produced
reader in Mäori, opening with lists of vowels, then syllables,
sentences, paragraphs and numbers. (A later edition (1870) added prayers
and responses.) Colenso published Ko te A-Nui a Wi Hei
Ako Maana ki te Reo Ingirihi or Willie's
First English Book in 1872, a parallel text for learning
English with graded lessons and vocabularies.
Teaching reading to
Mäori in English became standard practice in 1886 with The Native School Reader for Standards II and III
, produced by the Government Printer, which consisted of 50 fables
'altered and in some cases localised so that they
may be interesting to Maoris' (preface). The Native
School Reader abounds with hortatory 'fables' which are
colonising and assimilatory in intent. Kuni Jenkins's study of literacy
as an agent of colonisation Becoming
Literate—Becoming English (1993), discusses the
earliest Mäori manuscripts by Titere and Tuai (referred to in
some sources as 'Tui'), young Ngäpuhi men who spent 1818 in
England and recorded their reading lessons in English. Jenkins makes an
important argument about the whole process of literacy as a coercive
tool of colonisation.
Reports from the
Inspectors of Native Schools published in the Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives (AJHR)
from 1858 onwards sometimes provide very detailed information as
to numbers of pupils, reading progress and texts used. Although
administration of Native Schools was transferred to the Education
Department in 1879, separate reports for Native Schools continue in AJHR through until 1953 (shoulder numbers vary,
especially before 1882).
Education Act 1877
The Education Act 1877 provided for free, compulsory and secular
education and began the standardisation of reading systems and readers,
which are comprehensively discussed up to 1900 in Price (1987). The
curriculum stressed reading and writing and graded children into six
standards with corresponding readers. Reading was taught by the
alphabetic method: exercises in letters and letter combinations,
progressing from texts written in one and two-letter words to
three-letter word texts, until whole paragraphs in small typeface were
achieved. The reading texts were mostly moral tales written for British
council schools and maintained class values and divisions. Most readers
imply reading skills should be directed towards civic and moral duty
such as H.O. Arnold-Forster's The Citizen Reader
(1907), which set out to describe institutions and administration to New
Zealand children in language they could understand. Approved Readers for the Catholic Schools of Australasia
(1908) mixed approved excerpts from literary writers and clerics, and
New Zealand Graphic Readers (Collins School
Series) offered extracts from 'classic' writers such as Shakespeare and
Addison together with Cook's journals and short descriptive pieces on
New Zealand topics.
Department of
Education Inspectors' reports published from 1880 on-wards in AJHR (H.1-I, 1880; E.1-B, 1881-1908) open a
'window on Victorian classrooms', especially the methods and most
frequent problems and complaints encountered in teaching reading, one of
which was the scarcity of reading books (Price, 1987, p.187). W.C.
Hodgson's Inspector's report for the Marlborough Education Board (1888)
puts the proportion of books to pupils in a class in Picton at 6:17.
The first mainstream
reading books published in New Zealand were Whitcombe & Tombs's
Southern Cross Readers (1886-87), followed by
the Imperial Readers (1899) and the Pacific Readers series which began in 1911 and
aimed 'to assist in fostering the growth of national and patriotic
sentiments'. From 1911 to 1949 nearly all New Zealand children learned
to read from locally written and published reading books— Live Readers for the Modern Child (1922) and Progressive Readers (1928), not replaced until
1949 by the Janet and John series which was based
on an American original. Whitcombe & Tombs were the major
publishers of reading materials for children, with one series after
another. There was no comparable publisher in Australia and Whitcombe
& Tombs's readers were also widely used there, with copies
produced for each Australian state. Whitcombe & Tombs also
produced Whitcombe's Story Books , a series which
began in 1904 and included about 450 titles at its height in the late
1930s and early 1940s, by which time it was the biggest series of
children's books in the world. Ian McLaren's bibliography Whitcombe's Story Books (1984) and its supplement
(1987) is a comprehensive listing of the series which included many
reprints of 'classic' texts. Before 1949 parents bought reading books
directly, but with the advent of Janet and John
came school sets, and a change in focus, shifting to descriptive tales
of children's experience.
Basil Carryer's School in New Zealand in the Twenties (1991)
gives an account of the reading methods and history of education in the
1920s, including school timetables, the date of the new syllabus and the
opening of the Correspondence School in 1928.
Reading series and methods
There is no comprehensive account of the history of reading and reading
methods in New Zealand after Price's 1987 essay, though Price himself
has a work in progress on the history of reading books from 1900.
However, the number of studies and papers on reading grows exponentially
from the 1950s. Much of the research was initiated and funded by the
Department (now Ministry) of Education and the New Zealand Council for
Educational Research (NZCER). Hig[h]lights in
Education 1816-1985 (1986) is a useful checklist of major
events in education, and Roger Openshaw's 'Schooling in the 50's and 60's' (1991) and Price's School
Books Published in New Zealand to 1960 (1992) provide accounts
of the materials and educational methods of those years. Price (1992) is
a supplement to Bagnall's New Zealand National
Bibliography to the year 1960 which excluded school textbooks;
Price contains about 2,000 titles listed in chronological order under
subject headings.
The production of
reading materials has been a traditional activity of the
Department/Ministry of Education dating back to before the 1920s;
reading readiness has latterly been a focus of its research and
publication. The School Journal , which began in
1907, has been a continuous source of reading material for schools.
Provided free to every child monthly until the late 1950s, it is a mix
of fiction and non-fiction produced by local writers and was accompanied
(1948-80) by School Bulletins for primary and
post-primary students, also published by the Department. In 1989 the
School Publications Branch of the Department of Education was
corporatised into Learning Media Ltd, which continues to produce the Journal and the Ready to
Read series, as well as handbooks for teachers on reading and
writing. Its School Journal Catalogue (1996) is a
current index.
The Department of
Education also produced guides for teachers to help them choose readers:
Books for Infant Classes (1969), a checklist
which gave the readers a rating; Books for Junior
Classes (1978), now published every two years (the most recent
in 1996), a classified guide to commercially-published material; Reading in Junior Classes (1991); and The Learner as a Reader (1996), which has a
section on recent reading resources produced by the Ministry of
Education.
Janet and John , which replaced Whitcombe's Progressive Readers series in 1949, used a combination of
phonic analysis pre-reading and 'look and say' vocabulary learning, but
the early issues were weak on narrative. ( Run, John,
Run: Watch, Janet, Watch , a study of sex-role stereotyping in
infant readers was published in 1975, and Anne Else critiqued the sexism
and racism of Janet and John readers in a paper
given at the first annual conference of the History of the Book in New
Zealand, Auckland, 1995.) Initially there were seven books accompanied
by a handbook for teachers, but it was found they needed supplementing
to reduce the steepness of the learning curve. In 1963 the Department of
Education published the New Zealand-centred Ready to
Read series of 12 little and six big books. The Ready to Read series produces new titles every
year and is issued to all New Zealand schools with junior classes;
support materials include An Introduction to Ready to
Read (1993).
At the invitation of
the Department of Education, a number of publishers also began
publishing supplementary little book series in the 1960s: Reed's Read it Yourself books and the Environmental
readers, Paul's Book Arcade Playtime readers,
Whitcombe and Tombs's Step Along Stories , and
Price Milburn. Price Milburn's 32 PM Supplementary
Readers were published 1963-65 and followed the same graded
colour covers and vocabularies as Ready to Read .
In 1968 Price Milburn began to export to America and Britain. The books
were revised in 1969 and included in the long-running series PM Story Readers , many of them written by
Beverley Randell, one of the best known and most prolific writers of
story readers for children. Hugh Price's Beverley
Randell: A Checklist of Children's Books Written by Her,
1955-1995 (1996) indicates the scope of her writing and the series
of children's books available.
Shortland introduced
the Story Box series for five-to eight-year-olds
to New Zealand schools in 1978 and started exporting them in 1979. Many
of the readers were written by Joy Cowley, the well-known novelist.
Wendy Pye's reading scheme Jellybeans (for the
parent market) began in 1985 and contains about 200 titles, again many
written by already well-known writers like Cowley and Margaret Mahy. A
number of more recent issues have also come out in Mäori
translations. Pye's export of school readers to Europe and the US has
been phenomenally successful and she has also been the first publisher
in the world to successfully market an educational reading scheme on
video. Thomas Nelson took over from Price Milburn and produces picture
books and other early reading material. In 1997 Learning Media expanded
into the United States, introducing two new children's
programmes—Learning Media Literacy and Learning Media
Professional—with 140 New Zealand children's books and
materials adapted for the American market.
Teaching reading
Since 1963 New Zealand teachers have been members of the International
Reading Association and the proceedings of the annual conferences of the
New Zealand Reading Association (NZRA) are a useful account of reading
practices, materials and research from 1970.
English in the New Zealand Curriculum is the Ministry of
Education's policy document which sets out the reading objectives of the
curriculum. Literacy is regarded as a reciprocal relation between
reading and writing in New Zealand and there are two teachers' handbooks
which accompany the policy— Dancing with The
Pen: The Learner as a Writer (1992) and The
Learner as a Reader: Developing Reading Programmes (1996),
which contains a helpful bibliography of resources and discusses the
conceptual thinking behind the teaching of reading.
The work of Dorothy
Neal White and Dorothy Butler stresses the importance of books to small
children. White's Books Before Five (1954) is
based on a reading diary White kept of her daughter Carol's response to
and interest in books with suggestions for parents. Butler's Babies Need Books (1980) discusses introducing
books to babies and includes booklists by age group, as does its sequel
Five to Eight (1986), a manual for parents on
how to read and interact with children about books. Cushla and her Books (1979) is a case study of Butler's
handicapped granddaughter and her relation with books, based on a
reading diary kept by her mother, and also provides biographical
information on the way Cushla learned to read.
The progress of
children learning to read is monitored by teachers administering the PAT
(progressive achievement) tests developed in the late 1960s, explained
in Warwick Elley and Neil Reid's Progressive
Achievement Tests (1969). The realisation that little was known
about how small children interact and learn in the classroom led to the
pioneering Reading Recovery work of Dame Marie Clay and the development
of the Reading Recovery programme. Clay's Reading: The
Patterning of Complex Behaviour (1972) and The Early Detection of Reading Difficulties (1979a) discuss
the processes and procedures of reading readiness, including a
diagnostic survey and Reading Recovery. Clay's work has been very
influential internationally and there are many studies of reading which
refer to or use her work. Courtney B. Cazden's Whole
Language Plus: Essays on Literacy in the United States and New
Zealand (1992) describes her seven trips to New Zealand from
1983 to 1991 in order to pursue a research project in Reading Recovery
based on Clay's research (1979b, 1993).
There is a great deal
of research on reading acquisition, Reading Recovery and reading
readiness in education publications. Elley's Assessing
the Difficulty of Reading Materials (1975) addresses the whole
word method; he is the author of numerous studies on the teaching of
reading including Lessons Learned From LARIC
(1988). Learning Media's The Learner as a Reader
(1996) surveys the field of theoretical writing in recent years and
provides some historical account of the teaching of reading in the last
two decades. There are also useful bibliographies and discussion of
recent developments in Tom Nicholson's Overcoming the
Matthew Effect (1991) and At the Cutting
Edge (1994). There is a bibliography of New Zealand Council for
Educational Research (NZCER) publications 1934-84 (Marland and Pickens,
1985) but no bibliography of Department of Education publications.
Literacy
Hans Wagemaker's Achievement in Reading Literacy
(1993) is a comprehensive breakdown of the reading achievement of a
group of 9-and 14-year-old readers undertaken as part of an
international Unesco survey which discusses the factors influencing
reading achievement and puts New Zealand's overall performance in an
international context. A commentary on the survey is offered in Comprehending the Recent IEA Reading Literacy
Survey (NZEI, 1993) which discusses the high correlation between a
country's reading achievement and economic indicators. Ministry of
Education reports such as Boyd and Bennie's A Summary
of Reading Recovery Data (1989), and Henson's Reading in the Middle and Upper Primary School (1991), and
the Research Bulletin produced by the Ministry of
Education provide continuing information on reading achievement.
Janet Maconie's Survey of Teenage Reading in New Zealand ,
published for the 1969 New Zealand Library and Book Week, surveys the
reading habits of fourth formers and the availability of reading
resources for teenagers. A community reading survey carried out in Levin
in 1978 published by the New Zealand Book Council (Kate Fortune, 1982)
revealed the community percentage of what the study described as 'heavy
readers' and provided rare information on reading habits. Monthly
publications like the Booksellers News (1988-) or
the quarterly Booknotes , newsletter of the New
Zealand Book Council, provide a record of bestseller lists, book events
and some indication of readerships.
Adult literacy was not
publicly recognised as a problem in New Zealand until the early 1970s
when organised literacy programmes were developed. Kathleen Hill's From This Fragile Web (1990) is an informal
history of the Adult Literacy Movement in New Zealand, which began in
Hawkes Bay in 1974 with the Hawkes Bay Adult New Readers Programme. John
Benseman's Taking Control Over Their Own Lives
(1989) is a study of the Auckland Literacy Scheme and a history of ARLA,
the Adult Reading and Learning Assistance Federation. Benseman points
out there is very little research on adult literacy in New Zealand and
includes a useful discussion of available research work. An NZCER survey
A Job-Related Survey Among Electric Power Board
Workers (1983) looks at workplace literacy, as does Literacy At Work (1993), which is a joint
ARLA/Fletcher Challenge project surveying literacy in 17 companies from
a number of different industries in the Fletcher Challenge group. Angela
Irwin's study for the Department of Education The
Literacy Needs of Access Students (1988) and A.D. Mudford's Literacy Survey of Prison Inmates (1993) also
focus on the literacy of particular groups.
In 1988 the Caxton
Press published Michael's Challenge Overcoming
Illiteracy by Michael Marquet, an autobiographical account of
the author's speech and learning difficulties and achievement of
literacy in the Christchurch Adult Reading Scheme. Marquet's book won
the Unesco Literacy Award for 1988 and was followed by a fuller account
including his trip to Paris to receive the award, Literacy My Prize (1991). It is estimated there are
50,000-100,000 adult New Zealanders with literacy problems. Unesco
continues to be involved with literacy work in New Zealand, publishing
papers on progress in literacy and supporting conferences. In 1990,
International Literacy Year, Unesco supported the International Literacy
Year hui on Mäori and Pacific Island issues in literacy and the
17th NZRA conference Nurture the Culture in the
same year published a variety of papers on literacy and had as its
keynote speakers Dame Marie Clay and Leanna Traill on 'Educational
Culture: Aotearoa'. Literacy issues are also of interest to economists.
Ian Livingstone's Literacies, Numeracies and
Scientific Understandings (1994) discusses the relation between
education and economic growth.
Te Reo and literacy programmes for Mäori
One of the initiatives of the Tü Tangata philosophy of the
Department of Maori Affairs in the late 1970s was the establishment of
the Te Köhanga Reo movement in 1977. The primary aim of Te
Köhanga Reo is to encourage and increase the development of
Mäori spoken language but they also begin pre-reading skills
with picture cards and stories in Mäori. The consequence of
success in Te Köhanga Reo and continuing education in
Mäori has been a huge increase in Mäori text picture
books, school readers and educational books generally. One of the most
important changes in education generally and specifically teaching
reading has been the development of Te Reo Mäori, and there are
now over 60 titles in the He Purapura series of
readers for five-to eight-year-olds; some of the Ready
to Read series have been translated into Mäori, and
there are also the He Kohikohinga series for
older students; Ngä Körero
which are stories from the School Journal
translated into Mäori and Ngä
Tamariki Iti o Aotearoa , books designed to be read to young
children. These series are all produced by Learning Media and are listed
in a handbook Te Reo Mäori Resources
(1993). (Learning Media has also produced reading materials in Samoan
and other Pacific Island languages which are discussed in more detail in
the following chapter.)
Literacy among
Mäori children prompted the development of the Reading Tutoring
Programme documented in Pause, Prompt, Praise
(Atvars, Berryman and Glynn, 1995), a trial project implemented by
Mäori for Mäori in the Tauranga area. Surveys like
Wagemaker (1993) highlight the comparatively poor performance of Mäori and Polynesian children in
reading achievement and there are as yet no PAT tests for children
learning reading in Mäori. Children's reading achievement in
Mäori is discussed in Köhanga Reo
Let's Celebrate (1992). Mäori
Literacy and Numeracy (Irwin, Davies and Harre Hindmarsh, 1995)
puts Mäori literacy generally into the context of colonial and
post-colonial political and discursive processes and discusses the
collision of an oral tradition with the world of literacy.
Conclusion
The huge quantity of material on the teaching of reading cannot be
adequately covered in this survey but even a preliminary indication of
its extent draws attention to the importance of literacy in New
Zealand's colonial and post-colonial culture; the ways in which literacy
is both the first ground and an active factor in discourses as widely
spread as colonisation, imperial history, pedagogy, economics, cognitive
development and gender; its role in the conflict between an oral and a
print culture; and to the development of reading materials and methods
in New Zealand that are internationally recognised and imitated. The
teaching of reading and the place of literacy are significant emphases
in New Zealand cultural history.
Creating an interest in print culture
A history of the creation of interest in print culture is largely that of
institutions and organisations, and thus is relatively easy for the
researcher to identify and access. Two aspects seem important historically
and in contemporary terms: the education system (including its encouragement
of reading as a function of the basic skill of literacy), and a generally
held (though increasingly contested) notion of 'culture'. That is, those
values which a civilised society deems its duty to uphold, and which have
historically included literature. Victorians, such as Matthew Arnold, saw
literature as a moral force in a world increasingly uncertain about the
security of religious faith, and the academic study of literature, new in
the 19th century, took on this Messianic tinge. In Britain, movements
towards universal education and in particular adult self-improvement
combined both these strands—the educational and the
cultural—and these values were brought to New Zealand by
19th-century immigrants, who saw and used reading as a central part of their
value system.
The history and
development of the public library system embodies these attitudes, and is
therefore an obvious source of information. Libraries not only provide
books, but historically have also developed programmes of encouragement and
education aimed both at adults and children. Encouragement of membership and
use, reading sessions, special promotions concerning particular books or
events and the generally high profile of the library in the community are
factors that contribute. Sources for the researcher are, obviously, written
histories and archival material concerning individual libraries. Examples
include C.W. Holgate's An Account of the Chief Libraries
in New Zealand (1886), John Barr's Auckland
Public Libraries 1880-1950 (1950), and Dorothy Stafford's The Library from the Sea: the Nelson Public Library
1842-1992 (1992), which contain a wealth of detail and anecdote,
as well as testifying to the commitment early communities had to literary
culture. Mary Ronnie's Books to the People: A History of
Regional Services in New Zealand (1993) gives an overview.
There are a number of more
theoretical or policy-oriented works which concern the library and its place
in society: for example, McIntyre's Building the Library
into the Community (1969); Cullen and Calvert's Public Library Effectiveness (1992b); O'Reilly's 'Libraries': An Exercise in Definition (1968), and Euan Miller's
The Library and the Community (1973). These may
be more an expression of an aspiration than a reality, but are still useful
in denoting the general climate. Evidence for individual promotional efforts
are more difficult to trace, but a somewhat random sample, from M.J.
Edmonds's 'Children's Book Week, 20-24 August' (1956) to Woodhouse's Great Library Success Stories (1994) is indicative of
activities at a local level, and more material may be available through
individual archives. The New Zealand Library (now Library and Information)
Association has been active in this regard, with nationally organised
campaigns, reading and activities, as well as being a publisher of research
material. While the latter is easily accessible, the former is harder to
identify, and local archives and personal memory may be the most profitable
source.
Many libraries evolved out
of private institutes or societies formed in the early days of settlement
for the encouragement of civilised intercourse, with their functions later
superseded by or subsumed into the official public library service.
Histories and archives of organisations such as the Mechanics' Institutes,
and the Leys Institute, mainly relating to last century and the first part
of this century, recount their history and expand upon their general
philosophy. Cultural, quasi-social organisations such as the English
Association also played a part. There are a number of archival and published
records of such organisations which record their aspirations and
achievements.
Non-government
organisations with a more overtly educational bias also contributed to the
creation of an interest in print culture. As mentioned, Victorian ideas of
self-improvement, sometimes combined with a political, often left-wing,
agenda formed the basis of adult educational movements, such as the Workers
Educational Association (WEA), Mechanics' Institutes, and university
extension programmes, where book groups, literary discussions and lectures
were an important feature. Works such as The WEA of New
Zealand: What it Is and What it Aims At (1968) deal with the
aspirational base of the organisation, whereas works such as J.B.
Condliffe's The Beginnings of the WEA (1968) record
an anecdotal history. Rachel Barrowman's A Popular Vision:
The Arts and the Left in New Zealand 1930-1950 (1991) gives a broad
context to the ideological basis of this movement, while histories of
individual universities (for example, Keith Sinclair's History of the University of Auckland (1983) and Barrowman's
forthcoming history of Victoria University of Wellington) discuss the growth
of university extension and continuing education movements.
Book groups, semi-formal
organisations meeting in individual members' homes to discuss a prepared
book, seem to have arisen from such organisations; the WEA and university
extension departments have been involved in the provision of reading lists,
sets of books, study guides and advice. And there is a great deal of
anecdotal evidence that informal groups, based on this model but without the
institutional backing, have been a feature of middle class cultural life for
some time. The enormous popularity of reading is both attested to and
encouraged by literary festivals such as the Women's Book Festival and the
Writers and Readers Week component of the Wellington International Festival
of the Arts. Ann Mallinson's Recollections of Five
Festivals (1996) gives an account of the latter, while in-house
and archival memory of those involved in the former is a source to be
tapped.
Government patronage of
the arts has been organised around the Arts Council, previously the Queen
Elizabeth II Arts Council, now Creative New Zealand, and there is a large
body of material, both descriptive and philosophical, which has resulted in
the Council's responsibility towards encouragement of print culture. Some of
this energy has been directed towards writers and thus is only indirectly
within the ambit of this discussion, and, in general terms, in the absence
of any in-house history, the researcher will have to rely on archival
material. But there is a great deal of material dealing with specific
initiatives. There are strategic plans and policy discussion documents, such
as The What and Why, Who and How of the Arts Council
(1968); Policy into Action: the Seventies (1970); A Policy for the Arts (1973); The
Arts Council in the Community 1981-88 (1988). The Arts Council has
commissioned research in the area of print culture, such as the 1993 Research Report on the Literature Programme: Publishers'
Survey (and complementary . . . Writers'
Survey ); the purpose of the research is often polemical, as in New Zealand's Best Kept Secret: The Arts (1995), a
collection of facts and figures which show the depth and breadth of New
Zealanders' involvement in the arts and the impact arts have on everyday
life. The Arts Council also supported a number of periodicals: The Arts in Education News-sheet , the Pacific Island News-Sheet, The Arts Advocate , and
Arts Times promoting its work, and culture
generally in the community.
What is not recorded is
the contentious area of the Arts Council's role as arbiter and also, in a
sense, as creator of a distinctive New Zealand culture. Debates over who
gets funding for what are associated with the aims and outcomes of creating
an interest in print culture, but can probably only be approached through
the institutional memory of the participants, and its occasional overflow on
to the pages of the newspapers.
Literary prizes, and
patronage generally, have long been a means of enhancing the status of and
thereby the interest in literature, and are discussed in more detail in the
following section of this chapter. Exhibitions play a similar role by
publicising aspects of print culture, whether it be reading or literature,
as well as forming a historical record of past attitudes. Descriptive
catalogues are sometimes available for the researcher, e.g. New Old Books: An Exhibition of Recent Additions to the de
Beer Collection (1996), Working Titles: Books
that Shaped New Zealand (1993), and Fabulous and
Familiar: Children's Reading in New Zealand Past and Present
(1991). Travelling exhibitions have disseminated materials to provincial
areas and the Book Council has been active in this respect, often in
cooperation with the public library system: examples include 'A Library
Exhibition of New Zealand Poetry' (1976) and 'A Library Exhibition of Small
Presses in New Zealand' (1977). The National Library has recently also
become active in this area, with its Carnegie Libraries exhibition currently
on tour. Evidence of earlier events of this kind are, again, likely to be
found in archival and local newspaper records.
The New Zealand Book
Council is an organisation overtly dedicated to the promotion of interest in
print culture, and has exercised a widespread influence. It has functioned
in a number of areas, well represented by archival and published material.
Founded in 1972 as part of Unesco's International Book Year, its first
brochure stated its aims as 'to encourage the wider use, ownership and
enjoyment of books; to encourage research into all aspects of book
publication and distribution; to encourage increased provision of books by
public authorities of all kinds' ( Booknotes ,
no.117, Autumn 1997). Its first major initiative was Operation Book Flood in
1973, an exercise carried out in association with the New Zealand Council
for Educational Research. Two Auckland schools notable for low rates of
literacy were 'flooded' with over 500 books, and the resulting effects on
literacy and reading skills monitored (see Elley, Cowrie and Watson's 1975
interim assessment).
This set the tone for the
Council's role as a publisher of research papers backgrounding print culture
and its various manifestations. The Changing Shape of
Books: A Collection of Papers Presented at a Seminar Held at Victoria
University September 15-16 1973 (1974) summarises the Council's
approach. Other Council publications have provided a focus on individual
authors, for example Lynley Dodd Talks About her
Books (1990). The Writers in Schools scheme is typical of Book Council
initiatives; an explanatory booklet (1993) sets out its parameters with the
Arts Council. The Writers Visiting Prison project, described in an
explanatory handbook (Penny Mahy, 1995), is another. More generally, the
Book Council has fostered regard for books and reading in publications such
as Brian Brooks's New Zealand Community (1973), 'a
list of books which contributors believed had the greatest influence on
their lives and their community at large'.
The Book Council has also
been active in promoting commissioned research associated with the promotion
of print culture, such as Esslemont's Survey of Book
Buyers in New Zealand (1979) and the supplementary pamphlet Book buyers . . . published in the same year. Some
of this work has been done in cooperation with the trade, such as Maconie's
Survey of Teenage Reading (1969). It has
contributed to general social debates, as in Books You
Couldn't Buy: Censorship in New Zealand , by C.E. Beeby (1981). The
Book Council's quarterly members' newsletter Booknotes (originally Book Counsel ) contains a
range of material relevant to print culture, reading and the literary scene,
and thus both promotes and records initiatives in these areas of interest.
A recent non-institutional
initiative, author Alan Duff's Books in Homes scheme, also suggests the link
between literacy and the promotion of reading. Begun in March 1994, and
supported subsequently by government funding, private sector sponsorship and
philanthropy, Books in Homes has similarities to the Book Council's
Operation Book Flood of the 1970s. In an effort to encourage both literacy
and an appreciation of books and reading, 110,000 books have so far been
distributed to 111 primary schools for individual pupils to keep. The
textbook publisher Scholastic is associated with the project, supplying the
books at cost.
The extent to which the
'self-interest' of purely commercial activities are included here is an
interesting question. The publishing industry and bookselling trade may
promote themselves from purely profit-oriented motives, but thereby also
promote an interest in print culture. Early Whitcombe & Tombs
catalogues, primarily pieces of advertising, nonetheless included short
essays on literature: on 'New Zealand authorship' by A.H. Grinling in the
1927 catalogue, and 'A survey of the Dominion's productions' by H.H. Driver
in 1930. Whitcombe's Monthly Review of Literature ,
which became Books of Today , appeared from the early
1930s until 1970. Public occasions such as book signings, involvement in
book festivals, and cooperation with radio and television book programmes
are also relevant. A number of organisations have been associated with the
book trade: the Book Publishers Association of New Zealand, the Association
of Booksellers of New Zealand (now Booksellers New Zealand), the New Zealand
Book Trade Organisation. Many of these have produced trade periodicals, such
as The Publisher and New Zealand
Publishing News , and also publications of more general interest,
such as the New Zealand Book Publishers Association and the Association of
Booksellers' Books of the Year (1964-67), or the
Dunedin Publishers Association's Books in Dunedin
(1949-62). The Wellington bookseller Roy Parsons published Parsons Packet , part catalogue, part review journal, from 1947
until 1955 of which a selection edited by Parsons and Bridget Williams
appeared in 1984.
As a part of their
protection of their industry trade organisations have taken part in debates
over issues central to print culture, e.g. censorship and import controls,
leaving published and archival records. Market research into aspects of
readership has often gone ahead with the industry's support, providing
useful statistical data and reference resources such as New Zealand Books in Print (1957-).
The newspaper industry is
an obvious subject for investigation, both in itself—as a
transmitter of print culture—but also in the more specifically
literary context in promoting book reviews, book pages, literary
competitions, and literary advertising. Dennis McEldowney's (1991) and Mark
Williams's (forthcoming) chapters on literary patronage and literary
criticism in the Oxford History of New Zealand Literature
in English are relevant here. There are also a number of local
histories of individual newspapers, such as: 100 Years of
News: As Presented by the New Zealand Herald 1863-1963 (1963); 120 Years, 1866-1986: The Nelson Evening Mail (1986);
100 Years of Newspapers in Dannevirke (1988).
While largely anthologies without any commentary or argument, both point to
a body of significant potential research materials.
There is a close
relationship between the encouragement of interest in print culture and the
education system, which cannot simply confine itself to the mechanics of
literacy, but has always seen a responsibility for the more general
promotion of reading as a desirable social activity. Organisations such as
the Children's Literature Association of New Zealand have concentrated on
providing teachers with resource materials with which to encourage reading:
publications such as Gilderdale and Bowden's World Beyond
World (1976); McLaren and Fitzgibbon's New
Zealand Picture Books (1979); Brenda Knight's Teenread '85 and In and Out of Time (both
1985); and McLaren's New Zealand Books for Children
(1980).
An area where there is
little material concerns the history of readership. Australian research
which provides fruitful models for New Zealand includes works such as 'The
colonial reader observed' and 'Libraries' in The Book in
Australia (1988), 'Books, readers and reading' in Australian Cultural History (1992), and Books,
Libraries and Readers in Colonial Australia (1985). Dulcie
Gillespie-Needham's 1971 PhD thesis 'The colonial and his books: a study of
reading in 19th-century New Zealand' is one of few local studies, while
Martyn Lyons and Lucy Taksa's Australian Readers
Remember (1992) suggests a promising but as yet untapped source of
material in this area—that of oral history.
Autobiography, biography
and personal reminiscence are also a source in this area, whether of such
people directly associated with books and reading such as Phoebe Meikle,
Dorothy Butler, and Alan Duff, and those of teachers, librarians and
booksellers. In general, any autobiography or biography of any literate New
Zealander is also a potential source as they inevitably encounter print
culture.
Implied in much of this
material is a consensus of what constitutes the literate and cultured
citizen, and a history of trade and institutional cooperation in pursuit of
this commonly agreed good. This is unlikely to be a feature of the future,
as a society of far more disparate and contestable values
emerges—one in which ethnicity, gender, and class challenge the
consensus. Popular culture will similarly question and challenge the notions
of high culture implicit in the last century and a half's attitudes towards
readership.
Recognition, and rewards of success
The most significant recent published research on literary criticism, book
reviewing, and literary prizes and awards, are two essays published in 1991
as part of a broad study of New Zealand literature. They are Dennis
McEldowney's 'Publishing, patronage, literary magazines' and John Thomson's
discursive bibliography, both in the Oxford History of New
Zealand Literature in English , ed. Terry Sturm (1991, second
edition forthcoming). Thomson's survey of work in literary history and
criticism should be augmented by reference to his entries on individual
authors. The genre-based studies which make up the bulk of Sturm's volume
also supply the most useful accounts to date of critical activity in their
various fields. For the period to 1975, Three Hundred
Years of New Zealand Books (1990), compiled by Peter Alcock and
William Broughton, provides a useful chronology, with critical work listed
under a separate heading from 1956.
The online database Index New Zealand (INNZ) , launched in 1987 and
available through the National Library's Kiwinet, on microfiche and on
CD-ROM, selectively indexes articles and book reviews in over 450 current
specialist and general interest New Zealand and Pacific periodicals. The
Scitec Index, also on Kiwinet, indexes articles and book reviews of interest
to the New Zealand scientific community. Titles indexed on these databases
range from the Journal of New Zealand Literature
(1983-) and New Zealand Libraries (1932-) to the New Zealand Medical Journal (1887-) and New Zealand Sociology (1986-). Prior to 1987, INNZ was published in a printed format. Retrospective
indexing of journals onto INNZ is being carried out
by the National Library.
Book reviewing and literary criticism
The main focus here is on the reviewing of creative literature in
English, particularly at the specialist level. For other disciplines,
the primary sources for reviews are the relevant professional journals,
many of which are indexed on Kiwinet, as noted above. The development of
book reviewing in fields other than New Zealand literature requires
further critical analysis. Ray Grover's contribution to the World
Bibliographical Series, New Zealand (1980),
provides a useful introduction to the professional and general interest
journals, current listings of which are to be found in Nielsen
Publishing's biannual Media Directory ,
established in 1976 as the Advertising Directory and
Media Planner .
Until the 1930s,
literary criticism in New Zealand was almost entirely restricted to book
reviews published in newspapers and magazines. From as early as the
1880s, many of these publications committed themselves to supporting the
development of a distinctive New Zealand literature, although until at
least the 1940s discussion focused almost entirely on overseas
publications, with literary journalists demonstrating a clear preference
for poetry and short fiction imitative of British models. Iris M. Park's
bibliography, New Zealand Periodicals of Literary
Interest (1962), lists the magazine outlets for this type of
reviewing. Substantial work on the literary pages of the newspapers
remains to be undertaken. Guy Scholefield's Newspapers
in New Zealand (1958) makes passing reference to this aspect of
their content, and may be taken as a suitable starting point for further
work, supplemented by Ross Harvey's Union List of
Newspapers preserved in Libraries, Newspaper Offices, Local
Authority Offices and Museums in New Zealand (1987). Book
reviewing has been a regular feature of New Zealand radio, most
significantly in Elizabeth Alley's long-running 'Anthology' programme,
succeeded by the late Ross Stevens's 'Bookmarks', and in Kim Hill's
'Speaking Volumes'.
Prior to the 1940s,
few efforts were made to survey the overall state of New Zealand
literature. Introductions to anthologies of poetry supplied brief
accounts. One of the earliest of these was Alexander and Currie's New Zealand Verse (1906), revised as A Treasury of New Zealand Verse in 1926. The
publication in 1930 of both Quentin Pope's Kowhai
Gold verse anthology and O.N. Gillespie's New
Zealand Short Stories provided a foil against which an emerging
group of younger critics and writers were to react. Influenced by
British and American literary modernism, this new generation challenged
the hegemony of the literary journalists, most effectively by
participating in a series of avant garde little magazines and
newspapers— Phoenix (1932-33), Tomorrow (1934-40) and Book (1942-47)—which provided for the serious
examination of New Zealand literature, as well as encouraging new and
innovative creative work. The culmination of this initial movement was
the establishment in 1947 of the quarterly magazine Landfall . Its editor, Charles Brasch, drew support for the
development of a more rigorous critical climate from other key members
of his generation, including Allen Curnow and Denis Glover. Landfall combined with a number of other
magazines published during the 1950s and 1960s (including Here & Now (1949-57), Canterbury Lambs (1946-49), Hilltop
(1949) and Arachne (1950-51), Numbers (1954-59), Mate (1955-77), and
the annual anthology New Zealand Poetry Yearbook
(1951-64)) to stimulate an increasingly vigorous local criticism. The
New Zealand Listener (1939-) has long
provided an important weekly outlet for book reviewing in both literary
and other genres, as well as occasional longer pieces of criticism.
Again, for the period to 1961, Park's bibliography provides the most
accessible guide to these publications.
Since the 1960s, book
reviewing and literary criticism has continued to develop in line with
available outlets. The Listener and Landfall have remained important, and new
literary magazines to emerge include Argot
(1973-75) and Islands , first published in 1972,
and a number of university-based periodicals. The most significant of
these, The Word is Freed (1969-72), affected a
self-consciously revisionist critical stance. This tone was sustained
during the 1980s by several little magazines, including Parallax (1982-83), Splash
(1984-86), and AND (1983-85). Local and overseas
academic journals, including SPAN (1975-), the
Journal of New Zealand Literature (1983-),
the Journal of Commonwealth Literature (1965-),
World Literature Written in English (1971-),
and Australian and New Zealand Studies in Canada
(1989-), continue to give space to much important critical work, as have
other magazines with a focus broader than the strictly literary,
including Comment (1959-70, 1977-82) and Te Ao Hou (1952-75). The appearance in 1991 of
the quarterly New Zealand Books signalled the
maturing of book reviewing in all genres, while Stephen Stratford's
monthly magazine Quote Unquote , founded in 1993,
provided an outlet for both reviewing and literary news. Previously,
book trade and library journals were the outlets most explicitly
dedicated to book reviewing. Prominent among these are the National
Library's bulletin Books to Buy (1966-92) and the
New Zealand Book Council's Booknotes , founded in
1981 and still current.
In the immediate
post-World War II period the most substantial fruit of the new critical
rigour was Allen Curnow's introduction to his Book of
New Zealand Verse 1923-45 (1945, enlarged 1951). In this text
and its successor, The Penguin Book of New Zealand
Verse (1960), Curnow commanded the critical high ground and
established for the first time a credible canon of New Zealand poetry.
During subsequent decades, local poetics has largely been constructed in
the light of Curnow's work. In fiction, Frank Sargeson's anthology of
short stories, Speaking for Ourselves (1945),
though lacking an introduction of comparable depth, served a similar
purpose and consolidated its editor's influence over the direction taken
by New Zealand short fiction through to the 1970s.
Eric McCormick's 1940
centennial survey Letters and Arts in New Zealand
, revised in 1959 as New Zealand Literature ,
stood as the only book-length historical study until the publication of
Patrick Evans's Penguin History of New Zealand
Literature in 1990. Evans's work was soon superseded, however,
by the more comprehensive Oxford History of New
Zealand Literature in English (1991), ed. Terry Sturm.
Presently under revision, a new edition of this work will include an
essay by Mark Williams on New Zealand literary scholarship and
criticism.
A number of important
genre studies and collections of essays began to be published from the
early 1950s, one of the earliest of which was James K. Baxter's essay
Recent Trends in New Zealand Poetry (1951).
The School Publications Branch of the Department of Education (now
Learning Media Ltd) produced a number of useful genre studies as Post
Primary School Bulletins, including M.K. Joseph's The
New Zealand Short Story (1956) and W.H. Oliver's Poetry in New Zealand (1960). Likewise, Joan
Stevens's comprehensive The New Zealand Novel:
1860-1960 (1961) found a ready market among both secondary and
tertiary students. It reappeared in a second edition in 1966, covering
the period to 1965. Publishers also sought to supply the student market
with several series of critical monographs. These include A.H. &
A.W. Reed's New Zealand Profiles, the Oxford University Press's Writers
and their Works series, and New York publisher Twayne's World Authors
series, which turned its attention to New Zealand from the 1960s with
S.R. Daly's study of Katherine Mansfield (1965) and H.W. Rhodes's Frank Sargeson (1969). Kendrick Smithyman's A Way of Saying (1965) began life as a series of
essays in the little magazine Mate . It remains
the most sustained (if difficult) attempt to date to develop a local,
post-Curnovian poetic.
Essays on New Zealand Literature (1973), ed. Wystan Curnow,
was the first attempt to gather together serious critical work in the
field. Much of this were drawn from academic journals which had begun to
play a key role in the development of ideas about New Zealand
literature, including the Journal of Commonwealth
Literature and World Literature in English . Cherry Hankin
edited two important texts: Critical Essays on the New
Zealand Novel (1976) and Critical Essays on
the New Zealand Short Story (1982).
Collections of essays
and monographs by individual authors have appeared at regular intervals
since the 1970s. Prominent among these are Allen Curnow's Look Back Harder (1986), ed. Peter Simpson, and
two collections by C.K. Stead, In the Glass Case
(1981) and Answering to the Language (1989).
Others are listed by John Thomson in the Oxford
History of New Zealand Literature in English (p.612 and
passim). Such essays are usefully augmented by interviews and
biographical writings. In particular, the autobiographies of Frank
Sargeson and Janet Frame are exemplary of the genre in New Zealand.
Katherine Mansfield has been a major subject for the literary
biographer: Antony Alpers's Life (1980) and
Sylvia Berkman's Critical Study (1951),
supplemented by the collected letters and critical writings, remain
required starting points for researchers. Though many other important
personalities in the literature remain to be properly treated, several
recent literary biographies (Michael King on Frank Sargeson, Keith
Ovenden on Dan Davin), although generally not critical in their focus,
supply important insights into the personalities behind the work. Beginnings (1980), based on a series of
autobiographical essays commissioned by Robin Dudding for Islands , was the first sustained attempt to
account for the personal origins of modern New Zealand literature.
Collections of interviews with writers also add to this body of
resources while theses in the area of New Zealand literature are also of
immense value. All supply useful bibliographies, some of which are
listed in Bibliographical Work in New Zealand
(1980-). Theses are listed in the Union List of Higher
Degree Theses in New Zealand Libraries , the most recent
edition of which covers the period up to 1992, with current theses now
listed on the New Zealand Bibliographic Network (NZBN).
Literary prizes and book awards
McEldowney gives an outline account of state and private support for
creative writing in New Zealand in his chapter in the Oxford History of New Zealand Literature in English (1991,
pp.574-79, 595-600). Creative New Zealand supplies a listing of special
funds, fellowships, awards and scholarships in its publication Funding: A Guide for Applicants (1996) and the
Department of Internal Affairs maintains a database of funding sources
as part of its Link Centre service.
Before the
establishment of the Literary Fund in 1946, competitions run by
newspapers and magazines constituted almost the only regular
acknowledgement of success for writers. The university colleges hosted a
number of literary prizes, the most coveted of which remains the
Macmillan Brown Prize. Substantial state-funded literary patronage began
with the Centennial celebrations in 1940, when prizes were offered for
work in a wide range of genres and centennial histories commissioned, including
McCormick's pioneering survey, Letters and Art in New
Zealand (1940). Largely owing to lobbying by the New Zealand
Branch of PEN, the impetus created by the Centennial was sustained,
culminating in the establishment of the Literary Fund in 1946. The
extent of the Fund's support for writing and publishing during its first
25 years is set out in its report published in 1970 ( New Zealand Literary Fund 1946-70 ). From 1950, the work of
the Fund was detailed in the reports of the Department of Internal
Affairs, published in the annual AJHR . The Fund
was disestablished in 1988, immediately re-emerging as the Literary Fund
Advisory Board of the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council, now Creative New
Zealand.
Literary awards began
to be privately sponsored with the establishment of the Katherine
Mansfield Memorial Award for short fiction in 1959, organised by the New
Zealand Women Writers' Society with the support of the Bank of New
Zealand and still current. Mansfield's name is also associated with the
prestigious Memorial Fellowship, a residential fellowship currently
funded by the Electricity Corporation of New Zealand and administered by
Creative New Zealand. The Wattie Book of the Year was founded in 1968
with the support of the Publishers Association and became the first of
an increasing number of such awards. Recent issues of the annual New Zealand Books in Print provide retrospective
listings of the winners of the various book awards. These currently
include the NZ Post (previously AIM) Children's Book Awards (1983-), the
New Zealand Book Awards (established 1976) and the former Wattie (later
Goodman Fielder Wattie) Book Award (1968-93), and its successor, the
Montana Book Awards. In 1996, the Montana Awards amalgamated with the
New Zealand Book Awards to form the Montana New Zealand Book Awards,
managed by Booksellers New Zealand and offering prizes in six
categories. The criteria for these and other awards are described in New Zealand Books in Print , as are other current
sources of assistance for writers, including residential fellowships.
The first of these was the Robert Burns Fellowship, set up from
anonymous funding (widely attributed to Charles Brasch) at Otago
University in 1959. Similar fellowships were established at Canterbury,
Victoria, and Auckland Universities between 1978 and 1981, with other
tertiary institutions following suit during the following decade.
Grants for research
leading to a publication are available from, among other agencies, the
Lottery Grants Board, the Historical Branch of Internal Affairs, the
National Library of New Zealand, and the Stout Research Centre, Victoria
University of Wellington. Scientists and academics can apply for funding
to the Marsden Fund, administered by the Royal Society of New Zealand,
as well as to individual universities and the New Zealand
Vice-Chancellors Committee. The major source of funding for creative
writing is Creative New Zealand. As well as contributing to the
university fellowships, and to the Todd and Louis Johnson New Writers
Bursaries, which it also administers, Creative New Zealand distributes
significant funds in the form of project grants to writers. These
succeed the Literary Fund's system of Scholarships-in-Letters, Bursaries
and Project Grants, which were designed to allow writers to work
full-time for 12, 6 and 3 months respectively. The New Zealand Authors'
Fund compensates registered authors for losses of royalty on books
borrowed from New Zealand libraries. In addition, Huia Publishers offer
the Huia Short Story Awards for Mäori Writers. Finally, work in
children's literature is currently recognised by eight awards briefly
described in New Zealand Children's Book Awards:
Complete List of Winners and a List of Books Shortlisted
1988-96 (1996).
Financial incentives
and support for publishers are discussed in Chapter 3 under the heading
'Encouragement to publish' within the 'Process of Publishing' section.
Changing trends and special needs
The diversity of print media accommodates different reading and communication
needs. Historically, the relationship between text and image has developed
according to design trends, technological innovation, and readers' needs.
Although picture books
have long been a part of the children's literature scene, the graphic novel
and comic book often cater to both an adult and children's reading market,
running the gamut from the purely pictorial to the balanced integration of
word and image, to a riot of text and image which replays single-frame,
cinematic, story-board design. Toby Burrows and Grant Stone have edited a
useful monograph entitled Comics in Australia and New
Zealand: The Collections, the Collectors, the Creators (1994).
Cartoonist and historian Tim Bollinger's excellent survey of New Zealand
comics, 'Comic story' (1995), is part of a larger work in progress on the
history of the genre in a specifically New Zealand context. Tim Wilson has
also addressed the comics industry in New Zealand and its relationship to
overseas publishers in his 1993 article 'Comically, graphically novel'.
There is much fascinating research to be done on the publishing environment,
political censorship, distribution and readership of comics. The graphic
novel is fast becoming a separate area of research overseas; the most recent
New Zealand work to claim this title is Maui: Legends of
the Outcast written by Robert Sullivan and illustrated by Chris
Slane (Godwit Publishing, 1996). Recent articles by Philip Matthews
('Gripping Yarns', 1996) and Vicki Earle ('Gone Fishing', 1996) discuss the
collaborative process; Matthews also explains the use of digital
technologies in the production phase.
The livre d'artiste represents a quite different relationship between
image and book format. It is not to be confused with 'artists' books' which
will be treated below. In origin, the livre d'artiste
was developed to foreground the work of famous artists, whether painters,
sculptors or printmakers, who were commissioned to illustrate deluxe volumes
of prose and poetry, or to produce a suite of prints on a theme, which were
subsequently packaged as a high-priced, limited edition, boxed set. The
'coffee table' art book is its modern descendant, using the latest colour
reproduction technologies and printing on high-quality art and book papers.
Most New Zealand publishers produce such works, although they often use the
New Zealand landscape as their subject matter. Craig Potton Publishing has
capitalised on the current domestic and international interest in landscapes
to produce a wide range of print-based products from coffee table books to
calendars, diaries, appointment books and postcards.
New Zealand publishing has
heeded the call of the fine edition in several ways. Each variety appeals to
a particular sector of the book buying public, most usually those with
unlimited funds for personal entertainment or for investment opportunities.
First, the fine press book has a small number of exponents in New Zealand
(Bob Gormack, Ron Holloway, Denis Glover, Alan Loney, to name only a few)
and a few dedicated collectors. These generally hand-printed books are often
reprints of established texts or aim to introduce contemporary or
little-known literature; they often include the work of visual artists to
create a limited edition collaborative work of art. The quality of
craftmanship, the attention to design detail, and the individually numbered
and signed edition tend to place these books out of reach of most readers
and their resale value is often very much higher than the original price.
Secondly, there are
expensive facsimile editions of rare books otherwise only ever seen in
library special collections or on exhibition in galleries. These books are
frequently large folio-format works of art, history, botany, zoology,
ornithology, or exploration, which boast lavish colour plates, all possible
with modern colour reproduction processes. Nova Pacifica's Zoology of the Beagle and Genesis Publication's reprint of Cook's
journals are examples of such facsimile editions. David Hedley's involvement
with this side of bookselling and collecting is documented in Lynn Payne's
article in Signature (1982). These works are closest
in kind to the fine art print series, catalysed by an increasing historical
awareness in the late 1960s with projects such as Avon Fine Prints and the
Turnbull Library Prints. These works are presented as a loose portfolio for
individual print display or framing rather than being bound.
Thirdly, some publishers
hold back copies of a trade edition in order to produce luxury, generally
full-leather, bindings for presentation copies or for special purchase.
Although this habit fell into decline in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it
is now becoming more common in an era of corporate gift giving and promotion
of products in a climate of multinational competition.
Finally, the limited
edition book or 'quality book' is a recent marketing invention, usually
offering original texts presented as authoritative or definitive complete
with lavish reproductions, and accompanied by questionable production and
investment claims. In contrast to the fine press book, the notion of limited
edition in this instance has nothing to do with technology and everything to
do with the publishers' perception of the market. Although most mainstream
publishers, particularly in the buoyant 1970s and early 1980s, tried their
hand at one if not more of these high-risk publications, several set
themselves up to deal exclusively as publishers and/or distributors: Alister
Taylor, Millwood Press, the Graphic Society of New Zealand, David Hedley.
The career of Alister Taylor in particular has been well documented in the
media as exemplifying the risks involved in this form of publication. As
yet, fascination with the man's biographical details has generally thwarted
the critical detachment necessary to examine the social and economic
implications of the genre. Carroll du Chateau's Metro
article (1991a) provides a good starting point for research and includes a
useful select bibliography of Taylor's publications, many of which, such as
the 'Notable Thoroughbreds' series, The New Zealander,
Eugene von Guerard , and Bullshit &
Jellybeans have influenced the course of New Zealand publishing and
book marketing. The investment possibilities of the limited edition, deluxe
book have been revived in the late 1990s with Peter Hallett's 'Heritage
2000' project. The series of 28 books chronicling New Zealand's natural and
cultural heritage to be published to celebrate the millenium is described in
Tod's article 'Books for the millenium' (1996). The relationship of book
values to developments in electronic media, marketing, and commerce are also
worth exploring with the limited edition or quality book. The introduction
to the 4th edition of Glenn Haszard's New Zealand Book
Values (1996) registers these changes and a new range of
possibilities.
Artists' books have a rich
critical literature overseas and have only recently been assessed in New
Zealand. Unlike the genres noted above, the artist's book sets out to
redefine the structure of the book and, in particular, the reading
experience. As the artist engages conceptually with the form, the result can
be an eclectic combination of unusual materials, unorthodox construction,
and an intensive interrogation of the assumptions behind the book as print
or image-based communication medium. Gail Keefe's award-winning 1988 essay
'Artists' books' documents the New Zealand situation, both in terms of the
increasing numbers of artists exploring this new medium and the implications
for collection development policy in libraries, art galleries and museums.
Daniella Aleh's The Local Environment (1995) builds
upon Keefe's work and brings it up to the present. Exhibition catalogues of
artists' books shows are a necessary primary resource, examples being Visual Diaries/Artists' Books (1984), ANZART '85 Artists' Book Show , Opening up the Book
(1993), as are interviews with the individual artists. Similarly, reviews of
book shows and analysis of the design issues in Art New
Zealand and New Zealand Craft contribute to
the expanding field of research. As more polytechnics and art schools
recognise the global acceleration of interest in and expertise with the
artist's book medium, they are including book arts modules or degree majors
in their curricula.
If artists have
endeavoured to redefine the book, books themselves have also come under
pressure from other communication media. In 1973, the New Zealand Book
Council sponsored a seminar whose proceedings were published as The Changing Shape of Books . Speakers addressed a
number of issues: literacy, educational methods, reading habits, library
resources and the new format of the printed word. Keith Sinclair's balanced
introduction notes the panic which some felt at the time due to the
perceived threat to books posed by television and audio-visual aids. Euan M.
Miller picks up the subject in his talk entitled 'A pretty girl on the
jacket, but . . .' (1974) Contrary to public paranoia, Miller proves that
the new technologies enhance the reading experience, neither substitute for
nor displace it. He quotes figures from the Dunedin Public Library which
demonstrate that borrowing records for books increase as a result of
documentaries, docudramas, and dramatisations of novels and plays on
television and movie screen. This trend has continued to the present day
where the public is more apt to see the dramatisation of a novel or play
first on the television, as a video, or in the movie theatre, than read the
book itself; a whole publishing industry of the book of the movie of the
book has sprung up as a consequence, each step necessarily moving further
away from the originating text.
As readers demand 'a high
visual content' (Miller, p.71) in the display of print-based communication
resources, books with colour reproductions, tables and statistics, headings
and subheadings, columns and boxes are more frequently borrowed or
purchased. The Hamlyn series of history books is often cited as a model for
the new way of communicating information and educating. Technological
developments in the printing industry, particularly the improved and
affordable colour reproduction technology, enables these information needs
to be fulfilled. Miller's 1973 assessment of three multimedia packages
reflects the new design and format of print communication: educational
kitsets combining paper-based notes, commentaries and images with records
and filmstrips; Jackdaw Historical Series of facsimile material gathered in
portfolio folders; the 'Community '73' series of mixed media booklets and
cards collected on a common theme.
Miller notes, however,
that although the book and its associated forms are more readily accessible
to the reading public, there has been a decline in the content quality
(p.73). This must also be extended to book and print-based design. Today's
book designers are more often freelance than part of the in-house publishing
environment. The increasing number of self-publishing and desktop publishing
ventures which do not utilise trained designers have resulted in a loss of
communication effectiveness, efficiency and style.
Today, the reading debate
must also accommodate electronic technologies, particularly that of computer
multimedia. Computing is introduced at an early age to encourage learning
through the playing of computer games, and to teach using the full
multimedia potential of the computer. As well as specialist reference tools
(such as indexes and legal texts) New Zealand multi-media CD-ROM
publications for which there are also hard-copy print equivalents include
the TVNZ New Zealand Encyclopedia (1994, 2nd ed.
1996; still available in a paper edition as the Bateman
New Zealand Encyclopedia ), and Coast to
Coast (1995) which incorporates the complete texts of Diana and Jeremy
Pope's Mobil New Zealand Travel Guide volumes. Not
only do the differing titles create bibliographic challenges, but a
different distribution process applies to CD-ROM products, which are more
often sold through computer shops or by mail order than through traditional
bookshops. The Press (Christchurch) is the first New
Zealand metropolitan newspaper to have a specially designed electronic
version on the World Wide Web. While the textual content of print and
electronic versions may be the same, additional video and sound clips, and
inbuilt search facilities create a different total 'publication'. New ways
of reading, writing, and thinking result from the technological changes, and
further investigation and research is required in this area.
Although the bicultural
dimension of New Zealand has only recently been signalled by a greater
visible use of bilingual texts in official documentation and signage, the
publishing industry is increasing its output of bi-and monolingual texts in
Mäori and a wide array of Pacific Island languages. Huia Publishers
and Pasifika Press are the two most notable recent examples; both have
recognised a growing readers' need for the provision of monolingual
publications for the exploration of cultural identity, and bilingual
publications for the less than fluent or learning reader. Whether the book
as specialist container for information can be redefined successfully for
cultures in which the book is an introduced species is questionable; Sharon
Dell's provocative article 'The Maori book or the book in Maori' (1987)
suggests that a new Mäori specific 'book' form may be evolving to
accommodate language, identity and reading needs. It is one, significantly,
that makes great use of the visual image, large format text and appears in
extremely small numbers, often as unique, hand-rendered copies. New
Zealand's multicultural heritage and experience as manifested in books and
language publications remains to be explored.
For the visually and
hearing impaired, and for those with physical disabilities, the traditional
book format provides a distinctive challenge for which alternative media
have been developed to satisfy these readers' needs. For those who are
print-handicapped readers or for those who through sight impairment or
physical disability are unable to read, hold or turn the pages of a standard
book, the National Library of New Zealand's Print Handicapped Resource Unit
in Palmerston North provides audio book lending and purchasing services. In
addition, the Unit has published several editions of Talking Books/Audio Books for Print Handicapped Readers since
1987. Each author/title entry in the catalogue includes précis of
text, performance reader, recommended age, playing time, publisher, and
number of cassettes. Public libraries, booksellers, and stationers are
increasing their number of audio books both for the print-handicapped and
for those who prefer the listening to the reading experience. The Auckland
firm Word Pictures targets the commuter market for their recorded book
readings and specialises in New Zealand writers, calling themselves the
'Voice of New Zealand'.
The history of Braille
books and their publication in New Zealand has yet to be written, although
two useful centenary histories of the Royal New Zealand Foundation for the
Blind, one by Ken Catran and Penny Hansen (1992), the other by Eleanor White
(1990), together provide a good point of departure. Large print books are
published for the visually impaired and are available at lending libraries
throughout the country. Although published overseas (usually Britain or the
United States), New Zealand literature figures strongly in these
publications. A shortlist of authors translated into the large print medium
includes Margaret Mahy (by far the most titles), Ngaio Marsh, Janet Frame,
Maurice Gee, Fiona Kidman, and Maurice Shadbolt. Their publication in this
specialist format documents and reflects current reading tastes, audience
demographics and the public profile of New Zealand writers.
Although it is primarily
the spoken word which is affected by deafness, the education for deaf and
deaf/mute readers in the written language, the written language experience
for deaf children, the nature of the reading experience for the hearing
impaired, and the use of new technologies for communication are all areas
currently under scrutiny. Library services for the deaf and hearing impaired
and the use of the traditional book as a tool for education are a fruitful
area of study. Numerous histories of deaf institutions and associations have
been written and a number of newsletters continue to be published. These are
a rich and underutilised resource for exploring the development of special
print-based materials—their production, publication, distribution
and reading. Of particular note is the increasing number of print-based or
electronic books used to tell—in words and
images—personal stories of the hearing impaired, or to educate
other readers about the deaf experience.
The development,
standardisation and recognition of New Zealand Sign Language has led to the
forthcoming Dictionary of New Zealand Sign Language
spearheaded by Graeme Kennedy at Victoria University of Wellington. This
publication builds upon research from the late 1980s funded by the National
Foundation for the Deaf and the New Zealand Association for the Deaf. The
implications of such a book of written 'word-speak' and its visual reading
experience for the education of deaf and non-deaf alike is significant for
understanding the breadth and complexity of the field of print culture.
Access tools
Access tools are the means by which information relating to print culture can
be identified and located. New Zealand has a wide range of these tools to
access the wide range of print culture items. The most important of these
are bibliographies and indexes (including resources such as library or
publishers' catalogues and listings of books in print). General reference
sources (without a specific print culture purpose) may be useful starting
points for either general background or specific types of information, e.g.
biographical.
Bibliographies and indexes
A useful overview of these, though now rather dated, can be found in J.E.
Traue's New Zealand Studies: A Guide to Bibliographic
Resources (1985). As well as general guides, it very briefly
covers the following formats: printed monographs, printed serials,
theses, manuscripts, music, Mäori music, oral history, film,
visual images and maps.
Bibliographies may be
comprehensive in scope, such as a national bibliography, or limited by
format such as theses, newspapers or Mäori printed material.
Bibliographies on specific subject areas are outside the scope of this
section.
The most significant
New Zealand bibliography is the six-volume New Zealand
National Bibliography to the Year 1960 (1969-85) compiled by
A.G. Bagnall. As well as being a listing of New Zealand imprints it
includes books and pamphlets published overseas with New Zealand
content. This replaces earlier attempts at comprehensive bibliography,
in particular the work of T.M. Hocken (1909) supplemented by A.H.
Johnstone (1927) and L.J.B. Chapple (1938) and also that of A.S. Thomson
(1859) and J. Collier (1889). Although heavily inclusive, some
categories of material are excluded—these are listed fully in
the introduction to volume 2—such as school textbooks, local
election leaflets and parliamentary papers. Volume 1 (in two physical
parts) covering the period to 1889 has full bibliographic description,
annotations, and the library symbol where the copy was seen. Indexes
contain subject entries, titles, added entries for joint authors,
illustrators and other types of responsibility, and a chronological
index. Volume 5 contains addenda, and an index to the 1890-1960 volumes.
Material after 1960
can be found in the annual 'Current National Bibliography', issued by
the National Library Service until the formation of the National Library
of New Zealand (in 1965) which continued to produce the New Zealand National Bibliography (NZNB) . It
appeared in print form until 1983 and is now available in microfiche or
online through the New Zealand Bibliographic Network (NZBN). In addition
to monographs NZNB lists new, changed and ceased
serial titles, as well as maps, music, art prints and sound recordings.
Works currently
available for sale are listed in New Zealand Books in
Print (1957-), published irregularly at first, but now annual,
and complemented by the specialist New Zealand
Children's Books in Print (1988-). Individual publishers'
catalogues may also be useful.
The New Zealand
Library Association (NZLA) published a number of useful items including
John Harris's Guide to New Zealand Reference Material
and other Sources of Information (2nd ed. 1950, with
supplements in 1951 and 1957). An attempt was made by Massey University
Library in the 1970s to update this, but after eight subject parts had
appeared the project was abandoned. Another NZLA venture, A Bibliography of New Zealand Bibliographies
(1967) compiled by Simon Cauchi, is still a good starting point for
early material. A useful annual production for information on recent and
current work, compiled by Tony Millett and published by Waikato
University since 1980, is Bibliographical Work in New
Zealand: Work in Progress and Work Published .
A bird's-eye view of
material up to the late 1970s can be found in the New
Zealand volume of the World Bibliographic Series (1980)
compiled by Ray Grover. This useful volume contains 878 annotated
entries arranged in 40 broad subject groupings covering aspects of both
the people and the country designed to express the culture. Most of the
items are monographs, though some periodical articles are included when
they are more topical. This publication is currently being updated.
There is no
comprehensive listing of New Zealand serials though details of recently
published titles can be found on NZBN, and Nielsen Publishing's biannual
Media Directory (founded in 1976 as the Advertising Directory and Media Planner ) is a
useful source of information on current periodicals (by subject) and
newspapers, including community newspapers. The Union
List of Serials in New Zealand Libraries (1970 and 1975
supplement) contains full bibliographic information for earlier titles
and also where they are held.
Although there is no
comprehensive bibliography of New Zealand newspapers a good substitute
is Ross Harvey's Union List of Newspapers Preserved in
Libraries, Newspaper Offices and Museums in New Zealand (1987).
Newspapers published in New Zealand are arranged by town of publication
and then by title. A title index is provided and microform holdings are
also noted.
The bibliographic
control for theses submitted to New Zealand universities is fairly
comprehensive. Originally published in 1965 as the Union List of Theses of the University of New Zealand, 1910-54
there have been nine supplements taking coverage up to 1992, with
current theses being catalogued on NZBN. The Union
List and supplements are arranged in broad subject groups with
author indexes and subject indexes after 1962. All the universities
provide some regular form of listing for recently presented theses, some
are in the calendar and others are produced more informally.
Bibliographical
control of manuscripts and archives is not comprehensive and it is
particularly difficult to find the holdings of many small repositories.
In volume 1 of the Union Catalogue of New
Zealand and Pacific Manuscripts in New Zealand Libraries
(1968) is an incomplete listing of the holdings of a number of
institutions other than the Alexander Turnbull Library, the holdings of
which appear in volume 2 (1969). In 1979 another attempt was made to
list this material but this time in a looseleaf format with
comprehensive indexes by time, area subject and proper names. The National Register of Archives and Manuscripts in New
Zealand appeared irregularly in paper and microfiche form until
December 1992, but the publication is currently suspended as there have
been difficulties with many smaller institutions being unable to submit
information. A working group is currently looking at this and it is
hoped it will be possible to provide some online access in a less
complex form. Archifacts , the journal of the
Archives and Records Association of New Zealand (ARANZ) lists recent
collections of archives, and the Alexander Turnbull Library's manuscript
acquisitions are listed in the Turnbull Library
Record .
Early Mäori
imprints are listed in H.W. Williams's Bibliography of
Printed Maori to 1900 (1924, supplement 1928) was updated by an
unpublished typescript which includes material to 1945, prepared by A.D.
Sommerville as a library school bibliography. Entries are arranged in
chronological order with title pages bibliographically transcribed, and
useful notes describing contents. The Alexander Turnbull Library is
working on a complete revision incorporating a large amount of new
information, including entries for many items unknown to Williams. The
new publication, expected within two years, will be in book form.
Although there is no
general bibliography of maps, some useful publications dealing with
specialised areas have been produced. A notable contribution has been by
R.P. Hargreaves who between 1962 and 1971 produced eight compilations,
mainly dealing with 19th-century material, including: French Explorers' Maps of New Zealand; Maps of New Zealand
Appearing in British Parliamentary Papers and Maps in New Zealand Provincial Council Papers . For older maps
the best means of access is through the catalogues of libraries such as
Alexander Turnbull Library and the Hocken Library; other map collections
can be located through The Directory of New Zealand
Map Collections (1989). Maps currently produced have been
included in the current New Zealand National
Bibliography since 1966 as a continuation of the map section of
Copyright Publications (1949-65).
For accessing the
contents of New Zealand periodical literature, the most important and
useful tool is Index to New Zealand Periodicals
(1941-86) and its successor Index New Zealand
(INNZ , 1987-). The coverage of periodicals and the subject
headings used have changed over time, with earlier volumes tending to
concentrate on the needs of public libraries. The final volume of the
Index in 1986 states in the introduction that
it includes 186 titles and covers only articles of lasting value.
Articles relating to New Zealand in overseas journals are included, as
well as some conference proceedings. The emphasis is on humanities and
social science particularly after 1980 when New
Zealand Science Abstracts was established to cover scientific
material.
The Index appeared in annual paper volumes and on microfiche, but
was not cumulated, so each year must be searched individually. INNZ is an online database on the National
Library's Kiwinet service from which annual microfiche issues have been
produced with a cumulation covering 1987-91. In 1994 a CD-ROM version
was produced which is now updated quarterly. Some periodicals are
comprehensively indexed while others may be covered selectively, as only
articles of at least half a page in length are included. Some material
is covered from major metropolitan newspapers as well as biographical
material from some 20 provincial newspapers. Book reviews are listed
under the book title, continuing the practice of including book reviews
in the earlier Index .
Scholarly journals in
the social sciences, art and humanities are indexed as well as some
monographs in series, chapters in books, theses and conferences in these
disciplines. All entries for this research-type material include an
abstract in a similar fashion to the three annual volumes of New Zealand Social Science Research Abstracts
which cover material from 1985 to 1987. Newzindex
(1979-) is a monthly index (also available on Kiwinet) of New Zealand
business and trade articles with selected items from magazines,
newsletters and newspapers.
Parliamentary papers
and other official publications are a rich source of information on a
very broad range of topics of print culture interest, referred to
throughout this book. Such material can be complex to identify and
trace, but J.B. Ringer's Introduction to New Zealand
Government (1991) is an invaluable guide to anyone exploring
this material.
Access to books
printed before 1801 and held in New Zealand libraries has been greatly
improved by the publication of Early Imprints in New
Zealand Libraries: A Finding List of Books Printed before 1801 held
in the Wellington Region (1995). This publication, part of the
Australian and New Zealand Early Imprints Project, is intended as a
guide to the location of holdings. Individual entries are brief, with
reference to authoritative bibliographies. Many of the items are held in
the Alexander Turnbull Library, but items from 18 other libraries in the
lower North Island are also included. The Alexander Turnbull Library
also holds the master file of records of holdings elsewhere in New
Zealand, some of which are searchable on the Internet via the British
Library's ESTC database.
General reference sources
A good general starting point for any researcher is Studying New Zealand History (2nd ed. 1992) by G.A. Wood and
revised by Cauchi. Although the emphasis is on historical research the
coverage is broad enough to encompass theatre and music. A third edition
is expected shortly. The annual New Zealand Official
Yearbook (1893-) is an essential New Zealand current reference
work, providing a vast amount of commentary on virtually every aspect of
life in New Zealand. Consulting volumes over a period of time offers a
handy means of tracking changes in policy and statistical information.
The 1990 sesquicentennial issue is particularly valuable as it was
enhanced by historical surveys and extracts from earlier volumes.
The most comprehensive
encyclopaedia is still A.H. McLintock's three-volume Encyclopaedia of New Zealand (1966), which includes
biographical and subject entries, and is well indexed. Although dated,
and articles are of varying quality, no revised edition is planned. The
illustrated part-work publication New Zealand's
Heritage (1971-73) includes some articles of relevance to New
Zealand print culture history.
Now of historic
interest, the six-volume Cyclopedia of New Zealand:
Industrial, Descriptive, Historical, Biographical, Facts, Figures,
Illustrations (1897-1908) is mainly useful for biographical
information (arranged by locality) on individuals and businesses, though
not entirely trustworthy. Directories (dating from the 1840s onwards)
provide some basic information on commercial activities; refer to
Hansen's Directory Directory (1992) for further
assistance in this area of research.
The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography (1990-) provides the first
comprehensive and authoritative approach to biographical information;
three of the planned five volumes have been produced so far, covering
from 1769 to 1920. The project is due for completion in 2000, with the
final volume to cover to 1960, and a major database of information
available to researchers has been compiled in the process. The selection
policy is broader than similar overseas projects and the Categories
Index provides a subject approach to the entries, a number of which are
relevant to print culture. The Book of New Zealand
Women: Ko Kui ma te Kaupapa (1991) is a biographical dictionary
also with a broad approach and a detailed subject index. Oral history
archives could also be investigated as a source of unpublished
information.
Pictorial material can
be approached through major organised institutional collections (such as
the Alexander Turnbull Library's, now also available on the Internet
through its Timeframes service, or the New
Zealand Film Archive), newspaper archives, and commercial photographic
libraries.