Selected Writings

Blanche Baughan (1870-1958) was one of New Zealand's most spirited literary pioneers. This selection of her works includes her most enduringly popular poems, which were among the first by any New Zealander to break through Victorian conventions and engage vividly with the new country. They are coupled here with a generous selection of her stories, in which Baughan sought to sketch some of the rapidly vanishing features of a young colonial world in transition. In her popular series of tramping essays she gave lively and detailed accounts of some of New Zealand's most spectacular landscapes. And in People in Prison she introduces us to some of the prison inmates she befriended, presenting their cases as a damning indictment of the nation's retrograde penal system. This Selected Writings is the first edition to bring together the diverse facets of her career, and will serve as the standard introduction.