Early Castings for a Canon: Some 1920S Perceptions of New Zealand Literary Achievements‪.‬

In the 1920s, the decade during which Katherine Mansfield died, did Pakeha New Zealanders have any sense of a 'New Zealand literature', or was literary accomplishment regarded as the singular achievement of the Wellington banker's daughter? If they did have such a sense, which works, and which kinds of works, were in the 1920s regarded as central in the fledgling tradition? There were, of course, in that decade as in every decade since the arrival of Pakeha in more or less organised communities, numerous expressions of concern about literary prospects, accomplishments, and failures in the Antipodes (or 'the Antipathies', as Lewis Carroll playfully re figured them), and an anthology of prognostications for New Zealand literature promulgated during the 1920s would probably contain a large number of items. (1) This article focuses on just a handful of examples, published evaluations (some of the evaluations implicit rather than explicit), which had currency during the 1920s and which, as a consequence, played a part in shaping public perceptions at that time about the extent and nature of 'New Zealand literature'. Before these examples are discussed in detail, it is appropriate to make a few preliminary comments about the term 'New Zealand literature'. The phrase 'New Zealand literature' was used at least as far back as the 1860s, and the notion of a distinctively New Zealand literature had been adumbrated in the magazine Zealandia in 1889. (2) It was proclaimed, more stridently, in the New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, first published in 1899. (3) The latter journal drew on increasing local self-consciousness in political, social, and economic affairs, and, no less important, a desire to emulate the contemporary achievements of Australian writers. While later judgments on the Illustrated Magazine and its contributors were highly negative, especially the comments made by Eric McCormick in his influential 1940 survey, Letters and Art in New Zealand, the idea of a 'New Zealand literature', whatever it might turn out to be, continued to find favour well beyond the life of the Illustrated Magazine itself, which, by then a pale shadow of its earlier self, ceased publication in 1905. In any case, the Sydney Bulletin, circulating quite widely in New Zealand, was a constant reminder of the creative aspirations of Australasians.