Introduction (A SYMPOSIUM ON HISTORICAL Fiction) (Work Overview‪)‬

Alex Calder has referred to 'a key trend in New Zealand writing throughout the eighties--the rediscovery of history, especially colonial history'. (1) The primary literary expression of this rediscovery has been the historical novel. Since 1985 an impressive list of such novels has appeared. There are the various revisionist accounts of colonial history; including Don Binney's Long Live the King (1985) and Ian Wedde's Symmes Hole (1986) on the early colonial days, Maurice Shadbolt's Season of the Jew (1986) and Monday's Warriors (1990) and Witi Ihimaera's The Matriarch (1986) on the Land Wars, and Stevan Eldred-Grigg's The Siren Celia (1989) and Victoria Blay's Victoria in Maoriland (1990) on later settlement. There are various novels of settlement dealing with different migrant groups: Fiona Kidman's The Book of Secrets (1987), Joan Rosier-Jones's Voyagers (1987), Yvonne du Fresne's Frederique (1987), Iris Nolan's Bells for Caroline (1986), and, dealing with a more recent past, Amelia Batistich's Sing Vila in the Mountains (1987). There are two fictionalised biographical novels of historical characters, James McNeish's Lovelock (1986) and Rachel McAlpine's Farewell Speech (1990). There are novels of the recent past, most notably Eldred-Grigg's Oracles & Miracles (1987), Gary Langford's Newlands (1990) and Noel Virtue's novels, especially Always the Islands of Memory (1991). Ranging from the pre-European past to the present is Shirley Corlett's ambitious epic The Hanging Sky (1990), and, in a stream going back at least to Nelle Scanlan's Pencarrow (1932), there are the many more pious, less revisionist historical chronicles of pioneer life, of which Neville Peacocke's When Frosts are Slain (1989) and Jane Wordsworth's No Real Lady (1990) can stand as representatives of a larger group. This burst of activity in the historical novel has stirred some discussion, not to say controversy. There have been charges of historical inaccuracy, historical slander, and plagiarism, and of loading the moral dice. (2) The symposium that follows attempts to deal with some of these issues, with contributions from representatives from different groups: the literary practitioners (Kidman, Shadbolt, Ihimaera, Eldred-Grigg); the general reader (John Small); the biographer (Tessa Malcolm); and literary scholars (Ralph Crane, Chris Prentice and Ruth Brown).