The Expatriate Myth

New Zealand Writers and the Colonial World

Helen Bones

• Publisher: Otago University Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781988531465
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Many New Zealand writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century traveled extensively or lived overseas for a time. In The Expatriate Myth, Helen Bones presents a challenge to this conventional understanding that writers had to leave in order to find literary inspiration and publishing opportunities. Was it actually necessary for them to leave to find success? How prevalent was expatriatism among New Zealand writers? Did their experiences fit the usual tropes about expatriatism and exile? Were they fleeing an oppressive society lacking in literary opportunity? In the field of literary studies, scholars are often consumed with questions about ‘national' literature and ‘what it means to be a New Zealander'. And yet many of New Zealand's writers living overseas operated in a transnational way, taking advantage of colonial networks in a way that belies any notion of a single national allegiance. Most who left New Zealand continued to write about and interact with their homeland, and in many cases came back. In this fascinating and clear-sighted book, Helen Bones offers a fresh perspective on some hoary New Zealand literary chestnuts.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: A lost generation?
• Chapter One: Literary culture in New Zealand
• Chapter Two: Making the Waitematā smoke
• Chapter Three: The Tasman writing world
• Chapter Four: From a Garden in the Antipodes: The colonial writing world
• Chapter Five: Failure or exile? Reactions to ‘overseas’ writing and writers
• Chapter Six: New Zealand writers and the modern world
• Chapter Seven: The whole thing’s been a farce’: New Zealand writers in London and overseas
• Chapter Eight: Setting the Thames on fire
• Concluding thoughts
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index