Fictional Geographies: Versions of the Waikato in Juvenile Fiction, 1874-1907

For nearly 140 years the Waikato has been used as the setting for junior novels in which New Zealand writers have responded to and interpreted the region's distinctive geography and history. These narratives have utilised unique aspects of the physical and temporal setting as significant elements which offer a wide range of fictional versions of the region.1 During the 1980s and 1990s Gaelyn Gordon drew on both the geographical and cultural aspects of the Waikato for a series of fantasy novels in which modern teenagers encounter a taniwha in the Waikato River and patupaiarehe on Mount Pirongia; while contemporary writers such as Fleur Beale and G. Brassi have used Hamilton and its immediate surroundings as the backdrop for fiction about children having realistic adventures in a mainly urban setting. The Waikato countryside is the scene of a number of novels featuring the region's distinctive history as well as geography, such as Roderick Finlayson's The Springng Fern which follows the fortunes of a north Waikato tribe from the 183Os to the 1960s, and Beverley Dunlop's and Phyllis Johnston's rather bleak evocations of the hardships of farming life in the 1940s. The Waikato also features in historical fiction for children about the New Zealand Wars, with six novels set during the Waikato campaign, including five fictionalised versions of the siege of Orakau.These books, published mostly during the latter part of the twentieth century, were written by New Zealand authors for New Zealand children. They were preceded, however, by three rather different books, written during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by English authors, and addressed to a British authence. The Waikato as a setting for juvenile literature made its first appearance in 1874, with die publication of Amongst the Maoris: A Book of Adventure by Emilia Marryat, the daughter of the rather better known Captain Marryat, one of the most popular nineteenth-century authors of adventure stories for boys. Emilia Marryat wrote a number of other novels with a moral message for children, such as Temper (1854), Henry LyIe (1856), and The Stolen Cherries, or Tell the Truth at Once (1869). Two other English writers, Eleanor Stredder and H.C. Storer, also wrote books for children set in the Waikato - Doing and Daring: A New Zealand Story (1899) and The Boy Settler; or, The Adventures of Sydney Bartleti (1907). Little is known about Storer, although Jacqueline Beets identifies her first name as Hannah.2 In contrast, Stredder made her name as a writer of adventure narratives set in exotic parts of the British Empire, such as Jack ana His Ostrich Farm: An African Story (1890), Archie's Find: A Story of Australian Life (1890), and Lost in the Wilds: A Canadian Story (1893).The three books considered here form part of a small but distinctive group of about a dozen children's novels with a New Zealand setting, published in England between 1862 and 1916. In these books, young English protagonists emigrate to New Zealand and have a number of adventures arising from their interaction with the New Zealand landscape and its Maori inhabitants, both of which are depicted as alien and potentially dangerous. A few of these books have as the happy ending the return of dieir protagonists to England and 'civilisation', but in the majority the emigrants settle down successfully and create miniature versions of England in their new home. These texts have many analogies with those set in other countries with a similar history; as Mary Rubio notes in the Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English, 'the countries of the white diaspora (Australia, Canada, New Zealand) shared strong parallels in the development of their respective children's literatures'.3 In these countries, the earliest examples of juvenile fiction were written not for the inhabitants of the colonies in which they were set, but for young British readers. In many cases the intended readers were British boys; these books, as Betty Gilderdale observes, were published 'at a time when stories about the colonies were becoming increasingly popular with young men in British Public Schools, who were being encouraged to seek adventure (and a career) overseas'. …

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