Narrative
Station Life in New Zealand
Synopsis
Letters sent to England from a sheep station in Canterbury. The crossing and arrival at Lyttelton, the climb to Christchurch, the prefabricated house that must be lived in, the servants and ranks of a new society, a ball in town, summer rides, the north-west wind, the death of a small child, then the winter when snow blocks the house and its starving occupants.
Context
The book was born of a piece of advice: Alexander Macmillan urged its author to gather the letters written to her younger sister Jessie during the years spent at Steventon, a nine-thousand-seven-hundred-acre estate on the Selwyn, bought in 1866 with a partner, whose house was called Broomielaw. The winter of 1867 killed four thousand sheep out of seven thousand there, and the couple returned to England in December 1868. A sequel appeared in 1873.
Who it is for
Some thirty letters, lively and easy, out of copyright in the original. Nothing to know in advance, except that the province had only just been colonised.
Prizes and reception
The success was immediate: numerous reprints, a French translation as early as 1882 and a German one.
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