My earlier publications include a book of poems called Landscapes, the hand-printed Victoriana, the Pan Classics edition of Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh, three collections of essays on literature as Views of English, and the pioneering anthology Writing Wellington . None of these is now available.
I have a few left-over copies of several recent books seeking good homes at author price, personally signed if you wish (please specify). Please email books@roger-robinson.com to discuss mailing and timing.
Robert Louis Stevenson: His Best Pacific Writings . Selection, Introduction and Commentaries by Roger Robinson. Foreword by Albert Wendt (Exisle, Auckland ; University of Queensland Press, Brisbane; Bess Press , Hawaii , 2002.
Every biographer waxes lyrical about Stevenson’s years in the Pacific, but no one ever reads the brilliant writing that he himself produced about that then unknown region. So I selected the best, from an astonishing range of genres – fiction, memoir, history, travel writing, poetry, prayers, ballads, letters, and speeches, all showing his extraordinary sensitivity, gift for friendship across all ethnicities, acute observation, and sheer word power. I introduce each extract with a brief biographical and critical commentary, making up (I am proud to think) the best short account anywhere of RLS the Pacific writer and immigrant. There are many illustrations, too, including several never before published, and the design and production are of Tim Chamberlain’s usual stylish excellence. The book is dedicated to my sons and their families, “children of the Pacific.” Published in New Zealand , Australia and USA .
“Temperamentally, Stevenson needed both the shore and the sea, a sense of secure refuge and also a sense of infinite horizons….He was writing at the top of his literary game in the Pacific, stimulated by the new material and the challenge of lifting it above ‘romance, sugar candy sham epic.’ He had at least seven important Pacific books on the brew that were integral to the decision to live in Samoa …”
Softbound, new, fully illustrated, US$15, NZ$25.
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The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature (Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1998). Edited by Roger Robinson & Nelson Wattie.
This is the first definitive guide to New Zealand ’s vigorous and varied literature, from Maori oral forms to international best-sellers of the 1990s. Classics like Katherine Mansfield and Witi Ihimaera (The Whale Rider) are fully treated, while surprise entries include Neil Finn (of “Split Enz”), romance authors, sports journalists, and the main writer of TV’s “Home and Away.” As editor and the biggest contributor, I was redefining “literature,” as something wider, more varied, and more interesting than academic syllabuses suggest, as well as making a book that people have found readable and entertaining as well as compendious and expert. In very many cases, the entries (not only mine) on writers and works are the best accounts yet available. It’s big (600 double-column pages), but good to handle and read, with a beautiful New Zealand landscape cover.
Hardback, new, US$40 or NZ$55
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Julius Vogel’s Anno Domini 2000; or, Woman’s Destiny (Streamline Creative, Auckland ; University of Hawai’i Press , Honolulu , 2000.) Edited with Introduction by Roger Robinson.
“The Utopian novel that got the future right.” In 1889, an ex-Prime Minister of New Zealand wrote an extraordinary prophetic novel, imagining a future when women hold all senior political positions, travel is by air, communication by something very like email (“noiseless telegraph”), and social welfare, city architecture, global commerce, tourism and medical science are all astonishingly as we now know them. With all New Zealand’s senior posts filled by women in the actual year 2000, it seemed a good time to revive a book that features in all the histories of the women’s movement and futuristic fiction, but that no one could actually find. The beautifully produced 2000 commemorative edition, published in New Zealand and USA , is dedicated to Kathrine Switzer.
Softbound, new, US$12, NZ$20.
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Katherine Mansfield: In From the Margin (Louisiana State University Press, 1994)
Edited with introduction by Roger Robinson.
This is a fine collection of essays by international scholars such as W.H. New, Perry Meisel, Jacqueline Bardolph, Gardner McFall, Ruth Parkin-Gounelas and Gillian Boddy.
“Mansfield, then, is fragmentary, oblique, and “floating” habitually at the edge of human things, but in ways that can now be seen as crucial for her time, and for ours…She wrote almost compulsively of outcasts, exiles, minorities, and fringe dwellers.” (Introduction)
Hardback, new, US$30.
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The God Boy by Ian Cross, with an introduction by Roger Robinson
The first New Zealand novel to be selected for Penguin Classics, and deservedly so, as it’s a subtly crafted and deeply moving story of a Catholic boy learning that simple faith is no protection from life’s harsh betrayals.
“The God Boy is a deceptively modest masterpiece…sometimes compared with The Catcher in the Rye or What Maisie Knew…It seems likely to remain a moving and challenging novel, so long as children suffer from their parents’ conflicts, and there are readers to appreciate the fine art of first-person narrative.” (Introduction)
Paperback, new, US$22. (Not otherwise available in USA .)
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The Story of Hong Gildong by Hur Kyun
Translated by Yong Ho Ko. Abridged English version and introduction by Roger Robinson (Wai-te-Ata Press, Wellington, 1995).
An unusual excursion into Korean literature, this interesting little book happened when I supervised a student who translated the entertaining Robin Hood style classic from Korea ’s 15 th century. My 14-page abridgment, with introduction, provides a readable insight into another literary culture.
Paper cover, stapled, 16 pages, new, limited edition, US$ or NZ$10. (Not otherwise available.)
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Poems for the Eighties, edited by Roger Robinson (Wai-te-Ata Press, Wellington, 1980)
I compiled this slim collection of nine poems by five poets as a souvenir of the festive and influential PEN/Victoria University Conference, “New Zealand Writing 1959-1979,” in 1979. The poems were published here for the first time, and indicated various directions New Zealand poetry was to take in the subsequent decades. The poets are Fleur Adcock, Lauris Edmond, Sam Hunt, Bill Manhire, C.K. Stead. A collector’s item period piece.
Paper cover, stapled, 16 pages, new, limited edition, US$ or NZ$20. Not otherwise available.
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