Letters of Denis Glover

Overview

Denis Glover could be witty, intelligent, alarmingly frank, and frequently highly entertaining. A widely admired poet, honoured naval commander, gifted printer, and typographer, Denis Glover was founder of the Caxton Press in Christchurch. For 15 years from 1935 he directed a publishing programme that did much to define New Zealand literature for its day, and for much of the rest of the century. His literary work was suspended for war service in the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy, during which he earned a DSC for his activities in the Normandy landings. But he was also a serial philanderer and prodigious drinker, and his private life increasingly disintegrated around him, more and more publicly. And yet his energy as a correspondent appeared never to wane, and almost to the end he confided openly, prolifically, and entertainingly to hundreds of acquaintances and confidants. In this magnificent volume Sarah Shieff presents around 500 of Glover's letters to around 110 people, drawn from an archive of nearly 3000 letters to over 430 recipients.

Author Biography

Sarah Shieff is an associate professor of English at the University of Waikato. Her main teaching and research interests are New Zealand literature and cultural history, Gothic fiction, the literature of trauma, and food writing. Her books include Talking Music: Conversations with New Zealand musicians (AUP, 2002) and a scholarly edition of the letters of Frank Sargeson (Random House, 2012). Sarah is the New Zealand editor of Options for Teaching Australian and New Zealand Literature (MLA, 2017) and edited the Journal of New Zealand Literature 2005–15.