Ian Cross – 1959

'I am working on my best sustained piece of writing now and I don't expect that it will return me more than the initial advance from the publisher when I finish it in about a year's time.' So wrote Ian Cross in response to a question from the 'Writers in New Zealand' survey printed in Landfall, March 1960. The book was After Anzac Day, which followed The God Boy (1957) and The Backward Sex (1960), novels which had been published and completed prior to his accepting the first Robert Burns Fellowship at Otago University in 1959. After Anzac Day was completed in Wellington in 1960 and on reflection, Cross claimed that it did not 'fulfill the original grand plan...'. These pristine copies are from the library of Charles Brasch, who was one of the prime initiators of the Fellowship.

Ian Cross, The God Boy. London: Andre Deutsch, 1958. Brasch PR 9641 C82 G6; ___, The Backward Sex. London: Andre Deutsch, 1960. Brasch PR 9641 C82 B3; ___, After Anzac Day. London: Andre Deutsch, 1961. Brasch PR 9641 C82 G6.