Maurice Shadbolt – 1963

At 27, and with his first book, The New Zealanders (1959), published by Gollancz in London, Maurice Shadbolt (1932-2004) was seen as a rising new author. In response to Brasch's question 'What else could be done to help writers?' Shadbolt wrote that 'Otago, with the Robert Burns Fellowship, is like a bright island in a bleak sea.' Shadbolt arrived in the 'bright island' in 1963 and after writing 20,000 words on what would eventually be Strangers and Journeys, he quit it, and sitting at his Burns desk he 'began composing a playful pastiche of some New Zealand writing, partly as an oblique exercise in criticism, partly to put some of my more irritant preoccupations into permanent cold storage, and above all to make my year easier.' The result was Among the Cinders, of which this is the first edition.

Maurice Shadbolt, Among the Cinders. New York: Atheneum, 1965. Brasch PR 9641 S35 A4.