The Land Girls in a Man's World
Dianne Bardsley's The Land Girls was one of 15 books published by the UOP in 2002, and no. 183 of 310 books produced between 1959 and 2008. This is an impressive record considering Auckland University Press, which became a full-time publishing house earlier, produced 350 in the same period. Bardsley's work certainly deserved publication. Drawing on the oral histories of 130 women who worked on the land in New Zealand, and written interviews of 90 others, she created an accessible, highly personal, and balanced historical account of this overlooked phenomenon that occurred during the Second World War.