Springtime in Taranaki
An autobiography of youth
The story of Douglas Stewart's first twenty-five years until chance and literary ambition conspire to take him to Sydney.
Capturing the nostalgia of springtime - picnics, dances, the drama of first love-this gentle autobiography tells the story of Douglas Stewart's youth in a New Zealand country town, 'an almost invisible speck on the map about two hundred miles north of the great glittering metropolis of Wellington'.
Brimful with mischievous humour and rejoicing of nature, Douglas Stewart offers us a fascinating portrait of the artist as a young man, of leaving home and a world of innocence long past.
Author bio:
Poet, dramatist, short-story writer and critic, Douglas Stewart was a highly influential literary figure. Born in New Zealand in 1913, he came to Australia in 1938 and was for twenty-one years literary editor of the Bulletin before he joined Angus & Robertson where he worked for twelve years as an editorial adviser. He is remembered both for his finely observed nature poetry and his verse dramas, including his most significant work The Fire on the Snow concerning Scott's ill-fated Antarctic expedition and which was written during his second year in Sydney. He also published a number of books of prose including a collection of short stories A Girl with Red Hair and other Stories (1944) and the non-fiction works The Seven Rivers (1966), Norman Lindsay: A personal memoir (1975), A Man of Sydney (1977) and Springtime in Taranaki (1983). Written in 1984, the year before he died, his last book Douglas Stewart's Garden of Friends about the garden he created with his wife artist Margaret Coen was published in 1987.
