The story of a New Zealand writer

the long version

Jane Mander grew up in the kauri milling settlements of the North and her desire to depict life in those places produced a classic novel, The Story of a New Zealand River. Mander uses this and her other five novels to work through ideas about male/female relationships. The dilemmas of Alice, her daughter Asia and lover David Bruce continue to echo in our culture, although they shocked contemporary critics. Who was Jane Mander? Why did she write The Story of a New Zealand River? Many people know the book, but few know anything of the writer. Rae McGregor has drawn a rich and absorbing portrait of Mander - from her early years in the North, to Sydney socialist, New York intellectual, London writer and home again as Auckland critic and literary personality. It is almost one hundred years since Jane Mander published her first short story, 'A Stray Woman', in the Illustrated Magazine - at last we have this biography.