Literary awards in New Zealand have until recent years been sporadic and unimportant. Before the National Centennial celebrations in 1940, no prizes of significance were offered to writers, except within the membership of academic or other restricted groups, or for the special purposes of the press. Personal awards are of three types: one is the prize offered in open competition for unpublished work, a kind of “talent quest”; another bestows a laureate blessing upon a published work. The third type of award in New Zealand is the scholarship, intended to support a writer of established promise during a further period of creative activity. Support for writing also takes the form of State grants, not to persons, but to publishers, to assist publications of value, whether periodicals or books; in a country with a necessarily limited reading public this is a valuable type of recognition for a literary work. The note “published with the aid of the New Zealand Literary Fund” has become a token of some merit.
Awards fall into five categories. Literary societies or other similar bodies have offered prizes, occasional or regular, often in the name of notable members of the past. Civic authorities, banks, and Government or other institutions have promoted competitions to commemorate anniversaries or accompany community festivities. Prizes have been offered by newspapers, by the National Broadcasting Service, and by various periodicals, either as an element in general policy, or to mark some birthday or other occasion. Academic prizes and scholarships are offered by the universities. Finally, there are the many activities of the Fund, including annual scholarships and awards, subsidies to publishers, and grants-in-aid to writers.
The P.E.N. (New Zealand Centre) makes two annual awards for achievement by New Zealanders resident in the country. The Jessie Mackay Poetry Award (inaugurated in 1940) was at first for published or unpublished work. Up to 1955 major and minor prizes were given in each year; since that date, one major prize has been given, for published work only. Jessie Mackay (1864–1938) was a notable literary figure, poetical as well as polemical. Winners have been Douglas Stewart, Paula Hangar, R. I. F. Pattison, Mary Greig, Mary Stanley, Ruth Gilbert, James K. Baxter, Charles Spear, Pat Wilson, Paul Henderson, W. H. Oliver, Allen Curnow, M. K. Joseph, and Basil Dowling.
The Hubert Church Award for Prose was established in 1945, partly from a memorial bequest made to the P.E.N. by Mrs Catherine Church. Hubert Church was a poet, novelist, and critic who died in 1932. This award is for the best prose of any kind published in the previous year. Winners have been M. H. Holcroft, Lilian Keys, David Ballantyne, J. C. Beaglehole, Frank Sargeson, Janet Frame, Oliver Duff, E. H. McCormick, James Courage, Maurice Duggan, Dennis McEldowney, M. K. Joseph, Maurice Shadbolt, and Noel Hilliard.
In 1952 the value of both awards was raised to £25, and in 1959 to 50, with the aid of a subsidy from the Literary Fund. In 1964 the value of the Hubert Church Award was raised to £100.
The New Zealand Library Association offers the Esther Glen Award, a medal, for the most distinguished contribution to New Zealand literature for children, published in New Zealand during the year by an author resident in the country. Owing to the restricted field, it has been awarded only four times since its inauguration in 1945, to Stella Morice, A. W. Reed, Joan Smith, and Maurice Duggan.
The British Drama League holds an annual one-act-play competition.
The New Zealand Women Writers' Society in 1959 promoted the Katherine Mansfield Memorial Award. This, a biennial award, open to New Zealanders by birth or residence, offers a prize of 50 guineas each for a short story (published) and an essay (published or unpublished, as under local conditions a serious critical, biographical or historical essay would not easily reach print). The financial sponsor is the Bank of New Zealand, of whose board of directors Sir Harold Beauchamp, Katherine Mansfield's father, was member and chairman for many years. Winners of the award were Maurice Duggan and Elsie Locke (1959), C. K. Stead (1961), and Maurice Shadbolt (1963). A subsidiary prize went to a young Maori writer, Arapera Blanc in 1959.
These have stimulated public interest and directed attention to promising writers. One major set of prizes is that associated with the National Centennial celebrations in 1940. First prize in the essay section went to M. H. Holcroft for The Deepening Stream; first prize for a short story went to Frank Sargeson (The Making of a New Zealander) and E. Midgeley. J. R. Hervey won the poetry prize: no first prize was awarded in drama. In the novel section, only one entry later achieved publication, Beryl McCarthy's Castles in the Soil, a third prize winner. Prize money ranged from £150 (the novel) to 20 (poetry).
Some of the Provincial Centennial celebrations subsequent to 1940 also provided literary awards. In 1948, to mark the centenary of Otago, the Otago Daily Times offered a prize of £200 for a work on a New Zealand historical theme. It was won by Georgina McDonald with the novel Grand Hills for Sheep. In 1950 the Canterbury Centennial Association conducted competitions for a one-act play, a radio play, a short story, an essay, and a poem, prizes being in all cases 30 guineas. In 1956 the Southland Provincial Centennial was marked by a competition for an unpublished play, the prize being local production plus £200. It was won by Dorothy Mary Black; Stella Jones's The Tree was placed second.
In 1960–61, the city of Wellington offered prizes as a feature of its festival. £100 was offered for an unpublished short story with a New Zealand background, £50 for a poem or sequence of poems. The winners were Maurice Shadbolt and Fleur Campbell.
Offered by the press, periodicals, and the National Broadcasting Service. These are for unpublished work, and vary greatly in the value of the prize money and the quality of the entries attracted.
Among awards worth recording are:
The Landfall Awards. In 1953 the literary quarterly Landfall offered four poetry awards of £25 each; the winners were M. K. Joseph and Keith Sinclair. In 1956 two prose awards of £25 were offered for fiction and non-fiction. John Caselberg and Maurice Shadbolt were the winners, both with short stories.
The Otago Daily Times in 1961 sponsored a novel competition to mark its hundredth year of publication. First prize of £350 went to Errol Brathwaite for An Affair of Men.
Small prizes are offered by various of the “Little Magazines”, including Te Ao Hou, which endeavours to encourage good writing both in English and Maori.
The New Zealand Listener in association with the National Broadcasting Service has held occasional literary competitions. In 1936 W. Graeme Holder won a prize for a radio play. In 1946 John Gundry won both sections of a radio-play competition for prizes totalling £100. In 1949, to mark the proposed royal visit of King George VI, the Listener offered a £50 prize for an ode which should be “an expression of New Zealand's homage to the Crown”. The winner was Ruth France.
The most valuable of the academic awards sponsored by the universities is open to “any New Zealand writer of imaginative literature (including autobiography, biography, and literary criticism) whether or not at the time resident in New Zealand”. This is the Robert Burns Fellowship offered by the University of Otago. The emolument is “not less than the salary of a University lecturer”. The fellow, who is elected for one year, must reside in Dunedin; he is offered university facilities, but is free to devote his time to his own writing. The fellows have been Ian Cross, Maurice Duggan, John Caselberg, R. A. K. Mason, Maurice Shadbolt and Maurice Gee.
The University Macmillan Brown Prize, which commemorates a founding professor, is now awarded for poetry or prose showing “originality and imaginative conception”.
The major encouragement to literary aspirants in New Zealand, apart from the Robert Burns Fellowship, is that given by the Literary Fund. This was established in 1947 after representations had been made to the Government by the P.E.N. It is financed from the vote of the Department of Internal Affairs, the money being allotted on the recommendation of an advisory committee. The Literary Fund was set up with three principal aims:
To facilitate the publication of works of literary value in the fields of historical writing, contemporary imaginative literature, and reprints of New Zealand classics and Maori literature.
To make financial grants to New Zealand authors undertaking creative work on approved projects.
To facilitate the publication of critical books and studies of New Zealand literature, usually by grants to publishers.
Under heading (1) the Fund has supported a wide range of books. Representative titles are: Keith Sinclair, The Origin of the Maori Wars (history); Maurice Duggan, Immanuel's Land (stories); Janet Frame, Owls Do Cry (novel); Bruce Mason, The Pohutukawa Tree (drama); Charles Doyle, A Splinter of Glass (poetry); M. H. Holcroft, Discovered Isles (criticism, reprint); Robin Hyde, Check to Your King (novel, reprint); John Logan Campbell, Poenamo (autobiography, reprint); John Gorst, The Maori King (history, reprint).
Authors assisted under (2) have received grants for travel, for research materials, etc. One of the notable books resulting is Antony Alpers' biography, Katherine Mansfield.
Under (3) assistance given includes subsidies to the Arts Year Book, Landfall, The New Zealand Poetry Yearbook, Mate, Numbers, Image, and other periodicals. There have been grants to literary bodies for bulletins, and for writers' conferences; a grant is made annually to the P.E.N. to bring the prize money of the Jessie Mackay Awards and Hubert Church up to £50 each.
After some 10 years' experience, the Literary Fund extended its activities by the creation of two annual awards for New Zealand writers. These are the Award of Achievement and the Scholarship in Letters.
The Award for Achievement is worth £100; winners to date are Janet Frame (for Owls Do Cry), Ruth France (for The Race), and O. E. Middleton (for The Stone).
The Scholarship in Letters is to the value of £1,000, is intended to enable the recipient to give all or most of his time to the project nominated by him, whether in New Zealand or abroad, during the year of tenure. Holders have been E. H. McCormick, Sylvia Ashton-Warner, Maurice Shadbolt, and Marilyn Duckworth.
by Joan Stevens, M.A.(N.Z., OXON.), Associate Professor of English, Victoria University of Wellington.