Research to shed light on mysterious writer

19 February 2007

Research to shed light on mysterious writer

Murder made her an international bestselling author, and she was one of the leading lights in New Zealand’s arts world, yet Ngaio Marsh is barely remembered in her home country.

But a Unitec academic is hoping to change that with a book made possible by a prestigious research fellowship.

Unitec New Zealand School of Design lecturer Dr Joanne Drayton was named the Alexander Turnball National Library Fellow this year and is using the opportunity to research a new biography on Ngaio Marsh.

Dr Drayton says that despite Marsh’s huge international success – one million copies of her murder-mysteries were shipped worldwide in 1949 alone – the novelist hasn’t been given the place in New Zealand history she deserves.

“Ngaio Marsh should be remembered alongside Sir Edmund Hillary and our sporting icons as a great New Zealand figure, but there’s no awareness of her here at all.”

The Alexander Turnball fellowship includes a $45,000 stipend and Dr Drayton will be based at the National Library in Wellington this year, using their collection for her research. Harper Collins will publish the biography next year.

Marsh was one of the four “Queens of Crime” of the early 20th century with contemporaries Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham and Dorothy Sayers. But she first gained recognition in the 1920s as a modernist painter, and during her life was also an acclaimed Shakespearean director and interior designer.

Dr Drayton – who lectures on design theory and 19th and 20th century art history at Unitec – has previously written highly-regarded books on New Zealand artists Rhona Haszard, Frances Hodgkins and Edith Collier.

One of the misconceptions, she says, is that Marsh makes for a dry, academic book subject.

“That’s not the case at all. Marsh didn’t help matters very much because she made it sound like she lived a dull, uninteresting life in order to avoid attention. But I hope with my book I can show her as the lively, funny person she was.”

The subject matter is a good match for the Alexander Turnball fellowship, she says, as the aim of the fellowship is to encourage the use of the National Library’s collection for research that will be of interest to all New Zealanders.

“My ambition is to write a rigourously researched book that will be accessible to a wide audience.”

ENDS

© Scoop Media