The New Zealander

Macaulay

Macaulay's review of von Ranke's The ecclesiastical and political history of the Popes … coined what became, in the 19th century, the most frequently used literary allusion to New Zealand. The figure of a Mäori New Zealander arriving from the new world to survey a future London in ruins recalled the texts of Volney, Walpole and Gibbon. It referred back to the 18th century excursions of Wood and Dawkins, of Stuart and Revett and of Major at Paestum.
List of items

Doré

In the 1870s the artist Gustave Doré depicted Macaulay's New Zealander visiting future London. In the accompanying text Jerrold wrote, ‘Macaulay's dream of the far future, with the tourist New Zealander ... contemplating "The glory that was Greece - The grandeur that was Rome".' This solitary philosopher-artist appears more akin to romanticised images of young English travelers, discovering and sketching the ruins of Palmyra a century earlier, than to New Zealanders who had recently been at war with Colonial and Imperial troops.
List of items

Links

Images by Gustave Doré

Electronic version of Jerrold's London