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Creature comforts

New Zealanders and their pets – An Illustrated History

By Nancy Swarbrick
Books Swarbrick

New Zealand has one of the highest rates of pet ownership in the world – in 2011, 68 per cent of all Kiwi households had at least one pet: almost half had a cat and nearly a third had a dog. Yet, until now, no book has explored how pets came to be such an integral part of the New Zealand way of life.

Creature Comforts does just this. By chronicling the major events and ideas that have shaped pet keeping in New Zealand, this book explains the strong relationship we have with our animal friends and how this has changed over time. It looks at the social impact of fanciers' organisations, the moral influence of the SPCA and other animal welfare groups, the educational role of calf clubs, and the questions raised by animal rights activists. Along the way, it also tells the stories of some memorable companion animals.

The book is beautifully illustrated and includes many previously unpublished historical images.

The White Clock

New Poems

By Owen Marshall
Books Marshall

Delving both into “the worlds of the mind” and “where he happens to be”, Owen Marshall brings us poetry that is steeped in the classics, history and literature, and yet is alive with the vivid particulars of damp duffle-coats and hot-air balloons, beer and bicycles, willows and skylarks, kauri gum and limestone tunnels.

Marshall's work, taut with aphorisms, mining the philosophical, is nevertheless understated and wry. It is as likely to explore the nature of enduring love and the sacrifices made to adhere to a personal morality, as it is to delight in the image of a small child's animal élan on a trampoline.

With a crisply erudite vocabulary, yet a direct and lucid manner, Marshall takes us from Gorbio to Nelson, from Turkey to St Bathans, from Richard III to resentful schoolboys on detention, from intimate endearments to a portrait of the disillusioned guy in the pub cover band.

His dry, even acerbic, humour and verbal control effect a keen-eyed watch on any melancholia and despair that grow out of staring too long into the fire of human folly.

FITZ

The Colonial Adventures of James Edward FitzGerald

By Jenifer Roberts
Books Fitz

This tells the story of James Edward FitzGerald, whose energy and enthusiasm contributed so much to the early history of Christchurch. Orator, writer, politician and journalist, he was the first Canterbury pilgrim to set foot in New Zealand, first superintendent of the province of Canterbury, first leader of the general government and founder of the Press newspaper.

From his early years in the Anglo-Irish gentry of England to his old age as auditor-general of the colony, FITZ is a gripping biography that reads like a novel, breathing new life into the extraordinary man who played a major role in public life through 50 years of New Zealand history.

The author, Jenifer Roberts, is an English historian and direct descendant of FitzGerald. With access to sources previously inaccessible to researchers, she provides new information about one of our most outstanding colonists and his equally talented wife. Together, they personified the pioneer spirit of 19th-century New Zealand, a spirit re-invoked today as the people of Christchurch rebuild their city.

Edwin's Egg

& other poetic novellas

By Cilla McQueen

Books McQueen

Edwin's Egg & other poetic novellas, by Cilla McQueen, is a poetry-prose-image creation in which eight interlinked short story-poems combine with a series of obliquely evocative images sourced from the Alexander Turnbull Library.

Created during McQueen's term as New Zealand Poet Laureate (2009–11), the work was initially known as Serial and ran on the Poet Laureate blog. Three times a week over a period of 17 months new instalments were posted – a process reminiscent of how early novels, such as those of Dickens, were serialised.

In what became a most fruitful collaboration with the Alexander Turnbull Library, McQueen then spliced each instalment with photographs from the library's archives.

Edwin's Egg is a wonderfully maverick work “exploring a space between prose and poetry”, refusing to conform to either genre and exploiting the qualities of both. The text and inter-relationship with the images creates a verbal-visual field rich with humour, serendipity, a touch of Bluff Dada and more than a shade of disquiet.

Published in association with the Alexander Turnbull Library.

For further information and more books: Otago University Press

Email university.press@otago.ac.nz

Books by Otago alumni

The Postfeminist Biopic: Narrating the Lives of Plath, Kahlo, Woolf and Austen, by Bronwyn Polaschek, Palgrave Macmillan.

Por Pors Cookbook, by Carolyn King, self-published, November 2013.

Family Care and Social Capital: Transitions in Informal Care, by Patrick Barrett, Beatrice Hale, Mary Butler, Springer, July 2013.

The Complete Works of John Milton, Vol. 8: De Doctrina Christiana, Vol.1, edited by John K. Hale and J. Donald Cullington, Oxford University Press.

The Complete Works of John Milton, Vol. 8: De Doctrina Christiana, Vol.2, edited by John K. Hale and J. Donald Cullington, Oxford University Press.

Native-Speaker Status in the Translation Services Market: Marketing and Price-Setting Strategies of Translation Agencies, by Daniel Sebesta, Lambert Academic Publishing, July 2013.

Taxing Air: Facts and Fallacies about Climate Change, by Bob Carter and John Spooner, with Bill Kininmonth, Martine Feil, Stewart Franks, Brian Leyland, Kelpie Press, July 2013.

Biogeography of Australasia: A Molecular Analysis, by Michael Heads, Cambridge University Press.

Churchill: The Supreme Survivor, by A. W. Beasley, Mercer Books, October 2013.

Alumni:

If you have recently published a book, please email the Magazine editor.

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