The Puritan Paradox: An Annotated Bibliography of Puritan and Anti-Puritan New Zealand Fiction, 1860-1940 — Part 1: The Puritan Legacy

This bibliography springs from my examination of the literary, social, and cultural legacy of Puritanism in pre-1940 New Zealand. A brief overview of the aims and methodology of the thesis which embodies that study is provided here as a prelude to the bibliography. The broad contention of my thesis is that Puritanism is a dominant social, cultural, and literary influence in New Zealand. This is supported by statements made by a range of social historians, popular polemical writers, and literary critics writing during the last 50 years. For example, Gordon McLauchlan comments that ‘a strong strain of puritanism runs through the New Zealand character’ (1987:51), Bill Pearson asserts that ‘we are the most puritan country in the world’ (209), and Lawrence Jones writes that ‘Puritanism has been a consistent concern of New Zealand writers.’