English Department Colloquium and Reading Series

Mary Edmond-Paul, Massey University

"Robin Hyde's Life Writing: a new story of kindness"

On the 2nd of June 1933 Robin Hyde, already a well-known and admired journalist, critic and poet was overworked and anxious, she was also depressed by the flu and a fight with her employer, the editor of an Auckland newspaper, and by his threat to ‘sack’ her. She jumped off Princes Wharf at the bottom Queen Street, Auckland’s main-street, but was speedily rescued and arrested – attempting suicide was a crime in those days.

What followed is an extraordinary story of recovery and of opportunity for creativity that departs dramatically from our other national tale of mental institutions and the artist - Janet Frame’s story. Hyde escaped the punishment that Frame got for her alienation, the terrible experience of years of incarceration in the worst wards of the country’s mental hospitals. Instead her story is one of kindness – a story that this seminar will explain with readings and discussion of Robin Hyde’s unpublished autobiographical writings.

Dr Mary Edmond-Paul is Program Coordinator, English, at Massey University, Albany, Aotearoa. Her publications include Her Side of the Story: Readings of Mander, Mansfield & Hyde (1999); Gothic NZ: the darker side of Kiwi culture , which Mary edited with Jennifer Lawn and Misha Kavka, (2006); and Lighted Windows: critical essays on Robin Hyde, edited by Mary Edmond-Paul, which came out from Oxford (2008).

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English, Manoa Campus

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anne kennedy, (808) 956-7619 Eng., anne.kennedy@hawaii.edu

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