Romance in the Backblocks in New Zealand Popular Fiction, 1930–1950: Mary Scott’s Barbara Stories

Abstract

Settler literature is founded on a map of concentric circles, with the human at the inner ring and “natural spectacles” on the outer. This chapter considers the questions of genre and spatiality raised by romance as a quintessential colonial literary form, especially as it persisted in the twentieth-century popular literature of magazines and newspapers. It examines Mary Scott’s Barbara sketches, published in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, and collected in five volumes: Barbara in the Backblocks (1936), Barbara Prospers (1937), Life with Barbara (1944), Barbara on the Farm (1953), and Barbara Sees the Queen (1954). The chapter concludes that Scott’s settler map of the backblocks is unstable, has porous boundaries, and the centres of reassurance—the farm house, cleared fields, community—are always under threat.