Research Catalog

Title

Plume of bees: a literary biography of C.K. Stead / Judith Dell Panny.

Author

Panny, Judith Dell.

Publication

Auckland, N.Z. : Cape Catley Ltd, 2009.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

235 p., [16] p. of plates : ill. (some col.),; 24 cm

Summary

C.K. Stead has been widely published and translated. His honours include membership of the Order of New Zealand, and he is one of only two New Zealanders to become a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. This book looks to the situations or influences that may have contributed to his talent and ambition, his effects on others, the challenges he throws out and the differing responses he receives in New Zealand and abroad.

Subject

• Stead, C. K. 1932-
• Stead, C. K. 1932- > Criticism and interpretation
• Authors, New Zealand > 20th century > Biography

Genre/Form

• Biographies
• Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p.231-235).

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

• Introduction: The Stead phenomenon (The poem C.K. and the scope of the literary biography) -- 1. The rhythm of the garden (In thye suburb of Mt. Eden ; 'Thye Eden we are all cast out from" ; Pianist or poet? ; The Kaiwaka farm) -- 2. Marriage, tragedy, satire (Takapuna ; Death, poetry and fiction ; The University of Auckland ; Enter [Frank] Sargeson ; Satire in All Visitors Ashore ; Cecelia Skyways ; Melior Farbro and Prefessor Skidmore) -- 3. "Cradled in the great cup of London" (From Auckland to Armisdale ; Bristol and London ; Departure and the PhD) -- 4. The literary nationalist ("In at the beginning" ; Sargeson, Stead and "A fitting tribute" ; Hobson Bay and Oliver ; Politics in poetry ; Smith's Dream and the inside of a cell ; Stirrings of disquiet) -- 5. The Menton legacy ("On the stone stairway" ; "Under the Sun" ; The Scarf and Stead families ; [Katherine] Mansfield research ; Juan Quesada ; Walking Westward and University College, London ; Stead and the Emperor Henshu) -- 6. The Fellow and the feminists (Senior Research Fellow ; Cleverness in The Death of the Body ; "The writhing of a corpse" ; The feminists) -- 7. "The masks of Catullus" (Catullus and Clodia ; Nostalgia and scorn) -- 8. "To Hollywood" (Controversy and early retirement ; Stead and Professor Bill Harper ; History and illusion in Sister Hollywood ; The end of the eighties and Stead's "Negative thrust") -- 9. "Prose is the necessary donkey" (Frontliune and the London flat ; Laura as author in The End of the Century at the End of the World ; Moravia and the art of the novelist ; A vendetta? ; [Damien] Wilkins) -- 10. The "plume of bees" (Questioning 'Whakapapa' ; The plynesian cold shoulder ; The Singing Whakapapa: Maori and John Flatt ; Stead's whakapapa)
• 11. Tribute and tribulation (Villa Vittoria ; Facts relocated in fiction ; O'Dwyer and [Dan] Davin ; The makutu, Dyer and O'Dwyer ; Croatia and the reception of Talking about O'Dwyer ; Poetry of the 1990s) -- 12. "Stead, like execution, concentrates the mind" (The stories ; The Writer at Work ; The Secret History of Modernism) -- 13. "The wicked wisdom of Europe" (Steads Katherine in Mansfield ; Affinity ; "How it's done ... I have no idea" ; Puritan naïvety ; Honours and accolades) -- 14. In the limelight (The launch of My Name was Judas ; The debater ; My Name was Judas and the Auckland festival ; Judas the sceptic ; Stead's "godless gospel" and Dog) -- 15. The Black River poet and the Stead phenomenon (The years of The Red Tram and The Black River ; Rapallo Uzès London Oxford ; The phenomenon ; "A very antic quality") -- Bibliography: Publications by C.K. Stead.

ISBN

• 9781877340239 (pbk.)
• 1877340235 (pbk.)

OCLC

• 430989195
• SCSB-10544615

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library