The early works of hundreds of New Zealand authors, published in New Zealand's longest-running literary journal, can now be read online.
Landfall was established in 1947 and printed new work by writers such as James K Baxter, Allen Curnow – both in the first edition - Janet Frame and Frank Sargeson, among many others.
Some of the material isn't available anywhere else, and until now there hadn't been a way to read it unless you owned, or had access to, a back copy.
Ditigising the back catalogue was something Otago University Press had "wanted to do for ages”, publisher Rachel Scott says.
Early issues hold "buried literary treasure," Scott says. The first, published in March 1947 has works by James K. Baxter, Allen Curnow, Ngaio Marsh and A. R. D. Fairburn and the second Dennis Glover and James Courage.
“All of these names that people know of from the early days of New Zealand literature - and this is some of their very earliest material.
“Some of it has been republished since in various collections or anthologies but the majority of it hasn’t."
One of the challenges was to decide what to do about copyright.
To clear copyright on every single story, poem, article, review and art work would have entailed approaching 540 individuals – too much for the small team.
Instead, OUP has posted reproductions of 80 issues of the journal itself, to which it has copyright.
If someone wanted to reproduce any of the material, they would have to negotiate copyright with the author concerned.
“But everybody is free to go in and search and read to their heart’s content,” Scott says
OUP gets regular queries from scholars and family historians about early Landfall material which Scott says the team has not been able to answer. Now, the fully searchable PDFs - indexed by interns at the University of Otago Division of Humanities - will make the information readily available.
An exhibition celebrating the magazine is being held at Dunedin Railway Station until 17 June.
