Abstract:
The intention of this thesis is to examine in three separate studies the lives, the verse, and other relevant data associated with three New Zealand writers Walter D’Arcy Cresswell, (1896-196), Arthur Rex Dugard Fairburn, (1904-1957), and Ronald Alison Kells Mason, (1905 - ). The original suggestion of the choice of these three poets came from Mr R.M. Chapman (then Senior Lecuturer in the Department of History at the University of Auckland) in early 1961; the outlines of the research project were planned by me a little later, advised by Professor S. Musgrove and Drs Allen Curnow and C.K. Stead (all of the University of Auckland’s English Department) and undertaken at that University and later at the Massey University of Manawatu, as a research project for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, under the supervision of Dr. Curnow.
The choice of the three poets concerned as objects of study was influenced not only by personal interest in their work, but also by a belief (which I feel the thesis may vindicate) that this was an opportune time to begin research into the careers of three men who, with other poets such as Ursula Bethell, Denis Glover, Charles Brasch, and Allen Curnow, may by common consensus be seen to have had a place in the first years of a significant verse tradition in New Zealand – the years from the early 1920s onwards.
