“Do I speak well?”: a selection of letters by Robin Hyde 1927-1939

Abstract

This project began with the transcription and chronological assemblage of four collections of letters written by Robin Hyde: to JHE Schroder, JA Lee, W Downie Stewart and PA Lawlor. The text that emerged from this process produces questions about writing, autobiography and genre because the 166 letters have become another kind of volume in Hyde’s strongly autobiographical oeuvre. In their collected form the letters are also a mulitply-addressed enactment of Hyde’s writing practice over the twelve years of its duration. The introduction is in two parts and addresses firstly issues of self and other imaged in the letters. Here my objective is to locate Hyde in a tradition of twentieth century women who wrote the Self into their writing with an awareness of the genre boundaries they were disturbing. The second part deals in more detail with the provenance of the four collections and the effects of the collectors themselves on a part of Hyde’s writing that comes to us with the mark of dual ownership. The main letters text is divided into four periods reflecting significant shifts in Hyde’s circumstances: 1927-1930, 1931-1935, 1936-1937 and 1938-1939. Each section is contextualised by an introduction and I have added notes and passages of continuity between letters where necessary. In particular I have noted concurrent writing production and quoted from other parts of Hyde’s writing which provide time-or place-specific address. Sources of Hyde’s quotation within the letters have been identified wherever possible. A selection of related letters written by Hyde to Eileen Duggan, James Bertram, and Trevor Lund appears in the Appendix, along with a letter about Hyde written by the New Zealand Consul General in China to JA Lee. The Appendix is followed by an index of people named in the four main collections and a chronological listing of individual letters indexed by page number. By presenting Hyde’s letters as a literary text rather than biography or correspondence, I am attempting to provide a place for these documents which exceeds the limits of the archives to which they “belong.” Collected together, these letters illuminate an aspect of Hyde’s compulsive writing practice which has not previously been considered.