Previously, the author has presented R.A.K. Mason as essentially a sensitive modern romantic at odds with the New Zealand where he spent his life from 1905-1971, and with, in a larger sense, not only man but also the ...

Mason is writing about the plight of man, trapped in a hostile place, i.e. our planet, which, in the space of the universe as a whole, is 'fixed at the friendless outer edge'. Even if perhaps a poet in an isolated country ...

"The Ladybird" has not fared particularly well at the hands of its critics. Critics have failed to see that it is not to be understood as an example of mimesis or realism but creates its own symbolic, mythical world.