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Introduction
Biography of Lady Mary Anne Barker
Lady Barker was born Mary Anne Stewart in Spanish Town, Jamaica, on May 29th 1831.1 Her mother was Susan Hewitt and her father was Walter George Stewart.2 Her family was English but lived in Jamaica because her father was Island Secretary for the British government.3 Mary Anne, however, was sent to Europe to live when she was very young (before the age of four) along with her younger sister Dora. 4 This was considered standard practice of the time, because life in Jamaica was not considered suitable for proper European children.5 She lived in Europe for the duration of her childhood, and received her education there.6 Her first residence after Jamaica was near Dublin, Ireland where she and Dora lived with their grandfather, who had been a general in the Indian Army.7 From a very young age Mary Anne lived a multicultural life on multiple continents. An intelligent child, by the age of sixteen Mary Anne had gone as far as she could in her education in Ireland and returned with her sister to Jamaica.8
It was after returning to Jamaica that she met the man who would become her first husband, Captain George Barker.9 Barker, at 35, was fourteen years older than Mary Anne when they met in 1851, and they married in 1852 in the Spanish Town cathedral.10 Not long after that they moved to London where Mary Anne had their first child. 11 Accounts suggest that Mary Anne found living in London while her soldier husband was off in various parts of the world intolerable. 12 In 1859 Barker was knighted for his successes as a soldier in India and Mary Anne became Lady Barker, shortly thereafter Barker was sent to Bengal. 13 There was clearly a spirit of travel and adventure in Lady Barker that did not allow her to sit at home the quiet housewife; and in 1859 she moved to Bengal to be with her husband, leaving her two children behind in England. 14 While leaving behind her young children might seem a harsh move to the modern reader, it is important to consider Lady Barker’s own upbringing and the fact that her parents sent her to another continent at a very young age. It seems likely based on her experiences that she would not have considered it unusual at all to be separated from her children. Likewise moving to a different country (or even continent) at this point in her life was not a new prospect. However, she did not leave her children for as long as she had thought. In 1861 George Barker died, and Lady Barker returned once more to England. 15
Her inter-continental life resumed four years later in 1865 when she met and married Frederick Napier Broome. 16 Broome was eleven years younger than Lady Barker, educated and with literary interests and passions, and no stranger to intercontinental travel himself – Broome was visiting England from New Zealand where he owned a sheep station.17 After marrying Broome, Lady Barker moved with him to New Zealand.18 New Zealand was at that time a relatively new colony, and Lady Barker once again made the decision to leave her two sons from her marriage to Captain Barker behind in England.19 Lady Barker and Frederick Broome’s sheep station Steventon was located on the South Island of New Zealand, just outside Christchurch and it was there that they settled after the long journey from England.20 The new home was not an instant success for Lady Barker however, and her first child with Broome died their not long after he was born.21
Not yet writing professionally during her life in New Zealand, Lady Barker kept up a steady correspondence of letters to her sister Louisa.22 And her and Frederick’s shared passion of literature was shown in the lending library that Lady Barker ran from their home.23 Lady Barker and Frederick did not find success in New Zealand however, and gave up the sheep station there in 1868 to return to England.24 The Broome’s shared love of the literary surfaced again there – Frederick published a book of poems, and Lady Barker began to write of their life on the station.25 Frederick continued to publish articles and poems, and in 1870 Lady Barker published her first book Station Life in New Zealand to huge success.26 Station Life in New Zealand was based on her and Frederick’s experience with the Steventon station and it is one of the best known of her twenty plus books.27 At the prompting of her son George who wanted her stories to be “true”, she began writing tales for children based on her own life experience in Jamaica and around the world.28 This in turn led her to write A Christmas Cake in Four Quarters, based on her real life global travels to Jamaica, England, India, and New Zealand but told through a fictional narrative.29 Lady Barker continued to write both articles and books and by 1874 had eleven books published.30
Her husband’s career continued her global travels and together the Broomes moved to Natal, South Africa and then Mauritius, Western Australia where Broome was made Governor and knighted in 1884 – at which point Mary Anne who had previously still been known officially as Lady Barker changed her name to Lady Broome.31 Despite being eleven years younger than his wife, Frederick Broome died first in 1896, and Mary Anne eventually returned from Australia to London where she died in 1911 having published over twenty books in her lifetime.32
As a Writer
In New Zealand Lady Barker is known as a “New Zealand writer” – largely because of her successful book Station Life in New Zealand and its likewise successful sequel Station Amusements in New Zealand.33 And it is certainly true that Station Life in New Zealand was a large part of the beginning of her success as a writer.34 However she only lived in New Zealand for three years and all of her works about the country were written and published after her return to England.35 Additionally New Zealand was a very young colony during her brief life there. Lady Barker lived and travelled in so many different countries that it is too simplistic to try to ascribe her nationality to any one of her homes in particular. The best option is to consider her an English writer both because that is where she frequently returned in between her global travels, and because England owned a great many of the colonies that she travelled and lived in. Therefore think of her instead as a “colonial” writer or a travel writer and writer of the British Empire as a whole.
Even defining her as a travel writer is problematic however, because Lady Barker’s works do not follow traditional travel writing patterns – she tended to focus on the social life of the settlers and their interpersonal relationships instead of the landscape or the setting of the country she was in.36 A biography of her, The Seven Lives of Lady Barker, notes that she agreed with her sons Jack and George that most travels books which ought “to have been exciting, were, in fact, boring” and that she herself preferred exciting tales.37 Moreover her writing, especially in the case of A Christmas Cake in Four Quarters is not strictly factual, but a version of the truth that she has used fictional devices for dramatic storytelling effect.38 After all, A Christmas Cake in Four Quarters was largely prompted by the desire of her sons Jack and George for stories of her life and adventures, and a child is not going to sit and listen to a dry account of observations of the land.39
Lady Barker’s body of work encompasses a variety of genres and styles, and a large spectrum of more factual works to more fictionalized works, from the strictly factual textbook First Lessons in the Principles of Cooking to the dramatized “travel” writing of Station Life in New Zealand to her books for children including A Christmas Cake in Four Quarters. Her works are as varied as her life and places of residence were.
History of A Christmas Cake in Four Quarters
A Christmas Cake in Four Quarters published in 1871 was Lady Barker’s third published book.40 It was written following the success of Station Life in New Zealand which had shown that Lady Barker had both the talent to write, and an audience that would make her career as a writer successful.41 At the time (the late 1860s) there were not a great deal of original books written for children, with most children’s books and stories being republished versions of classic fairy tales.42 Children’s literature is often considered to have an intended audience that is distinctly different from the author as an adult;43 Lady Barker differs from this in that she wrote stories for children that she herself would be interested in reading.44 Lady Barker’s sons George and Jack shared their mothers desire for well-written exciting tales, and with her blossoming success as a published writer she set about to write the sort of stories they desired herself.45 The first result of her foray into children’s literature was the book Stories About.46 Published in 1870, Stories About exemplifies Lady Barker’s innovative method of seamlessly intertwining fact with fiction – it featured tales rooted in truth, but fictionalized for children and included tales of animals that paved the way for later famous stories about animals for children such as Black Beauty by Anna Sewell and Beatrix Potter’s tales.47 Lady Barker believed that writing for children should be a combination of non-fiction and fiction, and that it should be written simply and conversationally, a style that she continued to use in A Christmas Cake in Four Quarters.48 A Christmas Cake in Four Quarters is a collection of four tales linked together by a central narrative of a woman telling stories to a group of children during Christmastime. The central narrative is likely based on a combination of Lady Barker’s first Christmas back in England after living in New Zealand when she was reunited with her sons Jack and George, and other previous Christmases and times when her children had asked her for stories of her adventures and travels.49 She even includes her sons by name and description in the central story, describing “chubby-cheeked Georgie, who was dreadfully matter-of-fact, and acted as a check on all flights of imagination” and Jack who had “tastes for what he called the ‘grim and grisly’” (7-8). These descriptions were based on her actual sons different desires in their stories, and the four tales of A Christmas Cake in Four Quarters are divided according to these desires.50 The first tale of “Christmas Day in England” is a ghostly story clearly included for those children who, like Jack, wanted the “grim and grisly” while the tales of Christmas Days in Jamaica, India, and New Zealand are far more factual and do not include a supernatural elements such as ghosts, but instead focus more on cultural traditions and the people involved in them.
with the beginning of the later Little House in the Big Woods by Ingalls Wilder which starts withOnce upon a time there was a lady who liked telling stories to children, and once upon a time – which time exists up to this very moment – there were a great many children who liked listening. This lady used to be constantly surrounded by boys and girls in a chronic state of story-hunger; but fortunately she never seemed to tire of telling all that they wanted to hear. (3)
Likewise similar in language and style is Ryrie Brink’s Caddie Woodlawn, which beginsOnce Upon a time, sixty years ago, a little girl lived in the Big Woods of Wisconsin, in a little grey house made of logs. The great dark trees of the Big Woods stood all around the house, and beyond them were other trees and beyond them were more trees. As far as a man could go to the north in a day, or a week, or a whole month, there was nothing but woods.53
Each of these novels is in the style favoured by Lady Barker, they clearly tell the children from the beginning what the book is going to be about, and though each of these books is technically fiction, they narrated as if they are fact and the content of each is actually based on the life events of the author (or of the author’s grandmother in the case of Caddie Woodlawn55). While Lady Barker was not the only author of her time to employ this style of writing for children, she was certainly recognized as an important part in a shift in the way in which books were written for children.56In 1864 Caddie Woodlawn was eleven, and as wild a tomboy as ever ran the woods of western Wisconsin. She was the despair of her mother and of her elder sister, Clara. But her father watched her with a shine of pride in his eyes, and her brothers accepted her as one of themselves without a question.54
The Four Quarters
The division of the tales of Christmas in England, Jamaica, India and New Zealand into four distinctly separate stories linked together by a central narrative allowed Lady Barker to include a number of different styles of stories together into one book; satisfying the different desires of the tastes of her sons Jack and George in their requests to her for stories as well as allowing her to revisit and describe the cultural traditions and her memories of several of the English colonies that she lived in during her life abroad.
The Christmas cake after which she names her book of stories would have been an ubiquitous part of the Christmas holidays for her readers of the time, young and old alike – Christmas cakes in one form or another have been an English tradition since the 16th century.57 Modern readers from countries with an English heritage will no doubt recognize or have their own holiday memories associated with the dessert and understand Lady Barker’s use of it as a cultural link between the Christmases in four otherwise very different settings with rather different traditions. Lady Barker touches on the significance of the title as a traditional part of an English Christmas in the section of the book “Christmas Day in Jamaica”; though it is referred to there as “the plum-pudding” (125) this is the same as a Christmas cake, the desert in question having developed through the years from what was originally a porridge of sorts.58 She refers to its importance as a “national dish” of England (125) and that the tradition of having one at Christmas is such that her father “considered it a dreadful, almost a wicked thing, to sit down to dinner on Christmas Day without roast beef, turkey, mince-pies, and a plum-pudding” (126). Therefore by calling her collection of tales A Christmas Cake in Four Quarters she is invoking an idea of a traditional English Christmas that would be familiar to all her readers, as well as making a reference to her own varied or “quartered” experiences with the changes necessary to traditions when spending Christmas in a different part of the world.
The Four Quarters of the Cake: England
The first tale in A Christmas Cake in Four Quarters, “Christmas Day in England” begins with a description of the Christmas of the narrator of the book and of the many children with which she is spending Christmas and relating these tales to (including the Jack and George characters most certainly modelled after Lady Barker’s own sons). The English Christmas of the narration story is likely largely influenced by the Christmases spent in England after Lady Barker and Frederick’s Broome’s return from New Zealand, given the presence and ages of Jack and George. However Lady Barker had long since written journals and correspondence of her life adventures, and was no stranger to being asked for tales by children so (like the other tales in the book) it is not a straightforward account of any one particular Christmas but rather an amalgamation of her English Christmas experiences.59 After setting the scene from which the rest of the book is to be narrated, Lady Barker tells a ghost story set in an English castle, most certainly included for the fanciful desires of her son Jack (as requested as well by the fictional Jack in the book itself) for the ghostly and grim.
Interestingly this is the only story the narrator character tells to the children, which is not a tale of a Christmas past. The “English Christmas” of the section’s title is instead that of the narration story from which the four tales are told. However each of the later tales also contain a story within a story, though they differ in that they are not told from the perspective of the storyteller character (who is given the name “Mrs. Owen” in the book, but who is clearly the representation of Lady Barker herself); so it is only truly different in the content of the section in that the English Christmas is included throughout the book as part of the narration. Structurally however it differs from the way the other three quarters are arranged in the book as a whole. Jamaica, India, and New Zealand are all given their tales in the chronological order that the real Lady Barker and the fictional Mrs. Owen lived in them, however the tale of the English Christmas from which all the other tales are told would have chronologically gone last. This gives the reader a sense that the narrator (and indeed, Lady Barker herself) is recalling poignant and important memories from her life, as these are the ones that have stayed with her. Particularly the artistic license that Lady Barker uses by combining events of her travels and life into the one day she describes in each tale suggests that the details she includes are ones that are of particular interest or significance to her memory that these are the ones she remembers and chooses to share with her children and the reader.
The Four Quarters of the Cake: Jamaica
The story of “A Christmas Day in Jamaica” is the second section of the Christmas cake and begins an overarching timeline from which the three non-English Christmas are related sequentially in the order in which Lady Barker lived in the countries she describes. “A Christmas Day in Jamaica” is told from the perspective of the storyteller Mrs. Owen as a young girl, and indeed she describes it as “the first Christmas Day which I could recollect spending in Jamaica” since she and her sister had “been in England, away from our dear parents for many years, ever since we were little children in fact, both for health and education” (103), as was the case of course in Lady Barker’s own life. Aspects of the Christmas described in the story can be matched to events in Lady Barker’s own life, such as the visit of her cousin, or her comment “alas! We little knew how soon we should be scattered, never to meet again on Christmas Day” (116) both of which refer to a Christmas spent with her family in Jamaica in 1848, before world travels and deaths caused separations from the happy memories of the family gathering described in the tale.60
The Jamaican Christmas is unique in this collection in that it is the only tale told from Lady Barker’s youth – the English, Indian, and New Zealand Christmases all take place after she is grown and married. The Jamaican Christmas is the only story to include her parents and sister, and the cheerful and fondly told recollections of her mother, father, and sister become poignantly tinged with a sadness when read with the knowledge that she spent so little time with her family altogether in her life. Nor is everything in the tale cheerful and bright - in keeping with the narrative structure of the other stories of the book, “A Christmas Day in Jamaica” also includes a tale within a tale, of which a terribly sad tale of the drowning of small children is told (142-157). Such a sad tale is this that even the narration breaks up, in another unique aspect of the Jamaican Christmas section, to include a story told in the English setting of the connecting narration which is ostensibly written by Lady Barker’s son George – “copied word for word from the MS. of a seven years old author, with only a few corrections of the phonetic spelling” notes the text (137). This brief interlude adds an element of whimsy before the darker tale. The inclusion of such sad and serious stories as that of the deaths of young children is referential to the many deaths and hardships that Lady Barker faced in her own life up to the writing of this book, from the deaths of family members, to the loss of several of her own children, to the death of her first husband. Jamaica would in particular have a sad bearing on Lady Barker’s mind -both her childhood companion and beloved sister Dora and her father had died in Jamaica not long before the writing of A Christmas Cake in Four Quarters.61 The truthful though dark subject matter is also in keeping with her belief that children both desired and were capable reading stories that were truthful, even if these truths were not light-hearted in content.62
The Four Quarters of the Cake: India
Strictly speaking, India would not have been the next country chronologically in which Lady Barker spent a Christmas after Jamaica, having returned to England after marrying Captain Barker before deciding to accompany him on his military postings overseas. However it makes sense in the context of the structure of including four tales of different cultures and locations to describe it next as she had already given a tale to an English Christmas. Moreover as the narrator in the book she had promised the children of the tale stories of her Christmases abroad in faraway lands, and in particular New Zealand, Jamaica, and India (9-10).
Furthermore, India in particular had a significant, if tragic, part in Lady Barker’s personal history as the location of the death of her first husband Captain George Barker. This is reflected in the distinctly dark story of the uprising of some of the native Indians against the English in one of the tales within the tale in this quarter (195-223). As with the other Christmases of the book however she couches her sense of bereavement and loss in these darker and more melancholy tales with a more cheerful and frivolous tale at the end – in this case the story of the near mishap of the sailor who did not know the proper signals for “all quiet” and nearly got himself attacked by his own crew (226-235).
Lady Barker’s style of including the serious and sombre alongside the cheerful and silly is perhaps why the book was so well received by the public and critics alike of her time,63 and why it appealed to both adults (and was included in several adult anthologies64) as well as the children for whom it was written. Additionally at a time when the English Empire was so globally expanded, A Christmas Cake in Four Quarters would have provided to those back in England who did not have the will and drive to travel the globe that Lady Barker had, a sense of how their countrymen abroad lived and celebrated Christmas, and how, as she writes herself in “Christmas Day in India” “if it was not made up of the usual pleasant routine of the English festival, it had, at all events, its own share of adventure and excitement.” (235).
The Four Quarters of the Cake: New Zealand
The final tale in A Christmas Cake in Four Quarters is devoted to “Christmas Day in New Zealand” and is the most recent Christmas that Lady Barker experienced abroad prior to her return to England and the writing of this book. It seems likely then that this section would have been the clearest and most accurately remembered in her mind, given that not even three years had passed between her return to England and the writing of this book. Moreover New Zealand would have been fresh in her mind, having only recently written and published Station Life in New Zealand to great success the year before.65 Indeed, given the tale of the sheep farmers in this section of the book it is easy to imagine it fitting in either Station Life in New Zealand or the follow up to it Station Amusements in New Zealand. Though similar to the narrative liberties taken with events in the other sections of the book, it is likely that Lady Barker combined events from more than one Christmas and other times of the year in this section rather than describing with complete accuracy one particular New Zealand Christmas.66
This quarter of the book also is distinctly different from the other two stories of Christmas abroad in that it is undoubtedly the most light-hearted and does not include a tale within the tale that is dark and touched with sadness, loss, and death as do “Christmas Day in Jamaica” and “Christmas Day in India” – though this certainly could have gone the other way, had the story of the sheep farmers’ mishap with rat poison ended differently (301)! The reason for the overall more cheerful tone of this section may be due to the fact that with the exception of the loss of a newborn child at the beginning of her life in New Zealand67 (a sad and tragic event to be sure, but not one that was a new experience to Lady Barker) she did not have the extreme loss associated with it that she did with Jamaica (where her sister and father died) or India (where she lost George Barker). Additionally her time in New Zealand was melancholy for her because she was separated once again from her sons Jack and George, the memory of which would have been tempered at the time of writing A Christmas Cake in Four Quarters by her happiness at being reunited with them.
Whichever the cause for the tone in this section of the book, it was the favourite of critics, perhaps because of its less sombre content.68 Certainly New Zealand critical histories of the book such as the passage on Lady Barker in The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature in English are focusing on this tale when they refer to A Christmas Cake in Four Quarters as tempering the difficulties of settlers with humour and excitement.69 In a sense, in the way that Lady Barker couches the darker tales inside “Christmas Day in Jamaica” and “Christmas Day in India” by following them with more light-hearted and silly stories, “Christmas Day in New Zealand” is a more cheerful tale to follow the darker two, and ends the book without the sense of loss provided by the other two tales. Unlike the other quarters of the book, “A Christmas Day in New Zealand” does not return to the English Christmas of the linking narrative at its end, but is the finish to the book as a whole, ending A Christmas Cake in Four Quarters with a melancholy description of the “lonely valley of the Malvern Hills” (304), an interesting choice in that it further gives a very different and less cheerful and more adult style to this section of the book. New Zealand of course was not the last place overseas that Lady Barker would spend a Christmas, and while there isn’t a direct sequel to A Christmas Cake in Four Quarters, readers can look to her later books for further details of other aspects of her life around the world.
Other Books by Lady Barker
Station Life in New Zealand, Macmillan, London, 1870.
Stories About, Warne, London, 1871.
Spring Comedies, Macmillan, London, 1871.
Travelling About Over Old and New Ground, Routledge, London, 1872.
Ribbon Stories, Macmillan, London, 1872.
Station Amusements in New Zealand, Wm Hunt, London, 1873.
Holiday Stories for Boys and Girls, Routledge, London, 1873.
Sybil’s Book, Macmillan, London, 1874.
First Lessons in the Principles of Cooking, Macmillan, London, 1874.
Boys, Routledge, London, 1874.
This Troublesome World, Hatchards, London, 1874.
Houses and Housekeeping, Wm Hunt, London, 1876.
A Year’s Housekeeping in South Africa, Macmillan, London, 1877.
The Bedroom and Boudoir, Macmillan, London, 1878.
The White Rat, Macmillan, London, 1880.
Letters to Guy, Macmillan, London, 1885.
Colonial Memories (as Lady Broome), Smith, Elder & Co., London, 1904.
Works Cited
Brink, Carol Ryrie. Caddie Woodlawn, New York: Aladdin Paperbacks, 2007.
Gilderdale, Betty, The Seven Lives of Lady Barker, Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2009.
Hankin, Cherry, “Barker, Mary Anne - Biography”, Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand, New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage, 17 January 2012, retrieved 13 April 2012, http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1b5/1.
Hubert von Staufer, Maria, “The Story of the Christmas Cake”, The Christmas Archive, retrieved 26 April 2012, http://www.christmasarchives.com/christmascake.html.
Jones, Jenny Robin, Writers in Residence, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004.
“Lady Barker (1831-1911)”, Christchurch City Libraries, Christchurch City Council, retrieved 13 Apr. 2012, http://christchurchcitylibraries.com/Literature/People/B/Barker_Mary_Anne/.
Reimer, Mavis, ed. Discourses of Children’s Literature in Canada, Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008.
Sturm, Terry, ed. The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature in English, Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Wattie, Nelson, “Barker, Mary Anne”, The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature, eds. Roger Robinson and Nelson Wattie, Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Wilder, Laura Ingalls, Little House in the Big Woods, New York: HarperCollins, 1971.
1 Hankin, Cherry, “Barker, Mary Anne - Biography”, Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand, New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage, 17 January 2012, retrieved 13 April 2012, http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1b5/1. See also: Wattie, Nelson, “Barker, Mary Anne”, The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature, eds. Roger Robinson and Nelson Wattie, Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 40.
2 Hankin, Cherry, “Barker, Mary Anne - Biography”, Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand, New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage, 17 January 2012, retrieved 13 April 2012, http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1b5/1.
3 "Lady Barker (1831-1911)”, Christchurch City Libraries, Christchurch City Council, retrieved 13 April 2012, http://christchurchcitylibraries.com/Literature/People/B/Barker_Mary_Anne/. See also: Hankin, Cherry, “Barker, Mary Anne - Biography”, Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand, New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage, 17 January 2012, retrieved 13 April 2012, http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1b5/1.
4 Jones, Jenny Robin, Writers in Residence, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004, p. 163.
5 Ibid.
6 Hankin, Cherry, “Barker, Mary Anne - Biography”, Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand, New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage, 17 January 2012, retrieved 13 April 2012, http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1b5/1.
7 Jones, Jenny Robin, Writers in Residence, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004, p. 164.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid. See also: Wattie, Nelson, “Barker, Mary Anne”, The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature, eds. Roger Robinson and Nelson Wattie, Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 40.
10 Wattie, Nelson, “Barker, Mary Anne”, The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature, eds. Roger Robinson and Nelson Wattie, Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 40. See also: Jones, Jenny Robin, Writers in Residence, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004, pp. 164-165.
11 Jones, Jenny Robin, Writers in Residence, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004, p. 165.
12 Ibid.
13 Gilderdale, Betty, The Seven Lives of Lady Barker, Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2009, p. 53.See also: "Lady Barker (1831-1911)”, Christchurch City Libraries, Christchurch City Council, retrieved 13 April 2012, http://christchurchcitylibraries.com/Literature/People/B/Barker_Mary_Anne/.
14 Jones, Jenny Robin, Writers in Residence, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004, p. 165.
15 Jones, Jenny Robin, Writers in Residence, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004, p. 166. See also: Hankin, Cherry, “Barker, Mary Anne - Biography”, Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand, New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage, 17 January 2012, retrieved 13 April 2012, http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1b5/1.
16 Hankin, Cherry, “Barker, Mary Anne - Biography”, Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand, New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage, 17 January 2012, retrieved 13 April 2012, http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1b5/1. See also: Jones, Jenny Robin, Writers in Residence, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004, pp. 166-167.
17 Jones, Jenny Robin, Writers in Residence, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004, pp. 166-167. See also: "Lady Barker (1831-1911)”, Christchurch City Libraries, Christchurch City Council, retrieved 13 April 2012, http://christchurchcitylibraries.com/Literature/People/B/Barker_Mary_Anne/.
18 "Lady Barker (1831-1911)”, Christchurch City Libraries, Christchurch City Council, retrieved 13 April 2012, http://christchurchcitylibraries.com/Literature/People/B/Barker_Mary_Anne/. See also: Jones, Jenny Robin, Writers in Residence, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004, p. 167.
19 Jones, Jenny Robin, Writers in Residence, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004, p. 167.
20 Ibid. See also: "Lady Barker (1831-1911)”, Christchurch City Libraries, Christchurch City Council, retrieved 13 April 2012, http://christchurchcitylibraries.com/Literature/People/B/Barker_Mary_Anne/.
21 Jones, Jenny Robin, Writers in Residence, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004, p. 167. See also: Hankin, Cherry, “Barker, Mary Anne - Biography”, Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand, New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage, 17 January 2012, retrieved 13 April 2012, http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1b5/1.
22 Jones, Jenny Robin, Writers in Residence, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004, p. 169.
23 Ibid.
24 Jones, Jenny Robin, Writers in Residence, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004, p. 171. See also: Sturm, Terry, ed. The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature in English, Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 526.
25 Jones, Jenny Robin, Writers in Residence, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004, p. 171. See also: Hankin, Cherry, “Barker, Mary Anne - Biography”, Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand, New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage, 17 January 2012, retrieved 13 April 2012, http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1b5/1.
26 Hankin, Cherry, “Barker, Mary Anne - Biography”, Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand, New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage, 17 January 2012, retrieved 13 April 2012, http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1b5/1. See also: Jones, Jenny Robin, Writers in Residence, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004, p. 172.
27 Wattie, Nelson, “Barker, Mary Anne”, The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature, eds. Roger Robinson and Nelson Wattie, Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 41.
28 Jones, Jenny Robin, Writers in Residence, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004, p. 172.
29 A Christmas Cake in Four Quarters, London: Warne, 1871.
30 Jones, Jenny Robin, Writers in Residence, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004, pp. 172-173. See also: Hankin, Cherry, “Barker, Mary Anne - Biography”, Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand, New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage, 17 January 2012, retrieved 13 April 2012, http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/1b5/1.
31 Jones, Jenny Robin, Writers in Residence, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004, p. 174. See also: Wattie, Nelson, “Barker, Mary Anne”, The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature, eds. Roger Robinson and Nelson Wattie, Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 41.
32 Wattie, Nelson, “Barker, Mary Anne”, The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature, eds. Roger Robinson and Nelson Wattie, Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 41. See also: Jones, Jenny Robin, Writers in Residence, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004, p. 174.
33 Sturm, Terry, ed. The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature in English, Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 78.
34 Jones, Jenny Robin, Writers in Residence, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004, p. 175.
35 Jones, Jenny Robin, Writers in Residence, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004, pp. 171-172. See also: Sturm, Terry, ed. The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature in English, Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 50.
36 Sturm, Terry, ed. The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature in English, Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 50.
37 Gilderdale, Betty, The Seven Lives of Lady Barker, Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2009, p. 169.
38 Jones, Jenny Robin, Writers in Residence, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004, p. 172. See also: Sturm, Terry, ed. The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature in English, Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 50.
39 Gilderdale, Betty, The Seven Lives of Lady Barker, Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2009, pp. 167-168.
40 Gilderdale, Betty, The Seven Lives of Lady Barker, Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2009, p. 168. See also: Jones, Jenny Robin, Writers in Residence, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004, p. 172.
41 Jones, Jenny Robin, Writers in Residence, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004, p. 173.
42 Jones, Jenny Robin, Writers in Residence, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004, p. 172.
43 See introduction, Reimer, Mavis, ed. Discourses of Children’s Literature in Canada. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2008.
44 Jones, Jenny Robin, Writers in Residence, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004, p. 172.
45 Jones, Jenny Robin, Writers in Residence, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004, p. 172. See also: Gilderdale, Betty, The Seven Lives of Lady Barker, Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2009, pp. 167-168.
46 Gilderdale, Betty, The Seven Lives of Lady Barker, Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2009, p. 162. See also: Jones, Jenny Robin, Writers in Residence, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004, p. 172.
47 Jones, Jenny Robin, Writers in Residence, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004, p. 172. See also: Gilderdale, Betty, The Seven Lives of Lady Barker, Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2009, pp. 167-168.
48 Gilderdale, Betty, The Seven Lives of Lady Barker, Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2009, p. 168.
49 Gilderdale, Betty, The Seven Lives of Lady Barker, Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2009, p. 167.
50 Gilderdale, Betty, The Seven Lives of Lady Barker, Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2009, p. 168.
51 Ibid.
52 See Gilderdale, Betty, The Seven Lives of Lady Barker, Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2009, p. 162 for an account of contemporary children’s literature of the time.
53 Wilder, Laura Ingalls, Little House in the Big Woods, New York: HarperCollins, 1971, p. 1.
54 Brink, Carol Ryrie, Caddie Woodlawn, New York: Aladdin Paperbacks, 2007, p. 1.
55 See authors note, Brink, Carol Ryrie, Caddie Woodlawn, New York: Aladdin Paperbacks, 2007.
56 Gilderdale, Betty, The Seven Lives of Lady Barker, Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2009, pp. 161-163. See also: Jones, Jenny Robin, Writers in Residence, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004, p. 172.
57 Hubert von Staufer, Maria, “The Story of the Christmas Cake”, The Christmas Archive, retrieved 26 April 2012, http://www.christmasarchives.com/christmascake.html.
58 Ibid.
59 Gilderdale, Betty, The Seven Lives of Lady Barker, Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2009, p. 167.
60 Gilderdale, Betty, The Seven Lives of Lady Barker, Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2009, p. 97.
61 Gilderdale, Betty, The Seven Lives of Lady Barker, Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2009, pp. 96-97.
62 See Gilderdale, Betty, The Seven Lives of Lady Barker, Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2009, p. 168 for Lady Barker’s opinion of children’s literature.
63 Gilderdale, Betty, The Seven Lives of Lady Barker, Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2009, pp. 168-169.
64 Gilderdale, Betty, The Seven Lives of Lady Barker, Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2009, p. 168.
65 Gilderdale, Betty, The Seven Lives of Lady Barker, Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2009, p. 161.
66 Gilderdale, Betty, The Seven Lives of Lady Barker, Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2009, pp. 126-127.
67 Jones, Jenny Robin, Writers in Residence, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2004, p. 167.
68 Gilderdale, Betty, The Seven Lives of Lady Barker, Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2009, p. 168.
69 Sturm, Terry, ed. The Oxford History of New Zealand Literature in English, Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 529.