Reading and writing the New Zealand Dairy Exporter and Farm Home Journal 1927-1940

Abstract

This thesis investigates the role of the Farm Home Journal, the women's section of the New Zealand Dairy Exporter. I discuss the conversations about reading and writing in issues of the Farm Home Journal between 1927 and 1940. These conversations show that in a variety of ways the Farm Home Journal both offered practical, material assistance to aspiring writers, and the imaginative tools to construct a writerly identity. In section one I discuss the strategies the writers use to validate their writing and to support each other's efforts. In section two I discuss the emergence of communal reading practices, and the importance these have in enabling particular kinds of reading and writing. In section three I discuss the editorial practices of the Farm Home Journal editor, and her efforts to combat perceptions of rural life as culturally and socially deprived. In section four I discuss the conversations about publishing, and what they reveal about the role the Farm Home Journal played in the publishing careers of its contributors.