Nearly Out of Heart and Hope: The Puzzle of a Colonial Labourer's DiaryAuckland University Press, 1995 - 275 pages This original and thought-provoking book is based on the 800,000-word diary of James Cox, an itinerant laborer living in New Zealand between 1880 and 1925. Cox's diary is a rare record of the daily life of a permanent member of the colonial working class - nothing like it exists in a New Zealand archive and little elsewhere. Rather than reproducing selections of the somewhat down-to-earth diary entries, Fairburn uses it more interestingly, taking the life of this obscure and unimportant man to explore in novel and ambitious ways some issues in writing and understanding nineteenth-century New Zealand history, colonial societies and working-class experience. |
Table des matières
Introduction | 1 |
THE STORY | 25 |
The English Background | 27 |
Initial Optimism 188090 | 40 |
Uncertain Times 189192 | 49 |
Days of Darkness 189293 | 59 |
With Skey and Spooner 18931902 | 74 |
Decline 190218 | 92 |
Why Poverty? | 142 |
The World of Ideology | 163 |
UNRAVELLING THE THREADS | 185 |
Broken Threads | 187 |
A Stronger Thread? | 208 |
The World of Adjustments | 226 |
Notes | 242 |
Selective Bibliography | 266 |
Autres éditions - Tout afficher
Nearly Out of Heart and Hope: The Puzzle of a Colonial Labourer's Diary Miles Fairburn Affichage d'extraits - 1995 |
Expressions et termes fréquents
25 December 31 December A&P show Abbey April Arthur Spooner August Berrill better boarding-house camp Carterton chaff-cutting Christchurch Christmas cold colonial contingency cook Cox family Cox's cultural Davy Gunn diary early earnings economic Eketahuna employers employment entries farm February Feby flax mill Foxton free accommodn friends futile enactment gang gave Greytown Himatangi ideology immigrants income Jack Rayner James January Jones and Spooner Jones's July June labourers late lived Lizzie London lower-middle-class Maori March Martinborough Masseck Masterton material ment months moral November October odd jobs Pahiatua Palmerston North period Poroutawhao poverty Rayner reason Richard Jefferies rough rural seems self-help sense September 1892 Sherratt Skey Skey and Spooner Smilesean social Society Stanger station survival swag things threshing tion took town traction engines tramping Victorian wages Waimarama Wairarapa walked week Wellington whare working-class workmates wrote Zealand