Margaret Mahy is often grouped with Katherine Mansfield and Janet Frame as the third writer from New Zealand, of acknowledged genius, whose body of work has made a major and lasting contribution to world literature.
The world-wide children鈥檚 literature community recognised this in 2006, when at 70, she won the Hans Christian Andersen Medal. Because it is judged by a multi-lingual international jury, assessing nominations from more than 30 countries, this award is regarded as the pinnacle of achievement, the 鈥楲ittle Nobel鈥 prize for children鈥檚 writing.
Few winners in the award鈥檚 fifty-year history have matched Margaret鈥檚 inventive use of language and her imaginative range, across powerful, gritty young adult novels, comic novels for younger children, picture books, hundreds of short stories, poems and 鈥榮chool readers鈥 鈥 along with plays, scripts for television and film, and for adults, brilliantly original essays and published speeches.
Born in 1936, Margaret was, from the age of about seven, a compulsive writer and an 鈥榚ager and greedy鈥 reader, growing up the eldest of a large extended family in Whakatane. Her parents and teachers recognised her unusual gifts; surviving schoolgirl poetry shows that by her teens she had a wide knowledge of English literature, music hall ballads (the family were enthusiastic parlour singers) and Gilbert and Sullivan.
Majoring in English and philosophy at the Universities of Auckland and Canterbury, she went on to train and work as a librarian, first in Petone, moving in 1965 with her four-year-old daughter to Governors Bay, Lyttelton.
The child鈥檚 birth in 1961 coincided with the first of many Margaret Mahy stories appearing in the School Journal during the 1960s including a 1966 issue devoted entirely to her stories and poems, in effect her first book. A second daughter was born that year. Library work, and writing mostly at night, continued. She wrote for children, she has said, because she wanted to write fantasy; then, the children鈥檚 genre was seen as fantasy鈥檚 natural home.
In 1968 came the breakthrough. A leading New York publisher, alerted by a colleague to a story of unusual charm in a touring exhibition of School Journals, promptly flew to New Zealand to meet the 32-year-old author. It was a fairytale start to Margaret鈥檚 international career. The following year聽A Lion in the Meadow聽and four other School Journal stories were published in New York and London, illustrated by leading artists. They heralded a remarkable stream of picture books, collections of stories and verse, novellas and always, School Journal stories by the dozen. Some books were translated into 10 or more languages.
By 1981, now in her early forties and with her daughters leaving home, Margaret decided she was financially secure enough to move on from librarianship at the Canterbury Public Library to write fulltime.
If the 1970s had shown her talents with short stories, the 1980s saw Margaret burst onto an astonished children鈥檚 literature world as an accomplished and innovative novelist. Her first two serious novels (The Haunting听补苍诲听The Changeover) won Britain鈥檚 top children鈥檚 book award, the Carnegie Medal. Young adult novels followed, published in Britain and America and in many languages.
Concurrently, she was producing literally dozens of 鈥榮chool readers鈥 for reading programmes published internationally, while also developing a parallel career as a scriptwriter for highly original, award-winning children鈥檚 television. She became a tireless traveller to speak at seminars in New Zealand and overseas, and a frequent, much-loved, visitor to schools, often costumed and bewigged.
By the end of the decade and onwards, Margaret鈥檚 huge body of work was being recognised with prestigious international and local awards: the Observer Teenage Fiction Award, the May Hill Arbuthnot Lecture awards in USA, and many appearances in American 鈥榟onor book鈥 lists and New Zealand Post and Ester Glen awards. In 1993 came New Zealand鈥檚 highest civil honour, the Order of New Zealand; later, three lifetime achievement awards and honorary doctorates from the Universities of Canterbury (1993) and Waikato (2006).
In addition, she has been one of only two authors to twice win the Children鈥檚 Literature Association (America) Phoenix Award for a book published twenty years earlier but not an award-winner at the time: for聽The Catalogue of the Universe聽in 2005 and聽Memory聽in 2007. The superb young adults鈥 fantasy,聽The Tricksters, thought by many to rival聽The Changeover聽as her best novel, was also a Phoenix Honour Book in 2006.
In later years, though overseas travel slowed, there had been no resting on her laurels. A major 2006 publication,聽Maddigan鈥檚 Fantasia, was accompanied by the television series. In 2008,聽The Magician of Hoad, an epic 鈥榗ross-over鈥 fantasy begun in the early 1980s finally appeared in Britain, New Zealand and America to critical acclaim, bringing her total of books since 1961 to around 250.
Reprints in many languages continue, as well as new picture books, notably her famous comic 鈥榩erformance pieces鈥櫬Down the Back of the Chair听补苍诲听Bubble Trouble, illustrated by the English artist Polly Dunbar. And in聽The Word Witch: The Magical Verse of Margaret Mahy, illustrated by David Elliot, all her poetry has been brought together into a single volume.
Margaret Mahy occupies a unique place among New Zealand authors. Her generosity is legendary, towards young or new writers, the schools she visits, the seminars and festivals she attends and the young fans all round the world who queue patiently and are rewarded with a lion or crocodile sketch as well as an autograph. Her name honours the highest award for a distinguished contribution to New Zealand children鈥檚 literature, the Storylines of Margaret Mahy Medal.
Her reputation as a writer of genius rests principally on her stunningly inventive language, at once comic, witty and profound, full of effortless alliterations and internal rhymes, quirky metaphors, and as one English critic has said, 鈥榓 spectacular originality鈥 that by its energy and intensity has the unusual quality of charging up the reader.
A recurring theme in much of her fiction and many essays has been the poser of the imagination to alter reality, often drawing on her deep knowledge of (mostly) European myth and fairytale.
By Tessa Duder (Copyright 漏 March 2009 Local Heroes Trust)
Tessa Duder is the author of the biographical portrait 鈥淢argaret Mahy, a writer鈥檚 life鈥 (Auckland: HarperCollins, 2005) and editor of 鈥淭he Word Witch: The Magical Verse of Margaret Mahy鈥, illustrated by David Elliot (Auckland: HarperCollins, 2009). Her 35 books for both adults and children include novels, short stories, non-fictions, plays and anthologies.
