Station life in New Zealand by Lady Barker

During the next decade she showed her versatility by writing articles for magazines, editing travel books for inadequate authors in London, and bringing out eight books of her own: among them were Spring Comedies (1871), more or less autobiographical The White Rat (1880), a book for children and First Lessons in the Principles of Cookery (1874), which she wrote because she knew from experience of the need for such a book. The publisher, Alexander Macmillan, encouraged Mary Anne to prepare her New Zealand letters as books: Station Life, and Station Amusements in New Zealand (London, 1873). In London Mary Anne and her husband took up journalism for a living. A New Zealand edition by Whitcombe & Tombs in 1950 sold so well that it was reprinted a year later.Īfter a disastrous season Broome sold his share in Steventon to Hill in 1868 and returned to England with his wife. It went into a Tauchnitz edition in 1874 and in 1886 was published by Macmillan & Co. Life on this station was vividly described by Mary Anne Broome in her first book, Station Life in New Zealand (London, 1870), which was immensely popular for its account of pioneering life in a distant and isolated colony. Hill, had bought Steventon, a sheep run of 9700 acres (3925 ha) on the Selwyn River, North Canterbury. A son Frederick was born in Christchurch in 1866 but soon died. On 21 June 1865 she married Frederick Napier Broome, who was eleven years her junior, and sailed with him for New Zealand where he had been engaged in pastoral pursuits. He died in India in 1861 and Lady Barker returned to England with her two sons, John Stewart (b.1853) and Walter George (b.1857) who later took the name of Crole-Wyndham because of an inheritance. At 21 she married Captain George Robert Barker, of the Royal Artillery, who was promoted colonel during the Crimean war and knighted in 1859 for distinguished service during the Indian mutiny. Her maternal ancestry stemmed from a Scottish baronet, a Jacobite and buccaneer who sailed with Sir Henry Morgan and also took part in the expedition to Darien. Mary Anne Broome (1831-1911), author and governor's wife, was born in Spanish Town, Jamaica, where her father, Walter George Stewart, was the last island secretary.

Station life in New Zealand by Lady Barker