PHOTO: Marti Friedlander

E. H. McCormick was born in 1906 in Taihape, New Zealand, and educated at the then Victoria University College and Clare College, Cambridge. He has been teacher, librarian, archivist, lecturer, and research fellow, but always primarily a scholar with wide interests taking in literature, bibliography, history, and art. His previous works include Letters and Art in New Zealand (1940), The Works of Frances Hodgkins in New Zealand (1954), The Expatriate (a study of Frances Hodgkins as a New Zealander) (1954), Eric Lee-Johnson (1956), New Zealand Literature (1959), and Alexander Turnbull (1974); and he has edited New Zealand or Recollections of it, by Edward Markham (1963), and Narrative of a Residence in New Zealand, by Augustus Earle (1966).

JACKET DESICN by Ross Ritchie. The illustration is a detail of the portrait of Omai by Sir Joshua Revnolds (1774) at Castle Howard, Yorkshire.