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Blay, Margaret
Writer's File

Margaret Blay

Auckland - Tāmaki Makaurau
Blay, Margaret
In brief
Margaret Blay is an actor and fiction writer whose novel Victoria in Maoriland, published in the sesquicentennial year of the Treaty of Waitangi, satirises both the conventions of Victorian fiction, and attitudes of New Zealand's colonisers.
Bio

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Blay, Margaret (1940 –) is an actor and fiction writer whose novel Victoria in Maoriland (1990), published in the sesquicentennial year of the Treaty of Waitangi, satirises both the conventions of Victorian fiction, and attitudes of New Zealand's colonisers.

Sue McCauley describes the novel as ‘a double-edged satire, mimicking a certain style of Victorian novel while also tilting slyly at the modern (or timeless) tendency of mankind to cling blindly to beliefs and attitudes that are without substance.’

Gaelyn Gordon writes that ‘Blay has helped herself lavishly to the feast of language, devices and symbols laid for us by all past writers ... great fun.’

Blay has acted at Centrepoint, Mercury, Central (under the late Mary Amoore), in West End musicals and on screen. She is well known among Auckland children as Spangle the Storyteller.

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