My Hand will Write what my Heart Dictates - Edited by Frances Porter and Charlotte Macdonald

The unsettled lives of women in nineteenth-century New Zealand as revealed to sisters, family, and friends. 

Put aside preconceptions of straitlaced Victorian ladies or robust colonial maidens. Here is an altogether more authentic picture, richly told in the words of the women themselves. The women come from all walks of life: domestic servants, governors' wives, and farmers; they are married, single, widowed or deserted. Themes of love, loss, family and the daily trials of life are always present. Frances Porter and Charlotte Macdonald are two of New Zealand’s most distinguished writers of history. Here they have drawn on letters, journals, diaries and government records to build up a portrait of ‘life as it happens’ in nineteenth-century New Zealand.

This book is out of print. 

Condition: good. Secondhand paperback.