Barry Crump
Barry Crump MBE (
1935 -
1996) was a
New Zealand author of semi-
autobiographical comic novels based on his image as a rugged outdoors man. Taken together his novels have sold more than a million copies domestically, equating to one book sold for every four New Zealanders.
Born in
Papatoetoe,
Auckland, Crump worked for many years as a government
deer-culler in areas of New Zealand native
forest (termed bush). He collected his experiences in his first novel
A Good Keen Man in 1960. This novel became one of the most popular in New Zealand history, and Crump's success continued with the more fictional
Hang on a Minute Mate (1961),
One of Us (1962),
There and Back (1963),
Gulf (1964),
A Good Keen Girl (1970),
Bastards I Have Met (1971), and others, which capitalized on the appeal of his good-natured itinerant
self-sufficient characters and idiomatic 'blokey' writing style.
Crump travelled throughout
Australia (where he hunted
crocodiles),
Europe,
Turkey, and
India, the result of which was his converstion to the
Bahá'í Faith. He married five times, including a one-year marriage to the poet
Fleur Adcock and a longer marriage to
Robin Lee-Robinson, and had nine sons and no daughters.
Crump was also well known for appearing in a series of acclaimed New Zealand television advertisements for
Toyota's four-wheel drive cars, which relied on his image as a stalwart 'bushman'.
He was awarded an
MBE for services to literature in 1994, and died in 1996.
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New Zealand literature
