Jane Mander was born in Ramarama, south of Auckland, in 1877. However, she is more often associated with the scenes of her youth on the Kaipara Harbour in Northland.
The Kaipara Harbour is the setting of her most successful novels - The story of a New Zealand River (1920) and Allen Adair (1925).
The story of a New Zealand river takes place in a timber milling settlement on the Otamatea River, a part of the Kaipara where Jane's father, Frank Mander, took his family to mill the kauri in the 1890s.
Allen Adair is about the kauri gum-digging industry.
Despite their New Zealand setting these novels were written while Jane was overseas. She first pursued her education at Columbia University in New York (1912-1914), before moving to London where she earned her living as a journalist.
Jane did not return to New Zealand until 1932, spending her later years looking after her elderly father. She died in 1949.
Special Collections holds some of Jane Mander's papers and the typescripts of Allen Adair and three other novels. For further information please email us.
Further reading
Rae McGregor.
The Story of a New Zealand writer : Jane Mander. Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 1998