Edith J. Lyttleton’s novel “Pageant”, writing as G.B. Lancaster

Author Edith Lyttleton won the 1933 Medal from the Australian Literature Society for her novel about Tasmania called Pageant.

The New York Times reported on February 6, 1933, Monday -

Section: BOOKS-ART, Page 13, 259 words

“Pageant,” a novel About Tasmania, which is the Literary Guild choice for February, is published today by Century as the headliner of that company’s Spring list. The author is Edith J. Lyttleton, whose pen name is “G.B. Lancaster.” She was born in Tasmania and gathered much of the material for her novel from the old records of her family there.

Terry Sturm has written an extensive account of Edith Lyttleton’s life titled -

An Unsettled Spirit

THE LIFE AND FRONTIER FICTION OF EDITH LYTTLETON (G. B. LANCASTER)

TERRY STURM

Finalist, 2004 Montana New Zealand Book Awards

Edith Lyttleton, under the name of G B Lancaster, wrote over a dozen novels and some 250 short stories, mostly narratives of romance and adventure set in the remote back country of New Zealand, Australia and Canada. She was New Zealand’s most widely read author overseas in the first half of the twentieth century, reaching millions of readers. She topped bestseller lists in the United States for six months in 1933 and was awarded the Australian Gold Medal for Literature in the same year. Writing first from her family’s Canterbury sheep station and in the face of fierce parental opposition, she later travelled widely researching her stories in the Yukon, Nova Scotia and Tasmania. She never married and, with her sister, devoted many years to the needs of her mother. Her middle age was peripatetic and lonely but produced the four phenomenally successful epic novels for which she was best known.

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