Diggers, Hatters & Whores
  • Published: 5 August 2011
  • ISBN: 9781869797034
  • Imprint: Random House NZ
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 544
  • RRP: $39.99
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Diggers, Hatters & Whores

The Story of the New Zealand Gold Rushes

Formats & editions
Tr. Paperback
5 Aug 2011
EBook
28 Feb 2014
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The social history of New Zealand's gold rushes, as used by Eleanor Catton in her research for The Luminaries.

The social history of New Zealand's gold rushes, as used by Eleanor Catton in her research for The Luminaries.

A thorough and carefully researched history of the gold rushes in New Zealand. Based on sound scholarship and aimed at the general reader it's accessibly written in a clear, clean and lively style.

The scope is the social history of the goldfields of colonial New Zealand, from the 1850s to the 1870s. The book opens with a survey of worldwide rushes in the late eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth centuries, when for the first time in history a great wheeling movement of gold diggers began to revolve from continent to continent.

The main body of the book looks at all the rushes, large and small, that took place in the colony: Coromandel, Golden Bay, Otago, Marlborough, the West Coast and Thames. The early chapters of the main body survey rushes chronologically; the later chapters look at rushes thematically.

Beautifully illustrated with sketches and watercolours of the times - black and white - this is both a wonderful read and a beautiful gift book.

'I owe a debt of gratitude to . . . Stevan Eldred-Grigg's history of the New Zealand gold rushes Diggers, hatters & whores.' Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries
  • Published: 5 August 2011
  • ISBN: 9781869797034
  • Imprint: Random House NZ
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 544
  • RRP: $39.99
Categories:
Share…

About the author

Stevan Eldred-Grigg

Stevan Eldred-Grigg is a novelist, short story writer, essayist, biographer and historian, who has been lauded as ‘a natural story-teller’ (Metro). Born by mistake in the Grey Valley, New Zealand, in 1952, he grew up and was educated in Canterbury, New Zealand, and Canberra, Australia. He gained an MA in History from the University of Canterbury, and then obtained a PhD at the Australian National University in Canberra.

Few contemporary New Zealand or Australian novelists have written about subjects so varied and challenging – and in such a variety of genres and styles. A key focus in his writing has been on class and on his home region of Canterbury. His first novel, Oracles and Miracles, was published in New Zealand in 1987 and won second place in the 1988 Goodman Fielder Wattie Book Awards. It was subsequently adapted for stage and radio, and was also the first major novel by a living New Zealand writer to be published in China - the Chinese translation being published under the title Sheng Xian Qi Ji. This was followed by a number of other novels, including the riveting Shanghai Boy and Bangs, the fourth book in what has become a family saga over three generations, beginning with Oracles and Miraclesand continuing in The Shining City and Mum. In 2019, he won the Janet Frame Literary Trust Award.

As a historian he has been described as ‘smart, sensitive to his subjects, and prepared to tell the stories other historians neglect’ (Wanganui Chronicle). His histories include Diggers, Hatters & Whores: The Story of the New Zealand Gold Rushes, which won the Hachette NZ Award for Best Non-Illustrated Book at the PANZ Book Design Awards 2009, and The Great Wrong War (a controversial social history of the experience of World War One in New Zealand), which won the Hachette NZ Award for Best Illustrated Book at the PANZ Book Design Awards 2011. He won a Copyright Licensing Limited scholarship to write Diggers, Hatters and Whores.

Eldred-Grigg has lived in Mexico City, Iowa City, Berlin, Shanghai and Beijing. He is currently based in Wellington. He has three grown sons. See www.eldred-grigg.com

portrait photo of Stevan Eldred-Grigg

Also by Stevan Eldred-Grigg

Oracles & Miracles
The Great Wrong War
Bangs
Shanghai Boy
See all

Praise for Diggers, Hatters & Whores

The best and most comprehensive work so far on our goldrushes. That it is written in a forthright and racy style to attract a popular readership … is an added bonus that takes nothing away from its academic authority. It is Stevan Eldred-Grigg’s best historical work to date and is unlikely to be superseded for a long time.

The Press

A compendious, detailed, readable, informative, enjoyable and widely researched book, generously nuanced … in the way he looks at the Chinese contribution, and for solid human experience, there’s hardly a page that doesn’t yield a nugget.

Sunday Star Times

A rumbustious book and a gold rush in itself which captures the speed and social turmoil of an era, and pans vivid, even lurid, detail from historical paydirt. In dispelling common misconceptions about the gold rush, Eldred-Grigg has not only produced a thoroughly enjoyable and informative read, but also gathered together a useful source of historic facts with the index, endnoting and comprehensive bibliography.

NZ Heritage

This brilliant and meticulous history serves to remind us of how important gold rushes were in the formation of our history — as important in their way as the Land Wars that were dominating the North Island at much the same time.

Investigate

The heart of the book is a richly textured look at the lives of the diggers and those who shared their environment which makes telling use of contemporary newspapers and existing secondary sources in a colourful yet disciplined text.

NZ Doctor

Awards & recognition

PANZ Book Design Awards

Winner  •  2009  •  Hachette New Zealand Award for Best Non-Illustrated Book