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Crump Barry
(1935—1996)

Barry Crump 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 conversion to the Bahá'í Faith by 1982. He was awarded an MBE for services to literature in 1994, and died in 1996.

New Zealand, 1995, Barry Crump