Over the Hills and Far Away: A Story of New Zealand

by Charlotte Evans, Lewis Fletcher (Narrator)

One of the very first New Zealand novels, Over the Hills and Far Away is a heavily romanticised tale of a woman's journey from England to Otago, New Zealand, and her subsequent experiences in the wild new colony. - Summary by Lewis Fletcher

5 pages, Audiobook

First published January 1, 1874

About the author

Charlotte Lees Evans is among the earliest of New Zealand’s romantic novelists and a writer of popular romantic melodrama belonging to the ‘Pioneer Period’ of 1861–1889 in what is termed the ‘sensation’ genre.

Evans’ full collection of published works included three novels, of which the first, a story entitled Guy Eversley was serialised in the North Otago Times and Waitaki Reporter in 1865-66. This publication was then followed in 1874 by the two novels: Over the Hills and Far Away: A Story of New Zealand and A Strange Friendship: A Story of New Zealand. Evans also produced three short stories: A Narrow Escape, Only a Woman’s Hair and Our Nearest Neighbour that were published posthumously in 1900 and 1903 by a London publication called The Family Herald. A selection of her poetry, also collected posthumously, were to be eventually published by her husband Eyre Evans in 1917. It is largely unknown, however, as to what extent Evans’ novels were read, either in New Zealand or overseas.

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Librarian note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Charlotte^^^Evans

Reviews

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

First published in 1874, this story gives a window into travel by boat to New Zealand from England, and to life style in New Zealand at the time, within the landowning class of people of the British Empire. I found it interesting for that reason. The story was pretty good - the religious theme at the very end is disappointing for our time, but probably fairly standard for the time the book was written.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charlotte Evans emigrated from Great Britain to the nascent colony of New Zealand in the 1860s. Though largely unknown today - and indeed not widely read even in her own time - she was one of New Zealand's earliest novelists. Over the Hills and Far Away, one of only three novels she wrote, is a surprisingly underrated romantic tale of a proper English girl experiencing love and loss against the wild backdrop of an unsettled land. The boundless mountains and valleys, the sense of expansive freedom, and the beauty of sea and sunsets all nicely counterbalance what is otherwise a fairly conventional English novel of manners. At the center is the quiet but mounting suspense surrounding a handsome but troubled doctor and his mysterious estranged wife. The resolution involved a twist I did not see coming.

The characters are all wealthy landowners and professionals with their genteel Old World lifestyles largely intact, so obviously the imperialism, racism, and other issues of British Empire are left untouched. The native Maori are never even so much as alluded to - one gets the impression of a largely empty island aside from a few plantations. (By contrast, most nineteenth-century American frontier works definitely included Native Americans, for better or worse.) While this such glaring omissions may be jarring to modern readers, think of Over the Hills and Far Away as an artifact of the period and perspective in which it was written.