William Satchell

Satchell in 1936

William Arthur Satchell (1 February 1861 – 21 October 1942) was a New Zealand orchardist, writer, stockbroker, novelist and accountant.

Life and career

Satchell was born in London, England in 1861. In 1886 he decided to emigrate to New Zealand for his health, and settled at Waimā in the Hokianga area of the North Island, on a property that he cleared and farmed. He married Susan Bryers at Rawene on 15 November 1889.

Between 1902 and 1914 Satchell wrote four novels, all set in New Zealand. The Greenstone Door (1914) is a romantic adventure of inter-racial relationships set in the Auckland region during the wars in the middle decades of the nineteenth century.

Satchell lived in Kopu, near Thames, between 1917 and 1928, working as an accountant for a timber company. He worked as an accountant for the same company in Auckland between 1928 and 1936. He was granted a civil list pension in 1939 in recognition of his literary services. He died in Auckland in October 1942. His wife predeceased him by six years; he was survived by five sons and four daughters.

Assessments

In her book The New Zealand Novel 1860–1965 (1966), Joan Stevens says Satchell is the only New Zealand novelist, "in all the early years up to 1910, whose work has endured and is still readable in its own right". In 1996, in the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, Kendrick Smithyman said The Land of the Lost, The Toll of the Bush and The Greenstone Door "represent the most significant achievement in New Zealand fiction before the First World War".

A biography, The Maorilander, by Phillip Wilson, was published in 1961. Wilson wrote an expanded version, titled William Satchell, in 1968.

Books

• The Land of the Lost (1902)
• The Toll of the Bush (1905)
• The Elixir of Life (1907)
• The Greenstone Door (1914)

External links

• "Gentlemen in the Bush: William Satchell", chapter 8 from Maoriland: New Zealand Literature 1872–1914 by Jane Stafford and Mark Williams (2006)