A guide to print culture in Aotearoa, the impact of the book and other forms of print on New Zealand. This collection of essays by many contributors looks at the effect of print on Maori and their oral traditions, printing, publishing, bookselling, libraries, buying and collecting, readers and reading, awards, and the print culture of many other language groups in New Zealand.

This pioneering examination of travel writing about New Zealand in the colonial period discusses a wide range of writing that helped place New Zealand on the literary map, while providing an oblique history of the young nation in the 19th century. Exploring early newspaper accounts; the journals of missionaries, traders, and adventurers; and the guidebooks and specialized descriptions of fishing, and hunting, which promoted New Zealand as a sporting paradise, Wevers finds that writing about New Zealand was an essential tool in the colonization process.