Ashton-Warner, Sylvia (1908-1984) novelist, nonfiction writer

Sylvia Ashton-Warner was born in Stratford, New Zealand, to a father crippled by arthritis, so her mother, Margaret Warner, supported the family by teaching in remote country schools. At first Ashton-Warner resisted becoming a teacher, fearing the profession would stifle her creativity as a writer and painter. However, she graduated from Auckland Teachers’ College and, from 1938 to 1955, she worked with her husband, Keith Henderson, teaching Maori children to read. After Henderson’s death in 1969, she was invited to set up an alternative school in Colorado, an experience she described in her nonfiction work Spear- point: Teacher in America (1972). At her death, Ashton-Warner was recognized as a pioneer in both New Zealand literature and education.

Ashton-Warner’s first novel, Spinster (1959), is also her most acclaimed. Anna Vorontosov is a single teacher working in a Maori school who tries to integrate the inner world of her emotions with the outer reality of her teaching. Ashton- Warner’s decision to tell Anna’s story in the present tense, interrupted only by the voices of her young students, “conveys the poetry and color of a special kind of experience from within the mind of a woman of sensibility,” according to reviewer Ruth Blackman.

The nonfiction Teacher (1963), based on Ashton-Warner’s success with teaching struggling learners to read, expresses her philosophy of teaching, which builds on the knowledge students already have and the words that have meaning for them. The book won her international recognition as an innovative educator.

Ashton-Warner’s novel Greenstone (1967), while also considered innovative, received mixed reviews. To critic Elinor Baumbach, only the Maori characters seem real. However, reviewer Eleanor Dienstag says this fable for adults expresses two themes that recur throughout Ashton-Warner’s work: “. . . the channeling of destructive energies into creative ones . . . and her dream of two different but complementary cultures, the Maori and the Western.”

Among Ashton-Warner’s three autobiographical works, I Passed This Way (1979) is the most complete. Reviewer Linda B. Osborne notes that Ashton-Warner “builds her self-portrait through a series of images that hold for her a special meaning,” which is consistent with her belief that the “key vocabulary” consists of words that evoke deep feeling and make a child eager to use these words in reading and writing.

In 1982 Ashton-Warner was recognized as a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her services to New Zealand education and literature. Sylvia, a feature film based on her autobiographies, was produced by Michael Firth in 1985.

A Work about Sylvia Ashton-Warner:
Hood, Lynley. Sylvia! The Biography of Sylvia Ashton-Warner. New York: Viking, 1989.