O. E. Middleton

O.E. (Osman Edward or Ted) Middleton (born 1925 in Christchurch, died in Dunedin 2010) was a New Zealand writer of short stories, described as belonging to the vernacular critical realist tradition of Frank Sargeson.^[1] He was the brother of noted New Zealand novelist Ian Middleton, and like him also blind from middle age.^[2] Mentored by Frank Sargeson in Auckland in the late 1950s, he moved to Dunedin to take up the Robert Burns Fellowship (1970) at the University of Otago.

Prominent New Zealand author Janet Frame once said of Middleton, "O. E. Middleton is a fine writer... He's the only NZ writer who has made me weep over a story — one called The Stone in a volume of that title."^[3] Middleton was the recipient of several awards, including the Hubert Church Award and the 2006 Janet Frame Literary Award. His anthology Selected Stories, meanwhile, shared first prize for Fiction in the New Zealand Book Awards in 1976.

A full list of his publications can be found at the University of Auckland's NZ Literature File [1].

Further information can be found at the New Zealand Book Council's webpage on him [2].

Main works

• Short Stories (Wellington: Handcraft Press, 1954)
• The Stone and Other Stories (Auckland: Pilgrim Press, 1959)
• A Walk on the Beach (London: Joseph, 1964)
• The Loners (Wellington: Square & Circle, 1972)
• Selected Stories (Dunedin: McIndoe, 1975)
• Confessions of an Ocelot; and Not for a Seagull (Dunedin: McIndoe, 1979).
• The Big Room and Other Stories (Wellington: Steele Roberts, 1998)
• Beyond The Breakwater - Stories 1948-1998 (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2008)

References

1. ^ The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature, edited by Roger Robinson and Nelson Wattie (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1998)
2. ^ Benson, Nigel (19 July 2008). "Writer sees world through mind's eye". Otago Daily Times. http://www.odt.co.nz/entertainment/books/13937/writer-sees-world-through-mind039s-eye. Retrieved 1 November 2011. 
3. ^ Awards

External links

• New Zealand Book Council biography
• Janet Frame Literary Trust Awards
• http://access.alliedpress.co.nz/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Search&Key=ODT/2010/09/04/36/Ar03602.xml&CollName=ODT_ARCHIVE&DOCID=1238132&Keyword=%28middleton%7E%29&skin=odt2a&AppName=2&ViewMode=HTML

Persondata
Name	Middleton, O. E.
Alternative names	Osmond Edward
Short description	Author
Date of birth	1925
Place of birth	Christchurch, New Zealand
Date of death
Place of death