Barry John Crump MBE was a New Zealand author of semi-autobiographical comic novels based on his image as a rugged outdoors man. Taken together his novels have sold more than a million copies domestically, equating to one book sold for every four New Zealanders. Born in Papatoetoe, Auckland, Crump worked for many years as a government deer-culler in areas of New Zealand native forest . He collected his experiences in his first novel A Good Keen Man in 1960. This novel became one of the most popular in New Zealand history, and Crump’s success continued with the more fictional Hang on a... Minute Mate , One of Us , There and Back , Gulf , A Good Keen Girl , Bastards I Have Met , and others, which capitalized on the appeal of his good-natured itinerant self-sufficient characters and idiomatic “blokey” writing style. Crump travelled throughout Australia , Europe, Turkey, and India, the result of which was his conversion to the Bahá’í Faith by 1982.
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| Birthdate: | May 15, 1935 |
| Birthplace: | Papatoetoe |
| Date of death: | July 3, 1996 |