His critical [dubious – discuss] writings survey New Zealand poetry from 1898 on, covering mainly Georgian but also a few earlier and later writers.
He has published essays on numerous New Zealand writers including Maude Ruby Basham (Aunt Daisy), James K. Baxter, George Bouzaid, Alan Claudius Brassington, Alan Brunton, Charles Brasch, Alfred Edward Caddick, Alex Calder, Alistair Campbell, Ronald Brian Castle, R. E. Coury, Charles Doyle, Kate Gerard, Patricia Godsiff, C. W. Grace, Arnold Grierson Lamont Cork, D'Arcy Cresswell, Peter Crisp, Allen Curnow, Eileen Duggan, E. L. Eyre, Bernard Gadd, Michele Leggott, Arthur Frederick Thomas Chorlton, Leigh Davis, Arthur Rex Dugard Fairburn, Gerald Fitzgerald, Patricia Fry, Ruth Gilbert, Denis Glover, Alexander Connell Hanlon, Robin Hyde, Noel Farr Hoggard, Louis Johnson, John Liddell Kelly, Dennis List, Iain Lonie, Bill Manhire, Katherine Mansfield, Charles Allan Marris, Frank McKay, Philip Mincher, Barry Mitcalfe, Count Geoffrey Potocki de Montalk, Peter Munz, Walter Edward Murphy, Marjory Lydia Nicholls, Esma North, Victor O'Leary, W. H. Oliver, Vincent O'Sullivan, Charles Stuart Perry, Mark Pirie, Mary E. Richmond, Harry Ricketts, Betty Riddell, J. H. E.Schroder, Rosemary Seymour, Kendrick Smithyman, Charles Spear, C. K. Stead, John Pyne Snadden, J. E. Weir, Karl Wolfskehl and the Australian writer Pamela Travers.
[citation needed] Among the British authors he has written on are Rupert Brooke, Robert Browning, Robin George Collingwood, Frances Cornford, William Davenant, Richard Edwardes, T. S. Eliot, J. M. Edmonds, George Rostrevor Hamilton, Thomas Hardy, John Marston, Thomas Middleton, John Milton, Anthony Munday, Wilfred Owen, George Peele, Geoffrey Pollett, William Rowley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Anthony Thwaite, Alfred Tennyson and William Wordsworth.
[citation needed] Among the New Zealand bibliographers and critics he has written on are Peter Alcock, Rowan Gibbs, Don McKenzie and Joan Stevens.
[citation needed] Wright's published works include plays, filmscripts, novels, short stories and two verse novellas.
He has published two major[dubious – discuss] works of literary autobiography: Brilliantly Wright (1989) and Being, Obsession and Besetment (2007).