Rosemary Rees (New Zealand writer)

Rosemary Frances Rees (c.1875 – 19 August 1963) was a New Zealand actress, playwright, theatre producer and novelist.

[3][4] Her first one act play The New Gun was performed as a curtain raiser to Uncles and Aunts, by William Lestocq and Walter Everard, in 1902.

[4] Several of her one act plays were produced in this period: in 1907 A Judicial Separation in Manchester[6] and Her Dearest Friend in London;[7] A Desperate Marriage in Brighton in 1908;[8] The Happiest Woman in the World in Bournemouth in 1909.

[10] In 1909 she presented, at His Majesty's Theatre in Gisborne, an evening's entertainment which included three of her own one act plays: the comedy A Judicial Separation, the drama The New Gun and the comedietta Her Dearest Friend.

[19] By 1917 her health had deteriorated from overwork on the Entertainments Committee and, ordered to rest, she was offered a free trip to New Zealand by the military authorities.

She did this for 14 months; after the Armistice the Dramatic Party entertained the wounded at Ypres in Belgium and at Arras and Douai in Northern France.

[3][19] After recovering in London from a breakdown in 1919 she returned to New Zealand where she managed her own touring theatre company; one of the actors was the writer Ngaio Marsh.

[1][2][3][19] While in Australia Rees had begun to write romantic novels, giving up acting to become a successful writer.

"[26] The critic Bart Sutherland, writing in 1931 in The New Zealand Herald, defended Rees against her more dismissive critics: "although her books have been dubbed 'pleasant and sentimental, with too much local colour for true artistry', I must confess (with a fitting sense of being possessed of an inferior mentality) that I read Lake of Enchantment with real pleasure.