W. H. Oliver Biography | Poet

W.H. Oliver is a New Zealand historian and poet, born in Feilding, on 14 May 1925, the son of Cornish immigrants. He studied at Victoria University of Wellington (MA) and completed a PhD at Oxford University in 1953. He returned to New Zealand and lectured at University of Canterbury and Victoria, before becoming inaugural professor of history at Massey University in 1965. He was made emeritus professor on leaving Massey in 1984 to become general editor of the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. He has written extensively on New Zealand history and published several volumes of poetry. On 9 September 2008 he was honoured in the Prime Minister's Awards for Literary Achievement, Non-Fiction.