Olive Trotter

Olive Trotter is a Dunedin writer who discovered Richardson while she was researching the life of Miss Learmonth Dalrymple, a tireless 19th-century campaigner for women's rights. Since he amassed a vast archive in the course of his life – he kept every letter he had ever received, a complete record of his career in India, including pay-slips and commission documents, diaries from his early life in New Zealand, copies of his lectures on British India, and so on – she soon found herself with the task of sorting the largely unsorted Richardson papers at the Otago Settlers Museum, a task which led to this book. The manuscript of this, her first book, was completed in 1992. Subsequently Olive Trotter self-published four other books: The Maidservants Scandal, Dunedin's Crowning Glory: The Town Clock Tower, Pioneers Behind Bars, and Dunedin's Spiteful Socrates: J.G.S. Grant.