A Dunedin author will continue the tale of a minor literary character after securing a national research grant.

Wendy Parkins is one of four writers across the country to receive $5000 from Tāwhia Copyright Aotearoa and the New Zealand Society of Authors.

She will use the funds to search local archives while writing a novel that places a Charles Dickens figure in early Dunedin.

Parkins plans to trace the journey of Edith Dombey, who flees a bad marriage in the classic book Dombey and Son.

“Edith marries Mr Dombey for his money. And it’s very clear that this is a transactional marriage.

“But he’s just so awful that she can’t bear it. So, she runs away from him,” Parkins said.

Her new book will imagine what happens to the outcast, who ends up settling in the South.

In letters to his friends, Dickens had considered killing her off, but eventually she is sent into exile to an elderly cousin in Italy.

“So, that’s where my story starts with Edith in Italy.

“More bad things continue to happen to her and eventually, she ends up here.”

Parkins is exploring Toitū Otago Settlers Museum and the Hocken Collections to understand the environment her fictional creation could have faced when disembarking in the colonial town.

“One of the things I like to do is just to walk around the Settlers Museum.

“Just to get a sense of particularly pre-gold rush Dunedin.”

It was amazing how many people arrived so early in the 1840s and 1850s, during the initial years of settlement before things took off, she said.

“You just think, what would possess someone to do that?”

For many people, moving to the colony provided a chance to begin again.

“It was like their last hope, a chance to reinvent themselves, to run away from a past where they’d either failed or come into some kind of disgrace.”

The grant money will help Parkins study primary sources such as letters and journals.

In particular she wants to uncover the experiences of women, such as what they endured during the long journey by sea to New Zealand.

“I’m really interested to read things like ship diaries.

“Because they’re on the ship for, like, three months.

“What sort of connections do you make with the other people on the ship?

“Because you’re in such close quarters. I mean, you know, people died on the voyages, they gave birth on the voyages.”