Celia Manson
New Zealand writer, journalist and broadcaster
Cecilia Evelyn Manson (née Drummond; 24 August 1908 – 28 October 1987), known as Celia Manson, was a New Zealand writer, journalist and broadcaster. Many of her works were co-written with her husband Cecil Manson, and together they also laid the foundations for the Katherine Mansfield Menton Fellowship.
Life and career
Manson was born in Carterton on 24 August 1908. She was one of ten children of Agnes Telford and her husband, Robert Drummond, a teacher; the journal editor Norah Burnard was her older sister. Manson attended Wairarapa College and subsequently Victoria University College. After university she travelled to the United Kingdom, where she worked as a freelance journalist for the BBC, including narrating a television series about three generations of a New Zealand family.
In 1939 she married Cecil Manson, an English soldier, in France. Their son Hugo was born in London in 1941. They went on to co-write several books together about New Zealand history, including children's books, and beginning with Tides of Hokianga in 1956. For some years they published weekly historical essays in The Dominion; these were published in a collection called Curtain-raiser to a Colony in 1962.
“Celia Manson” enters the record as new Zealand writer, journalist and broadcaster. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Celia, Manson and Zealand can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Celia Manson” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Celia, Manson and Zealand provides the most credible route into that argument.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q104173626. VIAF identifies the subject as 7125395. The Library of Congress control number is no2005065696. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1908, 1987, 1939 and 1941.
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This entry incorporates text from “Celia Manson” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.