Wright was a prolific author and publisher of his work, he has over 1000 entries listed in the
National Library of New Zealand. Almost all are self-published under his imprint Cultural and Political Books, Wellington. His critical writings survey New Zealand poetry from 1898 on, covering mainly
Georgian but also a few earlier and later writers. From 1985, he has focused on the
Elizabethan and
Jacobean dramatists, and since 2002, increasingly on
Shakespeare. His major books are ''Shakespeare's Ongoing Composition
(2008) and Argybargy and the Big D'' (2009). He has published essays on numerous New Zealand writers including
Maude Ruby Basham (Aunt Daisy),
James K. Baxter, George Bouzaid, Alan Claudius Brassington, Alan Brunton,
Charles Brasch, Alfred Edward Caddick, Alex Calder,
Alistair Te Ariki Campbell, Ronald Brian Castle, R. E. Coury, Charles Doyle, Kate Gerard, Patricia Godsiff, C. W. Grace, Arnold Grierson Lamont Cork,
D'Arcy Cresswell, Peter Crisp,
Allen Curnow,
Eileen Duggan, E. L. Eyre, Bernard Gadd,
Michele Leggott, Arthur Frederick Thomas Chorlton, Leigh Davis,
A. R. D. Fairburn, Gerald Fitzgerald, Patricia Fry, Ruth Gilbert,
Denis Glover, Alexander Connell Hanlon,
Robin Hyde, Noel Farr Hoggard,
Louis Johnson, John Liddell Kelly, Dennis List,
Iain Lonie,
Bill Manhire,
Katherine Mansfield,
Charles Allan Marris, Frank McKay, Philip Mincher,
Barry Mitcalfe,
Geoffrey Potocki de Montalk,
Peter Munz, Walter Edward Murphy,
Marjory Lydia Nicholls, Esma North, Victor O'Leary,
W. H. Oliver,
Vincent O'Sullivan, Charles Stuart Perry,
Mark Pirie, Mary E. Richmond,
Harry Ricketts, Betty Riddell, J. H. E.Schroder, Rosemary Seymour,
Kendrick Smithyman, Charles Spear,
C. K. Stead, John Pyne Snadden, J. E. Weir,
Karl Wolfskehl and the Australian writer
Pamela Travers. Among the British authors he has written on are
Rupert Brooke,
Robert Browning,
R. G. Collingwood,
Frances Cornford,
William Davenant,
Richard Edwardes,
T. S. Eliot,
John Maxwell Edmonds,
George Rostrevor Hamilton,
Thomas Hardy,
John Marston,
Thomas Middleton,
John Milton,
Anthony Munday,
Wilfred Owen,
George Peele, Geoffrey Pollett,
William Rowley,
Percy Bysshe Shelley,
Anthony Thwaite,
Alfred, Lord Tennyson and
William Wordsworth. He has also written on
Goethe. Among the New Zealand bibliographers and critics he has written on are Peter Alcock, Rowan Gibbs, Don McKenzie and
Joan Stevens. He has published bibliographies of
Ivan Bootham,
Jeremy Commons,
Mark Pirie and
Michael O'Leary. Wright's published works include plays, filmscripts, novels, short stories and two verse novellas. His earliest plays date from the 1950s. From 1984 all his plays have been written in verse. They include
Orestes in Phthia,
Apollonius at Rome and
Women of Sparta. He has also written three filmscripts:
Mysterious Eve, ''Wolf's Gorge, or Operation Fullscale
, and Across the Ningthi
. His novels include Underprivileged Lovers
, Strangers in the Blood
, Caisson
, and The Last Time I Saw Turfit
. His latest is Weston Burley's Business in Great Waters
(2007). He has also written The Fall of the Modern West'', a book on the philosophy of history. He has published two major works of literary autobiography:
Brilliantly Wright (1989) and
Being, Obsession and Besetment (2007). Wright's final published work was ''The Pop Artist's Garland: Selected Poems 1952–2009
, drawing on his epic poem The Alexandrians'' as well as his post-Alexandrian work. == Reviews and critical studies ==