Isobel Whippy was in Fiji from 1963. She wrote several short plays for school children from 1968 onward. 'Pritchard' was her first major drama, which won a $100 prize in a drama contest for the South Pacific Festival of Arts in Suva in May 1972.

The play concerns the first British Consul in Fiji, William Thomas Pritchard, who arrived in Levuka in September 1858 and was dismissed from his post in January 1863. It is based on a theory that the Consul lost his job because of a love affair with a young woman - possibly a part-European - who gave birth to two children by Pritchard, before he married her in the British Consulate in Levuka a few days after his dismissal. The play is in two acts - the first covering the period from September 1858 to June 1859; the second from November 1859 to July 1862. There is an epilogue concerning the year 1864.