Frank Sargeson

Frank Sargeson () (born Norris Frank Davey; 23 March 1903 – 1 March 1982) was a New Zealand short story writer and novelist. Born in Hamilton, Sargeson had a middle-class and puritanical upbringing, and initially worked as a lawyer. After travelling to the United Kingdom for two years and working as a clerk on his return, he was convicted of indecent assault for a homosexual encounter and moved to live on his uncle's farm for a period. Having already written and published some short stories in the late 1920s, he began to focus on his writing and moved into his parents' holiday cottage where he would live for the rest of his life.

Sargeson became an influential figure in New Zealand writing, and his work continues to be recognised as a major influence on New Zealand literature. Sargeson is known for his minimalist and sparse style, with a focus on unhappy and isolated male characters, and has been credited with introducing everyday New Zealand English to literature. He published over forty short stories in the 1930s and 1940s, and later works included novels, plays and autobiographies. He also mentored and supported other young New Zealand writers, most notably Janet Frame.

Early life and education

Sargeson was born in Hamilton, New Zealand on 23 March 1903, the second of four children. His name at birth was Norris Frank Davey but he would later adopt the surname of his mother, Rachel Sargeson.

He attended Hamilton West School followed by Hamilton High School. From 1921 onwards he worked in solicitors' offices and studied law by distance through Auckland University College, (His biographer Michael King tells of police surveillance of Hollobon and immediate arrest of them both, and Sargeson betraying Hollobon, based on the account of a member of Sargeson's family, He was to remain at the bach as a full-time writer for most of the rest of his life.

It was at this time that he began using the name Frank Sargeson, in part to hide his criminal conviction, in part as a rejection of his parents' middle-class values, and in part in tribute to his uncle Oakley Sargeson.

He began to establish a reputation in the writing world from 1935 onwards, with short stories contributed to the left-wing magazine Tomorrow. His short stories from this time demonstrate the features that would come to characterise his style: minimalist and austere narration and characters, and the use of everyday New Zealand spoken English, was published by Caxton Press. It received favourable reviews but was not commercially successful.

In 1945, the local council informed Sargeson that the decrepit bach on his family's property had to be demolished. Sargeson had little money this time but managed to persuade his father to gift the property to him. It was as part of this legal transfer, in February 1946, that he formally changed his name by deed poll to Frank Sargeson.

In 1949, Sargeson published his first full-length novel, I Saw in My Dream. The first part of the novel had already been published in Penguin New Writing and as a small book by Caxton Press and Reed & Harris. Reviews were unenthusiastic and mixed in both England and New Zealand.

Sargeson continued to nurture and promote New Zealand literary talent, as he had with Speaking for Ourselves, most notably by inviting the young author and poet Janet Frame to live in the former army hut on his property in 1955, not long after her discharge from Seacliff Lunatic Asylum. She lived and worked in the army hut from April 1955 to July 1956, producing her first full-length novel Owls Do Cry (Pegasus, 1957), Later, she wrote about this period in her autobiography, An Angel at my Table. He was also a friend and mentor to other young writers such as Maurice Duggan and John Reece Cole.

In 1953, to mark Sargeson's fiftieth birthday, Landfall published "A Letter to Frank Sargeson", written and signed by sixteen of his fellow New Zealand writers, including Frame, Duggan, David Ballantyne, Bill Pearson, Helen Lilian Shaw and others. The letter praised Sargeson for his contributions to New Zealand literature, saying that he had "proved that a New Zealander could publish work true to his own country and of a high degree of artistry, and that exile in the cultural centres of the old world was not necessary to this end", and "revealed that our manners and behaviour formed just as good a basis for enduring literature as those of any other country". In the editorial to that same issue, Charles Brasch commented that Sargeson's birthday was more than a merely personal occasion: "By his courage and his gifts he showed that it was possible to be a writer and contrive to live, somehow, in New Zealand, and all later writers are in his debt."

At this time it seemed that Sargeson's career might be over; his literary output during the 1950s had slowed, with only one novella, two short stories and a short essay, and two partially completed plays.

Later career

In the 1960s, Sargeson's writing career experienced a renewal, and between 1964 and 1976 he published eleven further books. The two plays he had begun in the 1950s, the comedy The Cradle and the Egg and the drama A Time For Sowing, were both produced in Auckland in the early 1960s, Memoirs of a Peon, a novel he had completed in the late 1950s but struggled to get published, was finally published in 1965 by a London publisher, and in that same year he won the Bank of New Zealand Katherine Mansfield Memorial Award for the short story "Just Trespassing, Thanks". He continued to write and publish short fiction until 1980, when his health began to decline.

Sargeson left his estate to his friend Christine Cole Catley who later launched the Frank Sargeson Trust. After his death, the Trust restored his bach and opened it to the public. In 1990, Sargeson's ashes were scattered on the property, and a sign was put up outside the bach stating: "Here a truly New Zealand literature had its beginnings".

In 1987, the Trust established the Sargeson Fellowship, a New Zealand literary award, to provide assistance to New Zealand writers. Some writers who have received the award include Janet Frame (who was, appropriately, the first writer to receive the award in 1987), Since 2013, the fellowship has been sponsored by law firm Grimshaw & Co and it is now known as the Grimshaw Sargeson Fellowship.

Since 2003 (the centenary of Sargeson's birth), the Frank Sargeson Memorial Lecture has been delivered every year at the University of Waikato by a notable New Zealand writer, and since 2019 the University has sponsored a short story prize, the Sargeson Prize, in his honour.

In 2024, the Alexander Turnbull Library's Frank Sargeson Collection, comprising Sargeson's draft manuscripts, personal papers and photographs, was inscribed in UNESCO Memory of the World Aotearoa New Zealand Ngā Mahara o te Ao register.

Works

Collections

Conversation with my Uncle and Other Sketches (1936)
A Man and his Wife (1940)
That Summer: And Other Stories (1946)
Collected Stories, 1935–1963 with an introduction by Bill Pearson (1964); with an introduction by E. M. Forster (1965)
The Stories of Frank Sargeson (1973)

Short stories

Novels and novellas

I Saw in my Dream (1949)
I for One (1952)
Memoirs of a peon (1965)
The Hangover (1967)
Joy of the Worm (1969)
Sunset Village (1976)
En Route published with a novella by Edith Campion in a joint volume entitled Tandem (1979)