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.

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.

Although later in life Sargeson became known for his literary depiction of the laconic and unsophisticated New Zealand working-class men, his upbringing was comfortable and middle-class, if puritanical; his father, Edwin Davey, was the Hamilton town clerk and an active campaigner against social ills such as alcohol and gambling.

Both his parents were active Methodists.

He attended Hamilton West School followed by Hamilton High School.

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 began writing short stories in the late 1920s.

From 1921 onwards he worked in solicitors' offices and studied law by distance through Auckland University College, as well as spending time at the farm of his mother's brother, Oakley Sargeson, in Ōkahukura, King Country.

Although outwardly conforming with his parents' expectations, Sargeson was struggling inwardly with his sexuality and what he wanted to do with his life.

In 1925, after an argument with his mother because she read his private correspondence, he moved to Auckland to continue his studies, and obtained his legal qualifications in 1926.

Upon completing his training as a solicitor, Sargeson left New Zealand in February 1927 and spent two years in the United Kingdom, where he travelled, wrote about his experiences and had his first open homosexual relationship, with an interior decorator who was 14 years older than him.

He returned to New Zealand in 1928 and was unable to find work either as a solicitor or as a journalist.

He was eventually hired as a clerk by the Public Trust Office in Wellington, where he worked for 15 months.

In 1929, as a condition of a two-year suspended sentence he received for indecent assault due to a homosexual encounter, he was required to leave Wellington to live with his uncle in Ōkahukura, where he spent 18 months working on the farm and writing.

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.

During this time he successfully published an article about his European travels in The New Zealand Herald in May 1930 and also completed his first novel, which was rejected by publishers.

In May 1931, Sargeson took permanent residence in his parents' holiday cottage (or bach) in Takapuna, a northern suburb of Auckland.

He was to remain at the bach as a full-time writer for most of the rest of his life.

The bach was primitive and was described by Sargeson as "nothing more than a small one-roomed hut in a quiet street ending in a no-man's land of mangrove mud-flats that belonged to the inner harbour. It was very decayed, with weather-boards falling off."

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.

Early on he registered for unemployment benefits in order to be able to spend as much time as possible writing; he said he wished to produce work "which would be marked by an individual flavour: there would be a certain quality which would be recognised as my own and nobody else's".

He began to grow fruit and vegetables and to take in people who were struggling financially or on the social fringes of society, who he described as the "odds-and-ends kind of people I tend naturally to cherish and try to comfort".

He began to establish a reputation in the writing world from 1935 onwards, with short stories contributed to the left-wing magazine Tomorrow.

This led to the publication of a collection, Conversation with My Uncle, and Other Sketches, in 1936.

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, and showed the influence of the American writer Sherwood Anderson, whose stories Sargeson was reading at the time.

In late 1939, Sargeson was diagnosed with surgical tuberculosis, which meant he was excused from conscription in World War II and eligible for an invalid's benefit.

By 1940, more than forty of Sargeson's short stories had been published and he had established a significant reputation in New Zealand as a writer.

That year, his story "The Making of a New Zealander" won first-equal prize in a competition held to mark New Zealand's centennial, and his second short story collection, A Man and His Wife, was published by Caxton Press.

He was also receiving international attention, with his work appearing in journals in Australia, the UK and the USA, in John Lehmann's anthologies and periodicals such as Penguin New Writing.

In 1945, Sargeson edited an anthology of short stories by New Zealand writers, called Speaking for Ourselves, published both by Caxton Press in New Zealand and by Reed & Harris in Melbourne, Australia.

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.

The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature (2006) said that Sargeson "dominated" New Zealand short fiction at this time, with his "wry sketches or ostensible yarns about apparently undistinguished characters and minor occurrences", in which "the characters are depicted as itinerant labourers or unemployed men, seldom happily married and frequently without any apparent family connection".

He also was increasingly becoming part of the New Zealand literary community through his friendships with other local writers (including A. R. D. Fairburn, Robin Hyde, Jane Mander, Denis Glover and others).