One of New Zealand’s greatest literary innovators and most influential mentors to the literary community, Frank Sargeson was a novelist and short story writer who became internationally known as the pioneer who broke from colonial literary traditions to use an idiom that expressed the rhythms of New Zealand speech and experience. Born Norris Frank Davey in Hamilton in 1903, Frank Sargeson qualified as a solicitor before committing himself to full-time writing and a day-to-day struggle which he described as ‘physically, mentally and financially exhausting’. Between the mid-1930s and late 1970s he published scores of stories, seven novels/novellas and three volumes of autobiography, and became one of New Zealand literature’s most significant figures. Frank Sargeson died in Auckland in 1982.

Frank Sargeson chronology
Select bibliography
Books available from the trust
Further information

Frank Sargeson chronology

Norris Frank Davey was born in Hamilton on 23 March 1903 to the prosperous businessman Edwin Davey and his wife Rachel, both staunch Methodists. Although they gave the boy a secure early life he later regarded it as narrow and repressive. His paternal grandparents were from London’s East End. Norris was especially fond of Grandma Davey whose ‘kindness and generosity towards those who were in any way sick or unfortunate or weak established for her in Hamilton a reputation which became a legend’. His mother’s family, the Sargesons, were much more puritanical.

As he grew up, Norris’s family regularly took their Christmas holidays on Auckland’s North Shore.

Norris attended Hamilton High School then enrolled as an extramural law student at Auckland University College, working in a solicitor’s office by day and studying by night.

1921

Norris went to stay with an uncle, Oakley Sargeson, on his sheep farm at Ōkahukura in the King Country. Oakley, only sixteen years older than Norris, was gentle, generous and non-judgmental; he quietly debunked the Daveys’ religious beliefs and displayed an anarchic sense of humour. For Norris the farm became the spiritual centre of his life until the death of his uncle in 1948.

1924

A house on Esmonde Road on the North Shore was conveyed to the Davey family on 8 October 1924. The surrounding area had been the territory of Ngāti Pāoa since the 1700s, and slowly passed from the iwi into European hands. In 1852 the site (allotment 32, lot 86) was part of a parcel of allotments (29, 30, 31 and 32) transferred by Crown grant to the Ngāpuhi leader Patuone. By the 1920s the property had had several further owners, among them William Joseph Napier, a prominent barrister and disciple of Sir George Grey. 

1925

Norris moved to Auckland to board at the YMCA hostel and qualified as a solicitor in 1926. He attended concerts and plays and read the classics of European literature in the Auckland Public Library.

Norris travelled to London visiting art galleries, museums, concert halls and theatres. He undertook a two-week hike through Devon, Cornwall and Somerset and an eight-week walking and train tour in France, Switzerland and Italy. In London he had his first sexually consummated relationship, with an interior decorator fourteen years his senior. He began reading widely and attempted to write a novel.

1928

Norris returned to New Zealand. He failed to find work as a journalist or solicitor and worked as an estates clerk in the Public Trust Office in Wellington. He wrote poetry and stories in the evenings and weekends but none was published. A series of homosexual encounters ended with Norris’s arrest. He was given a two-year suspended sentence on the condition that he lived with his uncle at Ōkahukura.

1929–31

For eighteen months, from October 1929, Norris worked on Oakley Sargeson’s farm writing fiction and poetry in the mornings and helping with farm chores in the afternoons. He also wrote a novel that was not published.

1931

In May Norris left the farm to live and write in the family bach at 14 Esmonde Road, Takapuna. Frank’s modus operandi for living, established at this time, was continued in the new dwelling later built for him on the section in 1948. The bach was ‘nothing more than a small one-roomed hut in a quiet street ending in a no-man’s land of mangrove mudflats that belonged to the inner harbour. It was very decayed with weather-boards falling off and during gales only just saved from being blown off the bordered timber that propped it underneath by the shelter of a giant and sprawling overgrown hedge. The borough water supply stopped at the street boundary and a great deal of work with a bucket was an everyday job but inside furnishings had been improvised and there was besides much cast-off crockery a great pile of bedding and a folded tent which could be erected to eke out the place for summer camping. Fortunately gas for cooking and lighting had been laid on. The terrain for the most part was covered by a coarse fescue which when coming into seed could be as tall or taller than your head and besides the hedge to screen out neighbours there were three pines two of them very ancient and large. Beach and sea were within a quarter mile walk.’ (Frank Sargeson, Sargeson, 1981, p. 156)

‘Even by Takapuna standards the bach was primitive. The sleeping area which contained a double and a single bed was curtained off at night. Frank removed the double bed and inserted a small “homemade” table and a chair into the vacated space to serve as his writing space. There was a larger table, chairs and a long seating form in the centre of the room. A bench next to the gas cooker served as kitchen; the bathroom was a chair near the door with a bucket of water and a towel. Books as they accumulated piled up horizontally around the walls. Walls and floor were infested for a time with … black cockroaches … which emit a highly unpleasant smell when disturbed. The toilet was an outdoor privy with a can that had to be emptied at regular intervals.’ (Michael King, Frank Sargeson: A Life, 1995, p. 116)

Norris now called himself ‘Frank Sargeson’ partly as a rejection of what he saw as the bourgeois values of his immediate family, partly a tribute to his uncle and partly an attempt to conceal his criminal conviction of 1929. He registered as unemployed so as to be eligible for relief work and payments and began to grow fruit and vegetables on a large scale. He also befriended social derelicts whom he referred to as the ‘odds-and-ends kind of people I tend naturally to cherish and try to comfort’. One of these was Harry Doyle, a suspended horse trainer ten years his senior who became his partner and a friend for life. Doyle came and went from Esmonde Road for more than thirty years and lived there from 1967 until 1971, the year he died.

1935

Although he had one story published in the Australian Woman’s Mirror in 1933 and articles in the Auckland newspapers, Sargeson made what he called his ‘first real beginning’ in a 500-word fictional sketch published in Tomorrow on 24 July 1935 and called ‘Conversation with My Uncle’.

1940

Tomorrow published nine Sargeson stories by the end of 1935. In mid-1936 Bob Lowry’s Unicorn Press printed Sargeson’s first book, Conversation with My Uncle and Other Sketches. Sargeson now began to meet other New Zealand writers: D’Arcy Cresswell, A.R.D. (Rex) Fairburn, Roderick Finlayson, Robin Hyde and Jane Mander in Auckland; Eric McCormick and Oliver Duff in Wellington; Denis Glover of the Caxton Press in Christchurch. By 1940 he had more than forty stories published and in that year Caxton published his second story collection, A Man and His Wife.

1940s

Sargeson’s novella That Summer was published in Penguin New Writing (1943–44); the novella When the Wind Blows in 1945; and That Summer and Other Stories in 1946.

1940–45

Sargeson was troubled by surgical tuberculosis which exempted him from conscription and qualified him for an invalid’s benefit but was cured when antibiotics became available in the late 1940s.

1946

Sargeson formally changed his name by deed poll to Frank Sargeson so that his father could transfer ownership of the Takapuna property to him. His daily walks around Takapuna had made him a familiar figure – stooped, bearded and bespectacled, wearing a beret and carrying a canvas haversack over his shoulder.

1947

The under-secretary of Internal Affairs converted Sargeson’s invalid’s benefit into a literary pension of £4 a week which continued until he was eligible for the old-age pension. This allowed him to raise money for a new bach.

By the mid-1940s the old bach had become unfit to live in. Architect Vernon Brown prepared plans for a new dwelling but Sargeson did not like features such as the terrazzo bench (which he considered bourgeois) and the cost of the building was beyond his means. A simpler more economical dwelling was designed by Sargeson’s friend George Haydn and constructed in 1948.

George had first met Frank at the end of 1943 when he was having a drink with Rex Fairburn whom he had met when he entered the Papakura Military Camp early in 1943. The two men were at the pub on the corner of Victoria Street and High Street when Frank walked in and Rex introduced them.

George Haydn and his cousin Andrew had come to New Zealand from Hungary in 1939 escaping the imminent Nazi invasion. In Hungary he had been a university student but in his last year there had also learnt upholstery and cabinetmaking. When George reached Auckland he took up a variety of manual jobs and after a while became a leading hand carpenter with Fletchers before being enlisted in the army.

After ten months in the army George worked for a while in a ship-building yard and then set up a building partnership with a fellow worker Jack Abbott. Their first contract was from architect Vernon Brown. The partnership ended amicably after about two years. Then Barbara Duggan’s cousin, Una Platts, introduced George to the Rolletts and in March 1946 George set up the building firm of Haydn and Rollett with George Rollett.

1948

After their initial meeting George often visited Frank at his Takapuna bach and by the time Frank was ready to build a proper house it was a foregone conclusion that Haydn and Rollett would do the job. George prepared the most economical design for a cottage he could devise, a 20-foot-by-20-foot plan. Frank approved the plans and it was agreed that it would be built at cost. George Haydn supervised the job calling in to inspect progress each night on his way home after work. The foreman was Alf Miller and two men worked on the cottage which took about three months to construct.

1949

Sargeson acquires an army hut from a photographer in Mairangi Bay for his friend Jack Whewell, who helped with household and gardening chores.

Sargeson’s first full-length novel, I Saw in My Dream, was published in London.

1950s – early 1960s

Sargeson wrote and produced the plays The Cradle and the Egg and A Time for Sowing. They were put on in Auckland by the New Independent Theatre, founded by Sargeson, Chris Cathcart (who directed) and Colin McCahon (who painted the sets). The effort of both productions exhausted Sargeson and critical reception of the plays was insufficiently enthusiastic to persuade him to continue working in this genre. During these years Sargeson formed friendships with many young writers.

1950

In April, Maurice Duggan came to stay in the army hut, intending to live and write there while his wife Barbara was away in England. He stayed until September. For a while there was talk of Cristina Droescher, daughter of German refugee Werner Droescher, and his wife, Greville Texidor, moving into the hut permanently, but she went to Europe with her partner, artist Keith Patterson, who left behind some of his paintings to decorate the rather spartan interior of Sargeson’s cottage.

1951

In June, Renate Prince, a German-Jewish architectural student, moved into the army hut and stayed until July 1952.

1955–56

Janet Frame lived in the army hut where she wrote her first novel, Owls Do Cry.

1956

Kevin Ireland stayed in the army hut through the summer of 1956–57, writing poetry every morning and in the evenings ‘meals, visitors, chess and jokes about what one was so seriously trying to do’.

1960s

A revival of Sargeson’s career took place with the publication of Collected Stories 1935–1963; Wrestling with the Angel (1964); and Memoirs of a Peon (1965). In the same year he won the Bank of New Zealand Katherine Mansfield Memorial Award for his new short story, ‘Just Trespassing Thanks’. His short novel The Hangover was published in London in 1967 followed in 1969 by Joy of the Worm, and in 1972 three more short novels in one volume, Man of England Now, were published.

1967

It was decided that Harry Doyle, who was ill, would move in to live with Frank at Esmonde Road but existing arrangements were not ideal. Harry slept in Frank’s bed while Frank slept on the couch in the front room and visitors would have to traipse past Harry in order to be with Frank in the living room. In November Frank received an inheritance of around $7000 from an aunt. He used this to pay for an addition to the cottage, consisting of a bedroom for Harry opening off the back of the original bedroom, with a door opening on to a deck. Friend and architect Nigel Cook designed the addition. Haydn and Rollett were too busy to build it and it was built instead by two young builders recommended by George Haydn – Stu Opperman and Peter Hollows. Frank also brought his aunt’s refrigerator to Esmonde Road.

1970s

Sargeson wrote three volumes of autobiography: Once is Enough (1973); More than Enough (1975) and Never Enough! (1977). The short novel Sunset Village was published in 1976 and the novella En Route in 1979.

1980

By this time Sargeson was suffering from diabetes and congestive heart failure and he had a mild stroke shortly before his 77th birthday. The onset of senile dementia and cancer of the prostate in 1981 added to his physical and mental deterioration.

1981–82

Sargeson was admitted to the geriatric ward of North Shore Hospital in December 1981 and died there on 1 March 1982.

1982

Frank Sargeson Trust was formed to preserve the house as a literary museum and establish and maintain a literary fellowship. To fund this work, planning consent was sought and obtained to subdivide the original site into a front and back lot. A timber framed and fibrolite panel fence was built.

1983

Sargeson’s last book, Conversation in a Train, a collection of his critical writings, was published. 

The Frank Sargeson Trust was incorporated under the Charitable Trusts Act 1957 on 7 October 1983.

Mid-1980s

Previous planning consent lapsed and a new notified application for subdivision became required; consent was granted with conditions. Two new townhouses were built on the newly created rear lot.

A brick, two-storeyed property on Princes Street in central Auckland – a derelict but historic stables at the top of Albert Park – was renovated by Fletcher Construction with the support and fund-raising of George Fraser, Sir James Fletcher and Auckland City Council. The top floor became the Sargeson Centre, a residence for writers, and the ground floor an art gallery. 

1987

An annual literary fellowship was set up by the Sargeson Trust. The first holders of the Sargeson Fellowship, in 1987, were Janet Frame and Kevin Ireland. The Sargeson Centre was opened by Dame Cath Tizard, then mayor of Auckland, and Frame moved in for the term of her fellowship.

1990

Frank Sargeson’s ashes were scattered under a loquat tree in the garden at Esmonde Road in June 1990, as recalled in a poem by Kevin Ireland:

Ash Tuesday

For Christine Cole Catley, Elizabeth Caffin, Michael King, Graeme Lay, Gordon McLauchlan, Dennis McEldowney and the remains of Frank Sargeson, Tuesday, June 26, 1990.

Old friends always
take each other lightly,
so when we held your body

in a paper bag
no bigger than a bull’s
scrotum and took turns

at jigging you out 
under a loquat tree,
our only fear was that

the wind might blow you
completely away
before we could get you back

to your old roots,
of course we laughed 
at this – and thought

that here we were, 
casting you like seed
upon the ground.

1997

Frank Sargeson Trust finds it increasingly difficult to maintain the fellowship and in 1997 the national law firm Buddle Findlay added its support to the fellowship which became the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship.

2001–02

Widening of Esmonde Road was proposed and, after considerable discussion with the Frank Sargeson Trust, including a submission to council, the amount of land taken from the front boundary was reduced from 5 metres to 1.2 metres (the Sargeson Swerve), in view of the high cultural significance of the house.

2007

Friends of Sargeson House established August 2007 and launched March 2008. For the period they ran, the friends supported the work of the Frank Sargeson Trust and promoted the house as a national literary museum.

2007

A conservation plan for the Frank Sargeson House was commissioned from Salmond Reed Architects.

2014

The law firm Grimshaw& Co took over support for the fellowship which became known as the Grimshaw Sargeson Fellowship.

Select bibliography

From the mid-1930s, Frank Sargeson began publishing short stories, extracts and other writings in periodicals including Tomorrow, the Auckland Star, the New Zealand Listener and Landfall. His first book appeared in 1936.  

Conversation with My Uncle and Other Sketches. Auckland: Unicorn Press, 1936.

A Man and His Wife. Christchurch: Caxton Press, 1940. Stories. Cheap edition, 1941.

When the Wind Blows. Christchurch: Caxton Press, 1945. A short novel, the first section of I Saw in My Dream.

That Summer and Other Stories. London: John Lehmann, 1946. Stories. French translation, Cet été-là, Paris: Editions du Bateau-Ivre, 1946. 

I Saw in My Dream. London: John Lehmann, 1949. A novel.

‘I For One …’ Christchurch: Caxton Press, dated 1954 but published 1956. A short novel.

Wrestling with the Angel: Two Plays. A Time for Sowing and The Cradle and the Egg. Christchurch: Caxton Press, dated 1964 but published 1965.

Collected Stories 1935-1963, introduction by Bill Pearson. New Zealand edition, Auckland: Blackwood & Janet Paul, 1964. Reprinted 1966: Longman Paul, 1969. Reprinted with additional stories as The Stories of Frank Sargeson, 1973. Reprinted 1974, 1975, 1978, 1980. London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1975. Auckland: Penguin Books, 1982. Reprinted with additional stories as Frank Sargeson’s Stories, introduction by Janet Wilson. Auckland: Cape Catley, 2010.

Memoirs of a Peon. London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1965. A novel. Second edition. Auckland: Heinemann Educational Books, 1974.

The Hangover. London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1967. A novel.

Joy of the Worm. London: MacGibbon & Kee. 1969. A novel.

Man of England Now with ‘I for One…’ and A Game of Hide and Seek. Three novellas. London: Martin Brian and O’Keeffe, 1972. New Zealand edition, Christchurch: Caxton Press, 1972.

Once is Enough. A Memoir. London: Martin Brian and O’Keeffe, 1973. New Zealand edition, Wellington: A.H. and A.W. Reed, 1973.

Damals im Sommer. Collected stories: German translation. Munich: BiedersteinVerlag, 1968.

A Pair of Socks. Selected stories: Bulgarian translation. The Library for Workers, Sofia: ‘Profizdat’, 1970.

More Than Enough. A Memoir. London: Martin Brian and O’Keeffe, 1975. New Zealand edition, Wellington: A.H. and A.W. Reed, 1975.

Sunset Village. London: Martin Brian and O’Keeffe, 1976. New Zealand edition, Wellington: A.H. and A.W. Reed, 1976. A short novel.

Never Enough! London: Martin Brian and O’Keeffe, 1977. New Zealand edition, Wellington: A.H. and A.W. Reed, 1977. A memoir.

Tandem (with Edith Campion – ‘The Chain’), ‘En Route’. Wellington: A.H. and A.W. Reed, 1979.

Sargeson. One-volume publication of Once is Enough, More Than Enough and Never Enough! Auckland: Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, 1981.

Conversation in a Train and Other Critical Writing (ed. Kevin Cunningham). Auckland: Auckland University Press/Oxford University Press, 1983.

Edited by Frank Sargeson

Speaking for Ourselves. Christchurch: Caxton Press, and Melbourne: Reed and Harris, 1945. Collection of stories by Australian and New Zealand writers.

Performed plays by Frank Sargeson

A Time for Sowing. Three-act play, Auckland Art Gallery, May 1961, produced by Christopher Cathcart.

The Cradle and the Egg. Three-act comedy, Auckland Art Gallery, June 1962, produced by Christopher Cathcart.

Books about Frank Sargeson

Michael King, Frank Sargeson: A Life. Auckland: Viking, 1995.

Graeme Lay and Stephen Stratford (eds), An Affair of the Heart, A Celebration of Frank Sargeson’s Centenary. Auckland: Cape Catley, 2003.

Sarah Shieff (ed.)., Speaking Frankly: The Frank Sargeson Memorial Lectures 2003 – 2010. Auckland: Cape Catley, 2011.

Sarah Shieff (ed.), Letters of Frank Sargeson. Auckland: Vintage, 2012.

Books

The following books are available from the trust. Please contact franksargesontrust@gmail.com to purchase.

Frank Sargeson’s Stories Introduction by Janet Wilson $30.00 
A new edition of short stories from the father of modern New Zealand writing and the man who introduced the speech of ordinary New Zealanders to our literature and took it to the international stage. Includes some early works which have not previously appeared in book form.                                        

Letters of Frank Sargeson edited by Sarah Shieff $40.00
Besides his short stories, Sargeson wrote memoirs, novels, and plays. He encouraged at least three generations of younger writers and was also a prolific letter writer. This selection of 500 of the most fascinating ranges over half a century, from 1927 to 1981. Frank loved gossip, could be bitchy and peevish, but also kind, affectionate, funny, ribald, astute.                                

Speaking Frankly edited by Sarah Shieff $20.00
The Sargeson memorial lectures from Christine Cole Catley, Michael King, Kevin Ireland, Graeme Lay, Elizabeth Aitken Rose, Owen Marshall, Lawrence Jones and Peter Wells. Topics range from his generosity, the influences on his writing, the place of literary house museums and the value of reading to our lives. Commemorating him, the Buddle Findlay Sargeson Fellowship for writers is awarded annually.

An Affair of the Heart edited by Graeme Lay / Stephen Stratford $30.00
This anthology marks the centenary of Frank Sargeson’s birth. The collection is a showcase for many of NZ’s finest writers along with a selection of Sargeson’s writing at its brilliant best.          

Conversation in a Train and other critical writing Frank Sargeson, edited by Kevin Cunningham $20.00
Sargeson’s appraisals of individual writers and more general issues of literary form and content and the social milieu from which they arose, particularly societies which grew on the nineteenth-century European colonial frontiers and the writers they produced.

Golden Weather: North Shore Writers Past and Present edited by Graeme Lay & Jack Ross  $30.00  
This collection celebrates the Shore’s writers. Includes James K. Baxter, Allen Curnow, Maurice Duggan, A.R.D. Fairburn, Janet Frame, Maurice Gee, Sam Hunt, Robin Hyde, Kevin Ireland, Michael King, Bruce Mason, R.A.K. Mason, Frank Sargeson, Keith Sinclair, C.K. Stead, and Hone Tuwhare.

Fairburn and Friends edited by Dinah Holman & Christine Cole Catley. $30.00
A.R.D. Fairburn, probably more than any other New Zealander, bridged literature, politics, commerce, medicine and art history. Incisive memoirs from people in these fields.

Bloody Marvellous: George Haydn 1919–2005 edited by Dinah Holman & Christine Cole Catley  $20.00
A friend of Sargeson who designed and built Frank’s bach in 1948, George Haydn lived life with gusto. Sent to New Zealand from Hungary in 1939 to escape Hitler, this book tells how, through the power of his personality and character, he attracted such a large and devoted following of family, friends and colleagues.      

Further information

For further information about Frank Sargeson and his work, see:

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