Frank Sargeson

Frank Sargeson (23 March 1903 – 1 March 1982) was the pen name of Norris Frank Davey. He is considered one of New Zealand's foremost short story writers. Like Katherine Mansfield, Sargeson helped to put New Zealand literature on the world map.

Sargeson has been credited with introducing New Zealand English into short stories. His technique was to write the story without mentioning the setting. He also used a semi-articulate style, meaning that the story was written from a naive point of view. Events are simply told but are not explained.

Sargeson was born in Hamilton on 23 March 1903.

Although Sargeson became known for his literary depiction of the laconic and unsophisticated New Zealand male, his upbringing had in fact been comfortable albeit puritanical. Upon completing his training as a solicitor, he spent two years in the United Kingdom. Sometime in the 1930s, he began living year-round in his parents' holiday cottage at 14A Esmonde Road in Takapuna, a northern suburb of Auckland. He eventually inherited the property which became for several decades an important gathering place for Auckland's bohemia and literati.

The original bach 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.”

Michael King, who wrote Sargeson’s entry in the Dictionary of New Zealand biography, as well as a major biography of Sargeson says that “even Don Doran, who disparaged bourgeois standards and conventions, declined to spend a night there when he visited Frank from Wellington soon after his protégé had moved in; he told his daughter the conditions were ‘too rough’. Whilst the original bach must have been pretty basic, the jewel of the property was the vegetable garden.

The vegetable garden, which is no longer there, was an important part of the property to Sargeson. Michael King, again, on the importance of growing vegetables to Frank: The success of that first season of fruit and vegetable production, and the excitement and profound satisfaction it bought, had an enduring effect. “[It] ensured that for more than thirty years I would grow on a scale sufficient to provide for myself, with often besides a good deal to sell or give away.”

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