Kylie Tennant

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Commemorative plaque for Kylie Tennant on the Sydney Writers Walk

Kathleen "Kylie" Tennant AO (born March 12, 1912 in Manly , New South Wales , † February 28, 1988 in Sydney ) was an Australian author .

biography

Career

Kylie Tennant attended Brighton College, a private girls' school in Sydney . She excelled in English and appeared in school plays. From 1931 she studied at the University of Sydney , but left it after a year without a degree because she could not finance her studies. At this time she wrote her first short stories and went on long hiking tours through Australia for research purposes. She witnessed the hard life of farm workers and the consequences of the global economic crisis for the people. She processed these experiences in her first book Tiburon , published in 1935 . The novel was awarded the SH Prior Memorial Prize that same year . She also received this award for The Battlers from 1941 and the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal . In 1939 Kylie Tennant contributed alongside other authors such as Dymphna Cusack , Eleanor Dark , Marjorie Barnard and Flora Eldershaw to the anti-fascist publication Writers in Defense of Freedom , which, however, was never printed because of the outbreak of World War II .

Kylie Tennant's investigative methods were unusual: she moved to a boarding house in the slums of Redfern for some time , lived on the streets of New South Wales among the unemployed and in an Aboriginal community, and volunteered for a week in prison. She wrote newspaper articles about her experiences and used them as a source for her books, all of which had a social message but were humorous. In her narratives, the line between reality and fiction was not always clear, which led to an edition of Ride on Stranger being withdrawn in 1943 after Tennant was sued by someone who believed himself portrayed in this book.

In 1935 Kylie Tennant was briefly a member of the Communist Party of Australia , but resigned after disputes because she believed the party had lost touch with the working class. In later years she stated that she probably joined the party in protest against her father: "If my father condemned communism, it had to be right for me." She and her husband turned to Christian socialism . In 1952, a member of the Australian Parliament complained that a third of the beneficiaries of the Commonwealth Literary Fund were communists, including Kylie Tennant. She then returned (“in a flamboyant gesture”) her grant and asked the MPs to repeat this charge outside of Parliament so that they could sue him. “Anyone taking the trouble to glance through my books would realize that not only am I no Communist but that I am extremely unpopular with them.” (“Anyone who takes the trouble to leaf through my books would recognize that I not only am not a communist, but that I criticize them [the communists] strongly. ")

Kylie's Hut in Crowdy Bay National Park, destroyed by bushfires in 2019

During the Second World War, the Rodds lived in Laurieton , where Roddy worked as a school principal. A farmer, Ernie Metcalfe, built a small wooden hut for Kylie Tennant so that she could work there undisturbed. She later immortalized Metcalfe and the area around Crowdy Bay in her book, The Man on the Headland . In 1976 Tennant donated the hut and property to the Crowdy Bay National Park . In November 2019, the hut was destroyed by the devastating bush fires .

The Honey Flow (1956) was Tennant's eighth novel and, for the time being, the last for nearly three decades. The Rodd family was under increasing financial pressure, which is why they took over activities at Macmillan Publishing and the Sydney Morning Herald . She has also written non-fiction - including a biography of Australian politician Herbert Vere Evatt -, books and plays for children. In 1960 she won the Children's Book Council of Australia Award for All the Proud Tribesmen . In the same year she was appointed advisory editor of the literary magazine Overland , and the following year she was appointed to the advisory board of the Commonwealth Literary Fund .

In 1980 Kylie Tennant became Officer of the Order of Australia and received an honorary doctorate from Monash University in 1987 . In 1986 she published her autobiography The Missing Heir . When she got cancer, the Sydney Morning Herald published her article Letter to a friend , in which she advocated the right to a self-determined death . She died on February 28, 1988 at the age of 75. Her remains were cremated and buried on the grounds of her farm, Cliff View Orchard, in the Blue Mountains .

Through TV adaptations of her novels Ride on Stranger (1979) and The Battlers (1993), Kylie Tennant became known to a wider audience again.

Family background

Kylie Tennant was the child of Kathleen Alice, née Tolhurst, and Thomas Walter Tennant, an office worker and later managing director at Lysaghts . She was baptized Presbyterian , but grew up under the influence of Christian Science on her maternal family . Her childhood was marked by constant arguments between the parents, who separated several times, as well as by their conflicting relationship with the father, whom she usually called "the parent".

At the university Tennant met fellow student Lewis Charles Rodd, known as Roddy . On one of her hiking tours, which went over 450 kilometers, she visited her former fellow student who had got a job as a teacher in Coonabarabran . Tennant and Rodd married in 1932, a few days after they met; they had a daughter (* 1946), Benison, and a son (* 1951), John Lawrence, called Bim . In the early years of their marriage there were often political conflicts between the spouses, who were very different in their personalities, but they shared the same interests as literature and social policy. Rodd typed and corrected his wife's handwritten manuscripts , while at the same time he was her strongest critic. In an interview she later said: "We formed a working and a writing team."

In 1961, after several years of severe depression, Lewis Rodd threw himself in front of a train. He survived but lost an arm and a foot. In 1971, son Bim was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was a drug addict . After her husband suffered another breakdown in 1975, Kylie Tennant and her family moved to the Blackheath farm in the Blue Mountains in the hope that nature would stabilize the husband and son. In 1978, Bim was admitted to hospital after he was beaten and found unconscious, apparently as a result of a contentious drug deal; he died on March 6th. Lewis Rodd was cared for at home by Kylie and Benison Tennant and died the following year of cancer . The book Tantavallon (1983) was Tennant's literary farewell to Roddy and Bim. The novel was based on her knowledge of depression and drugs. In doing so, she turned her personal tragedy into a comedy. In an interview she said, “Humor is defense. Simple people use it when they are in a desperate situation: They laugh. "

Works (selection)

  • Tiburon . Endeavor Press, Sydney 1935 (English).
  • Foveaux . Gollancz, London 1939 (English).
  • The Battlers . Gollancz, London 1941 (English). - in German: Fahrendes Volk . Gutenberg Book Guild, Zurich 1957.
  • Time Enough Later . Macmillan, New York 1942 (English).
  • Ride on Stranger . Macmillan, New York 1943 (English). - in German: Keep moving stranger . Gutenberg Book Guild, Zurich 1944.
  • Lost Haven . Macmillan, New York 1946 (English).
  • The Joyful Condemned . Macmillan, London 1953 (English).
  • The Honey Flow . Macmillan, London 1956 (English).
  • The volcanic island . Klopp, Berlin 1963.
  • Tell Morning This . Angus & Robertson, Sydney 1967 (English).
  • Evatt: politics and justice . Sydney & London 1970, ISBN 0-207-12051-X .
  • The Man on the Headland . Angus & Robertson, Sydney 1971 (English).
  • Tantavallon . Macmillan, Melbourne 1983, ISBN 0-947072-02-0 (English).

literature

  • Jane Grant: Kylie Tennant - A Life . National Library of Australia, Canberra 2006, ISBN 978-0-642-27617-9 .

Web links

Commons : Kylie Tennant  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kylie Tennant. In: austlit.edu.au. Retrieved February 22, 2020 (English).
  2. ↑ a b Jane Grant: Kylie Tennant. P. 11. ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Jane Grant: Biography - Kathleen (Kylie) Tennant. In: Australian Dictionary of Biography. March 12, 1912, accessed February 22, 2020 .
  4. ↑ The Age : "Literature Prize", November 19, 1943, p. 2. (English)
  5. ^ Writers in Defense of Freedom. In: bi.hcpdts.com. Retrieved February 22, 2020 (English).
  6. ^ Curator's notes Kylie Tennant (1986). In: aso.gov.au. Retrieved February 22, 2020 (English).
  7. ^ A b Adrienne Parr: Kylie Tennant. In: aso.gov.au. Retrieved February 22, 2020 (English).
  8. ↑ Kylie's hat walk-in campground. In: nationalparks.nsw.gov.au. Retrieved February 22, 2020 (English).
  9. ↑ Laura Telford: A tragedy: Kylie's Hut, precious coastal habitat destroyed. In: nambuccaguardian.com.au. November 21, 2019, accessed on February 22, 2020 .
  10. ↑ Joyce Thompson: Obituary - Kathleen (Kylie) Tennant. In: oa.anu.edu.au. February 23, 2020, accessed on February 22, 2020 .
  11. ^ Curator's notes Ride On Stranger (1979) on ASO. In: aso.gov.au. Retrieved February 22, 2020 (English).
  12. ↑ The Battlers (1993). In: screenaustralia.gov.au. April 13, 2000, accessed February 22, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Tennant, Kylie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tennant, Katherine (real name); Rodd, Kylie Tennant (married name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Australian author
DATE OF BIRTH March 12, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Manly
DATE OF DEATH February 28, 1988
Place of death Sydney