As New Zealand short fiction’s chief architect of cultural decolonisation, Frank Sargeson established a tradition of his own. The collections Conversation with My Uncle and Other Sketches (1936), A Man and His Wife (1940), and That Summer and Other Stories (1946) elevated him to iconic status within Auckland’s literary circles. In celebration of his fiftieth birthday the literary journal Landfall published a letter of appreciation endorsed by sixteen fellow writers, some of whom would later be termed the “sons of Sargeson”. The “school” included G. R. Gilbert, A. P. Gaskell, O. E. Middleton, John Reece Cole, David Ballantyne and Maurice Duggan, a generation of writers whose prose operated within, and in some cases extended, Sargeson’s influential textual paradigm. The powerful impact of his short fiction was largely attributable to his centralisation of the “sargesonian” vernacular,...

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Citation: Gwynne, Joel. "Frank Sargeson". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 01 October 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3936, accessed 10 June 2026.]