Correspondence, 1929-1988

Component identifier:

Series 1

Content Summary:

This series comprises correspondence of Tennant and her husband, L.C. Rodd. Many files contain both business and private correspondence, including outgoing business letters of Tennant and Rodd. Much of the business correspondence was produced or received by Tennant during her period as Macmillan Ltd's Australian Literary Adviser in the 1960s, including many reports on submitted manuscripts and letters to writers. Literary drafts (mainly excerpts), notes, press cuttings, correspondence between Rodd and Tennant, and letters from Tennant's publishers, literary colleagues Kay Brown and Elizabeth Harrower, long-term friend and Maitland City Librarian, Mavis Cribb, appear throughout the series. Generally names of other correspondents are highlighted in the file descriptions only where there is more than one letter.

Australian literary figures amongst the correspondents include Nancy Cato, Clem Christesen, Robert Darby, Beatrice Davis, Geoffrey Dutton, Miles Franklin, Mary Gilmore, Dorothy Green, Max Harris, Tom Inglis Moore, Elizabeth Jolley, Nancy Keesing, David Martin, Stephen Murray-Smith, Nettie Palmer, Nancy Phelan, Hal Porter, Colin Roderick, Peter Scriven, Thomas Shapcott, Douglas Stewart, Judah Waten, Patrick White and Patricia Wrightson. Other correspondents represented in the collection by significant amounts of papers include the Reverend Alfred Clint, Doris Chadwick, Jack Ross, and Tennant's children, Bim (John) and Benison Rodd. Correspondence is also to be found in other series, particularly in Series 3.

Immediate source of acquisition:

The papers of Kylie Tennant were received by the Library in a number of instalments between 1973 and 2007: in 1973 Tennant donated papers relating to her biography of Evatt; in 1976 a large instalment was purchased from Tennant (originally MS 4734); in 1988 an instalment was purchased from Tennant's daughter, Benison Rodd, and her literary executor, Mavis Cribb, via her agents, Curtis Browne (originally MS 7574); and between 1988 and 2007 several small instalments were donated by Benison Rodd (including Acc05/188 (originally MS 7574, file 81a), Acc06/32 and Acc07/72).

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