Foveaux

by Kylie Tennant

Foveaux was Kyle Tennant's second novel and was drawn from her experiences living in the then disease-ridden slums of Redfern and Surry Hills in the late 1930s. It is a substantial novel of Sydney recounting the inner city around William Street in the first decades of the twentieth century.

Genres: Australia, Fiction

425 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1939

About the author

Kylie Tennant was born in Manly, NSW, in 1912. In 1932, she married Lewis Charles Rodd. Her first novel, Tiburon, won the S. H. Prior Memorial Prize in 1935. and further novels saw her develop her social-realist style. However, her work is much more complex than suggested by the term social realism, although she conducted first-hand research to give her novels authenticity, once even spending a week in gaol. Her best known novel is The Battlers (1941) which won the S.H. Prior Memorial Prize in 1940 and the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal in 1941. Other of her works embrace travel, biography, work for children and dramatic works. In 1980 Kylie Tennant was made AO. She died in 1988.
Awards

1935: S. H. Prior Memorial Prize awarded by The Bulletin magazine, for Tiburon[5]
1940: S. H. Prior Memorial Prize (run by the Bulletin), for The Battlers, shared with Eve Langley, The Pea-Pickers, and Malcolm Henry Ellis's "John Murtagh Macrossan lectures".
1942: Australian Literature Society Gold Medal for The Battlers
1960: Children’s Book Council Book Award for All the Proud Tribesmen
1980: Officer of the Order of Australia for services to literature[6]

Reviews

[Jennifer (JC-S) · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘The change in Foveaux, that momentous slow change that was to creep over it, had just begun in 1912.’

This novel, first published in 1939, was Kylie Tennant’s second novel. It is a novel about life in the slums of inner Sydney, a novel that Kylie Tennant researched by living and working in the area. The pages are peopled with many different but memorable characters, whose lives emerge as the book progresses. The squalor in which many of the characters live is a combination of ignorance, unemployment, financial insecurity, alcoholism and sickness. Slum landlords and political opportunism make difficult lives even harder. And yet, despite the evictions, the grinding poverty and the crime, the lives and loves of a number of the characters demonstrate incredible spirit and adaptability.

Foveaux itself – from the rarefied air breathed in Upper Foveaux, through the rows of terraces in Middle Foveaux , right to the depths of the Foot of Foveaux - is the main character in this novel. Honest John Hutchison, the master of local government wheeling and dealing, Bob Noblett, the alcoholic barrowman and Bill Bross the slum landlord are the colourful central characters who tie much of the story together.

I enjoyed this novel for its depiction of early 20th century inner city Sydney life, for its descriptions of how life was for many people during this period.

‘Perhaps the last time that Foveaux came out in all of its old glory was the day of the Eight Hour Day Procession.’

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

[Marius Venz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A masterful book and a strong social comment. The characters are people in a working class suburb that is squalid, unhealthy and dingy - but these people have a sense of belonging, they are content with their lot, the suburb possesses them. These characters are masterfully portrayed; if I have a regret about the book, it's that many of them really deserved a whole book just to themselves. Some individuals exploit the working class for their own ends - a convincing but corrupt politician, a greedy slumlord; some idealists try to bring about change, the few who rise above it all don't have a working-class background, they are from an impoverished middle-class family. Alcohol and the hotels help keep many people poor, the trade unions try to stand up for the people, but also promote that sense of solidarity that will keep the people where they are. This read gave me a lot to think about.

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly wonderful book by a truly talented writer. A huge cast of characters and yet each one distinct and memorable. Of course the main character is the fictional Sydney suburb of Foveaux itself. Will definitely be reading more of Tennant’s work.

[Heather T · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sweet micro-stories about a range of characters in the Sydney suburb of Foveaux, now just a street in Surry Hills, in 1912, and the randomness and contingencies affecting how people's lives turn out. An inferior version of Ruth Park's Harp in the South.