A National Library
Gallery Exhibition Supported by Rhodes House, Oxford
1936
Dan Davin | 1913 - 1990
Born in Invercargill, Dan Davin showed his gift for words at an early age. Brought up among the oral tradition of his Irish parents, he taught himself to read at the age of four. At Otago University he obtained a first class honours degree and a reputation for ‘running with the fast set’ that may have cost him the Rhodes scholarship the first time he applied. He applied again in 1935 and was successful. In 1939 Davin married Winnie Gonley in Oxford. They had met at Otago University where she had encouraged Davin’s raw writing talent and introduced him to modern European writers. When war broke out Davin joined the British Army but then transferred to the 2nd NZEF at his own request. He served in Greece and Crete as an intelligence officer with General Freyberg before being wounded and evacuated to Egypt. After the Second World War he was recruited into Oxford University Press by former Rhodes scholar, Kenneth Sisam. For the next 33 years Davin presided over the Press and earned an international reputation as an academic publisher. As an author he made a major contribution to New Zealand literature with many novels, short stories, essays, and a history of the Crete campaign for the Official War History. In his retirement he often visited Kenneth Sisam in the Scilly Isles and spent his days writing and fishing. In a letter to Frank Sargeson he wrote of the place, ‘One is almost home again’. Dan Davin was awarded an honorary doctorate by Otago University in 1984.
The Gorse Blooms Pale contains 26 short stories, arranged in a chronological sequence running from nostalgic early school days in New Zealand (‘The Apostate’ and ‘Milk Round’) through to the horrors of war (‘Under the Bridge’ and ‘Mortal’). For Dan Davin, the expatriate New Zealand writer, it was a good year. The collection was published in November 1947 in an edition of 3,000, and almost half were sold by the end of the year. Dan Davin, The Gorse Blooms Pale. London: Nicholson & Watson, 1947. Brasch PR 9640 D35 G7.In 1953, after completing his book on Crete, and despite a heavy schedule at the Press, Davin pushed forward with his novel about New Zealanders in London. He called it The Sullen Bell, taken from Shakespeare’s 71st sonnet – ‘No longer mourn for me when I am dead’ – a particular favourite of his. This is the first edition. Dan Davin, The Sullen Bell. London: Michael Joseph, 1956. Brasch PR 9640 D35 S8.Davin’s No Remittance is written in the first person as if by Richard Kane, a 70 year-old Englishman, looking back on a life of misadventure and mistakes, and which has brought him to a rundown farm in New Zealand. In order to capture both time and place, Davin plundered libraries, old newspapers, old colonial histories, stock agents’ catalogues, and relied heavily on information from friends in New Zealand. In 1966, Davin said of it: ‘The only book of mine I regard as a technical success is No Remittance. But, of course, it’s not a book in [which] I am myself committed, and as a young man at that…’. Dan Davin, No Remittance. London: Michael Joesph, 1959. Brasch PR 9640 D35 N6.Davin’s recruitment to the Clarendon Press, like John Mulgan’s before him, had been aided by the influence of Kenneth Sisam, a New Zealand Rhodes scholar of 1910 who became an English Language specialist, and by 1942 had succeeded to the position of Secretary of the Delegates. Davin’s first publication with Oxford University Press was An Introduction to English Literature, which appeared in 1947 over the joint names of John Mulgan and D.M. Davin. This is a reprint of the second edition. John Mulgan and D. M. Davin, An Introduction to English Literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952 (reprint). Cen. PR 85 MY35 1950.
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Special Collections |
1st Floor, Central Library, University of Otago |
20 September - 10 December 2004 |