L. C. Rodd

L. C. (Lewis Charles) "Roddy" Rodd (1905–1979) was a schoolteacher, writer, activist, and the husband of novelist Kylie Tennant.

Early life and teaching career

Rodd was born on 12 March 1905 in Sydney and gained a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Sydney in 1931.^[1] Rodd was a practicing Anglican, and had considered entering the priesthood rather than pursuing education.^[2]

He met novelist Kylie Tennant at the University of Sydney and they married in 1932.^[3] During the 1930s and 1940s, Rodd worked at public schools in Coonabarabran, Canowindra, Dulwich Hill and Mullswellbrook as a teacher, and as headmaster in Laurieton and Hunters Hill.^[1] He was head of Woolwich Primary School around 1945.[citation needed]

In 1931, he was a founder of the Educational Workers' League, and an activist in the New South Wales Teachers' Federation.^[1][4] Rodd contributed regularly to the League's journal, the Education Worker from 1932-1936, arguing for changes to the curriculum.^[2] Around 1937, he published a pamphlet as part of a "Survey of Australia" series titled Australian Imperialism.^[5] He registered as a conscientious objector during World War II.^[1]

After the World War II, Rodd, Tennant and Tennant's father, formed a publishing company, Sirius Books, to re-publish Tennant's novels.^[2] It also published "cheap" Australian editions of other novels.^[1]

Retirement and later years

Rodd retired from teaching in November 1960, and experiencing depression, attempted suicide shortly after.^[1] He collaborated with Donald McLean co-editing a collection of Australian essays Venturing the Unknown Ways (1965) and with Tennant on the collection The Australian Essay (1968).^[6][7] In 1972 he wrote a biography of Father John Hope, long-serving rector of Christ Church St. Laurence in George Street, Sydney.^[8] He also co-wrote a book about the Church and its location, published the same year.^[9]

From 1965 to 1966, Rudd published a series of children's books based on the lives of prominent individuals, almost all authors: Henry Lawson, Louisa M. Alcott, Rudyard Kipling, Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, R.M. Ballantyne and Henry Parkes.^[10] He published an illustrated autobiography A Gentle Shipwreck in 1975.^[11]

Rodd died from cancer on 29 July 1979 in the Blue Mountains, aged 74.^[2][1] He was survived by Tennant, and their daughter Benison Rodd, a painter and artist.^[12] Their son, John Rodd, died in 1978.^[1]

Rodd's papers are held by the National Library of Australia.^[13]

Selected works

• John Hope of Christ Church: a Sydney Church era (biography) ISBN 0-85553-072-3
• A Gentle Shipwreck (autobiography) (Sydney, Thomas Nelson, 1975) (illustrated by Cedric Emanuel) ISBN 0-17-005040-8