Speak You So Gently

Lives Among the Australian Aborigines

by Kylie Tennant

Victor Gollancz, 1959 (First Edition), 224 pages, Hardcover with protected dust jacket

Very Good Condition in protected dust jacket, sellotape stains on inside front and back covers

'"It is a custom among the Eskimos", the book opens, "for a man to lend his wife to a friend who is going on a long sled journey.  The friend has no wife of his own and needs someone to see to his furs, carry the spare gun, and push the sled".  Following this principle, Kylie Tennant was lent by her husband to the Reverend Alfred Clint, not to care for his physical well-being but to write articles and letters about his work among the Australian Aborigines, and so help to make it better known among the people who might be able to help with money or services or influence in government quarters.  Alf Clint was a very unparsonical man who had been appointed by the Australian Board of Missions as Director of Native Co-Operatives.  The idea of the co-operatives was to help the aborigines and the Torres Straits Islanders to become self-reliant, and to try to rescue them from the state of poverty, disease and under-nourishment in which they lived.'