There are two times in a man's life when he should not speculate: when he can't afford it and when he can.

Author, playwright, biographer and historian                          

Selected Works:

Bibliography:

Novels:

Tiburon - 1935. Sydney: Endeavour Press - first published in serial form in The Bulletin
Foveaux - 1939. London: Gollancz; 1946. Sydney: Sirius
The Battlers - 1941. London: Gollancz; New York: Macmillan; 1945. Sydney: Sirius
Time Enough Later - c.1942. New York: Macmillan; 1945. London: Macmillan. A humorous coming of age story about a young woman and her relationship with an artistic older man.
Ride on Stranger - 1943. New York: Macmillan; London: Gollancz; Sydney: Angus & Robertson
Lost Haven - 1946. NY: Macmillan; Melbourne: Macmillan; London: Macmillan
The Joyful Condemned - 1953. London: Macmillan; New York: St Martin's Press
The Honey Flow - 1956. London: Macmillan; New York: St Martin's Press
Tell Morning This - 1967. Sydney: Angus & Robertson - complete version of The Joyful Condemned
The Man on the Headland - 1971. Sydney: Angus & Robertson
Tantavallon - 1983. Melbourne: Macmillan ISBN 0-947072-02-0
[edit]Short stories
Ma Jones and Little White Cannibals - 1967. London

For children:

Long John Silver - 1954. Sydney: Associated General Publications - adapted from the screenplay by Martin Rackin
All the Proud Tribesmen - 1959. London: Macmillan; New York: St Martin's Press; 1960. Melbourne: Macmillan - illustrated by Clem Seale. Children's Book Award - 1960
Come and See: social studies for Third Grade - 1960. Melbourne: Macmillan
We Find the Way: social studies for Fourth Grade - 1960. Melbourne: Macmillan
Trail Blazers of the Air - 1965. Melbourne: Macmillan; New York: St Martin's Press - illustrated by Roderick Shaw

Plays:

Modern Plays for Schools 3 - John o' the Forest, Lady Dorothy and the Pirates, The Willow Pattern Plate, The Laughing Girl, Christmas at the Old Shamrock Hotel - 1950. London: Macmillan; New York: St Martin's Press
Tether a Dragon - 1952. Sydney: Associated General Publications - Commonwealth Jubilee Stage Play Prize
Modern Plays for Schools 15 - The Bells of the City, The Magic Fat Baby, The Prince Who Met a Dragon, The Ghost Tiger, Hamaguchi Goh Ei - 1955. London: Macmillan; New York: St Martin's Press
The Bushrangers' Christmas Eve and other plays - The Tribe of the Honey Tree, The Ladies of the Guard, A Nativity Play, The Play of the Younger Son, The Emperor and the Nightingale - 1959. London: Macmillan; New York:St Martin's Press

Biography and History:

Australia: Her Story - 1953. London: Macmillan; New York: St Martin's Press
Speak You So Gently: lives among the Australian Aborigines - 1959. London: Gollancz
Evatt: politics and justice - 1970. Sydney: Angus & Robertson
The Missing Heir - 1986. Melbourne: Macmillan - her autobiography

Criticism:

The Development of the Australian Novel - 1958. Canberra: CLF
- with L.C. Rodd The Australian Essay - 1968. Melbourne: Cheshire.                          

Husband L. C. Rodd -Lewis Charles Rodd, two children, daughter, Benison, in 1946 and a son, John Laurence, in 1951.                          

Awards:

S. H. Prior Memorial Prize awarded by The Bulletin magazine, for Tiburon - 1935

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" - 1940

Australian Literature Society Gold Medal for The Battlers -1942

Children’s Book Council Book Award for All the Proud Tribesmen - 1960

1980: Officer of the Order of Australia for services to literature - 1980.                          

Was publicity officer for the Australian Broadcasting Commission - ABC television.  

Worked as a journalist, union organiser, reviewer for The Sydney Morning Herald, a publisher's literary adviser and editor, and a Commonwealth Literary Fund lecturer. 
Her work was known for its well-researched, realistic, yet positive portrayals of the lives of the underprivileged in Australia. 

In a video interview filmed in 1986, three years before her death for the Australia Council’s Archival Film Series, Tennant told how she lived as the people she wrote about, travelling as an unemployed itinerant worker during the Depression years, living in Aboriginal communities and spending a short time in prison for research.