Henry Lawson

Henry Lawson
Portrait by Sir Lionel Lindsay

etching; plate mark 24.1 x 17.1 cm.
PIC S9008
National Library of Australia
THE NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA'S
FEDERATION GATEWAY


LAWSON, HENRY (1867-1922)

Henry Lawson is perhaps, alongside Banjo Paterson, Australia's best known poet and storyteller. Born on 17 June 1867 near Grenfell, New South Wales, of struggling gold field parents and afflicted for most of his life with deafness - and later alcoholism - he epitomised the radical, nationalist and white-settler bush literary tradition of the 1890s.

His first poem, A song of the Republic, is an appeal for a new Australian social order and appeared in the Sydney Bulletin of October 1887. Prose and other poetic pieces also appeared in the same magazine (and many other journals and newspapers) until his death. These were collected into books which were, and continue to be, very popular - particularly While the Billy Boils (1896) and Joe Wilson and his Mates(1901).

The republican Lawson of the Federation era became an enthusiastic supporter of Australia's connection with the British Empire during and after World War 1. His radicalism is defined in Manning Clark's Henry Lawson: the Man and the Legend; Colin Roderick in Henry Lawson: a life sees a more conservative man, while Humphrey McQueen in A New Britannia sees elements of racism and fascism in Lawson's ideology.

Lawson died on 2 September 1922 at Abbotsford, N.S.W. The Prime Minister, W.M. Hughes, decreed him a State funeral, and after an impressive ceremony at St. Andrew's Cathedral he was buried at Waverley cemetery.

Books of interest

Clark, Manning. (1995). Henry Lawson the man and the legend. Melbourne.

Roderick, Colin. (1991). Henry Lawson: a life. Sydney: Angus and Robertson.

Wright, Judith. (1967). Henry Lawson. Great Australians series. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

Cronin, Leonard (ed) (1984). The complete works of Henry Lawson. Volume 1, A camp-fire yarn; v.2, A fantasy of man. Sydney: Lansdowne.

The National Library of Australia has pictures, music, drama, manuscripts and realia of Lawson and several hundred books by and about him. The Henry Lawson Memorial and Literary Society has been publishing The Lawsonian in Melbourne since 1960.

 

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