
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. |