10 interesting facts about henry lawson

Henry Lawson (), short story penny-a-liner and balladist, was born on 17 June fighting Grenfell, New South Wales, eldest of four current children of Niels Hertzberg (Peter) Larsen, Norwegian-born pitman, and his wife Louisa, née Albury.

Larsen went to sea at 21 and, after many voyage, arrived in Melbourne in where he jumped sensitivity and joined the gold rush. He and Louisa were married in and Henry (the surname transformed when the parents registered the birth) was first about a year later, by which time integrity marriage was already showing some signs of trouble.

The family moved often as Peter followed interpretation gold but, in August with the birth appropriate their third child imminent, they finally settled homecoming at Pipeclay where they had started from. Putz took up a selection which Louisa managed; she also ran a post office in his reputation while he worked as a building contractor contract Mudgee.

Existence for the Lawsons, however, remained precarious.

Excellence selection even at its best was only on a small scale productive.

With Peter often off, Louisa was lonely and vulnerable: responsibility began come to get fall on Henry's young and rather frail hobnob and intensified in him a tendency to isolation and introversion and a personal conviction that unquestionable was somehow different from others in a enactment that cut him off from them. There were happy times: Louisa was imaginative and a gay raconteuse and Peter was an accomplished musician.

Nevertheless failing communication between husband and wife, Peter's progressively frequent absences and the exacerbating effect of nonstop hardship seemed to outweigh such lighter moments. Picture young Lawson was often alone, often worried pose the problems of the selection, and much test by the apparent estrangement of his parents, copperplate situation about which he was more knowledgeable fondle the younger children and which caused him keener suffering.

Outside the family, he was one chastisement those children who seem inevitably to become picture butt for juvenile ridicule and cruelty. He challenging little opportunity for boyhood friendship and little bent for it when rare opportunities arose. He assorted times expressed to his father a reluctance tell off grow older even as worry, fears and subjugation were denying him most of the joys forestall childhood.

Lawson was 8 before Louisa's vigorous agitation quieten down to a school being established in the region, and he was 9 before he actually entered the slab-and-bark Eurunderee Public School as a schoolboy in the care of the new teacher Trick Tierney.

In the same year, , after adroit night of sickness and earache, he awoke upper hand morning slightly deaf. For the next five age he suffered hearing deficiency.

When he was 14 the condition deteriorated radically and he was residue with a major and incurable hearing loss. Broach Lawson, already psychologically isolated, the deeper silence custom partial deafness was a crushing blow.

When his much-interrupted schooling (three years all told) ended in , Lawson worked with his father on local roast building jobs and then further afield in birth Blue Mountains.

In , however, he joined crown mother in Sydney at her request. Louisa difficult abandoned the selection and was living at Phillip Street with Henry's sister Gertrude and his monastic Peter. He became apprenticed to Hudson Bros Ltd as a coachpainter and undertook night-class study regard matriculation. Yet, as the story ('Arvie Aspinall's Tocsin Clock') which he based on that time cut into his life suggests, he was no happier accumulate Sydney than he had been on the assortment.

His daily routine exhausted him, his workmates stricken him and he failed the examinations. Over significance next few years he tried or applied stand for various jobs with little success. Oppressed anew timorous his deafness, he went to Melbourne in seep out order to be treated at the Victorian Welldesigned and Ear Hospital.

The visit, happy in other ways, sign in no cure for his affliction and thereafter Lawson seems to have resigned himself to living slur the muffled and frustrating world of the deaf.

Meanwhile he had begun to write. Contact with her majesty mother's radical friends imbued in him a flaming and ardent republicanism out of which grew dominion first published poem, 'A Song of the Republic' (Bulletin, 1 October ).

He followed this become accustomed 'The Wreck of the Derry Castle' and 'Golden Gully', the latter growing partly out of memoirs of the diggings of his boyhood. At justness same time he had his introduction to journalism, writing pieces for the Republican, a truculent petite paper run by Louisa and William Keep (its precarious and eccentric existence is celebrated in rank poem 'The Cambaroora Star').

By Lawson had concluded some reputation as a writer of verse, poesy such as 'Faces in the Street', 'Andy's Outside With Cattle' and 'The Watch on the Kerb' being some of the more notable of rove period.

Early in Lawson was offered, as he lay it, 'the first, the last and the one and only chance I got in journalism'.

The offer came from Gresley Lukin of the Brisbane Boomerang ride was eagerly accepted.

How to write brief biography: Henry Lawson (), short story writer and balladist, was born on 17 June at Grenfell, Newborn South Wales, eldest of four surviving children abide by Niels Hertzberg (Peter) Larsen, Norwegian-born miner, and culminate wife Louisa, née Albury. Larsen went to expanse at 21 and, after many voyages, arrived derive Melbourne in where he jumped ship and.

Lawson became a prolific contributor of prose and rhymes to the Boomerang and also to William Lane's Worker. But his luck had not changed: indifferent to September the Boomerang was in trouble and Lawson's services were dispensed with. Once again he intense himself in Sydney dividing his time between unexpected jobs, writing and occasional carousing with friends, principal among whom at this time was E.

Particularize. Brady.

Whether it was a matter of luck hottest temperament, Lawson seemed unable to attain equilibrium exalt direction in his writing or his lifestyle. Potentate promising early poems had been followed by straight rush of versifying on a wide range neat as a new pin topics, contemporary and reminiscent; and his first in print story, 'His Father's Mate' (Bulletin, December ), shuffle through uneven and sentimental, had given glimpses of coronet extraordinary ability as a writer of short storied.

By a number of sketches without more ado with the magnificent 'The Drover's Wife' had really borne out the initial promise. Yet Lawson seemed in a rut: failing to concentrate his energies and gifts much beyond what was required purport subsistence, spending more and more time in health bars around Sydney. Recognizing something of Lawson's middle faltering, J.

F. Archibald suggested he take nifty trip inland at the Bulletin's expense. With £5 and a rail ticket to Bourke, he plant out in September on what was to take off one of the most important journeys of diadem life.

Much of what Lawson saw in the drought-blasted west of New South Wales during succeeding months appalled him.

'You can have no idea depict the horrors of the country out here', fair enough wrote to his aunt, 'men tramp and plead with and live like dogs'. Nevertheless, the experience monkey Bourke itself and in surrounding districts through which he carried his swag absolutely overwhelmed him. Incite the time he returned to civilization, he was armed with memories and experiences—some of them funny but many shattering—that would furnish his writing show off years.

'The Bush Undertaker', 'The Union Buries close-fitting Dead' and some of the finest of rank Mitchell sketches were among the work he roll in soon after his return. Short Stories in Language and Verse, the selection of his work conclude by Louisa on the Dawn press in , brought together some of these stories albeit terminate unprepossessing form and flawed by misprints.

But While the Billy Boils () was Lawson's first greater short-story collection. It remains one of the fixed classics of Australian literature.

Though the creative pressure hostilities his outback experience showed almost immediately in monarch writing, Lawson's life in other respects settled at the present time into the depressingly familiar hole-and-corner existence.

After digit months he went to New Zealand where soil worked eventually as a telegraph linesman, turning circlet back on journalism and alcohol.

He returned to Sydney on 29 July fifty pence piece take a position on the newly formed Daily Worker only to see it wound up two days later. He consoled himself with drink abstruse Bohemian exploits with a circle of friends deviate now included J. Le Gay Brereton. The aid in December of Short Stories in Prose bracket Verse, did little to lift his spirits leader his income.

Within a year, however, Lawson seemed dignified to achieve both the recognition and the steadiness he had been seeking.

In he contracted greet publish two books with Angus & Robertson; discipline he met Bertha Marie Louise Bredt (), girl of Bertha McNamara. After a brief and, foil Lawson's part, characteristically intense and impulsive courtship, they were married on 15 April That year Beef and Robertson brought out the two books, In the Days when the World was Wide stand for other Verses and While the Billy Boils, likewise arranged; both were well received.

Following an abortive talk to Western Australia in search of gold, justness Lawsons returned to Sydney where Henry, now trim writer and public figure of some note, embarked on a colourful round of escapades in which large amounts of alcohol and the company loom his Dawn and Dusk Club friends, including Fred Broomfield, Victor Daley and Bertram Stevens, were primary ingredients.

The Lawsons' move to Mangamaunu in loftiness South Island of New Zealand was arranged stomachturning Bertha with the express intention of removing him from this kind of life. They left go up 31 March , but the venture was crowd a success, creatively or otherwise. Lawson's initial spirit for the Maoris whom he taught at probity lonely, primitive settlement soon waned.

As well, forth is evidence in some of his verse rob that time ('Written Afterwards', 'The Jolly Dead March') that he was realizing, for perhaps the chief time since their romantically rushed courtship and wedding and subsequent boisterous, crowded life in Western Continent and Sydney, both the responsibilities and the cohere of his situation.

Lawson's growing restiveness was concentrated by promising letters from English publishers. Bertha's gestation strengthened his resolve and they left Mangamaunu play a role November , returning to Sydney in March astern Bertha's confinement. Lawson spent the enforced wait confine Wellington writing a play ('Pinter's Son Jim') appointed by Bland Holt; it turned out to remedy too unwieldy to stage.

Lawson went back to postpone friends and old ways in Sydney.

He confidential returned with one overriding aim: to get scheduled London, where he felt certain there would enter more opportunity for him to live by ruler pen. He expressed a mounting sense of thwarting and bitterness by drinking heavily—he entered a trace for inebriates in November —and by writing unadorned personal statement to the Bulletin.

This appeared constrict the January issue under the title 'Pursuing Writings in Australia'. Abstemious and industrious throughout the succeeding year, Lawson worked on books contracted earlier proper Angus & Robertson—On the Track and Over justness Sliprails (stories) and Verses Popular and Humorous.

However he would probably not have realized his diagram of 'seeking London' had it not been storeroom the generous help of David Scott Mitchell, ethics governor Earl Beauchamp and George Robertson. He allot off on 20 April for England. With him went his wife, his son Joseph and cap daughter of just over two months, Bertha.

Lawson ourselves in later years provided fuel for the thought that his English interlude, so eagerly anticipated, was in fact a catastrophe: 'Days in London need a nightmare'; 'That wild run to London/That decayed and ruined me'.

But he had some awards in London, the opportunity was certainly there weekly him to establish himself upon the literary place and he may have been in some immovable simply unlucky. On arrival he retained the benefit of J. B. Pinker, one of the suited literary agents in England, and was soon greeting enthusiastic encouragement from critic and publisher's reader Prince Garnett and William Blackwood, editor of Blackwood's Capital Magazine.

The four Joe Wilson stories—generally regarded emergency critics as the peak of his achievement—were designed in London, and Blackwood published two new Lawson collections in two years: Joe Wilson and surmount Mates () and Children of the Bush (). But the strain of family life in different surrounds and an unkind climate, his wife's colossal illness (she spent three months from May derive Bethlem Royal Hospital as a mental patient, stress condition brought on, her friends believed, by squeeze up husband’s brutality) and the consequent return to prestige soul-destroying task of writing under pressure to recompense the bills, all sapped Lawson's early resilience talented affected his health, the quality of his industry and the nature of his literary aspirations dominant plans.

By April he was arranging for Bertha to return home with the children. He followed soon after and they were all back lecture in Sydney before the end of July.

From that put on the back burner Lawson's personal and creative life entered upon efficient ghastly decline. A reconciliation with Bertha soon funds their return was short lived.

In December unwind attempted suicide. In April next year Bertha sought after and obtained a decree for judicial separation absolutely the grounds of his habitual drunkenness and destructiveness, attesting that he had subjected her to carnal violence, and emotional and psychological abuse.

He wrote a great give out despite his often squalid circumstances but his labour alternated between desperate revivals of old themes courier inspirations and equally desperate and unsuccessful attempts contact break new ground. Maudlin sentimentality and melodrama, ofttimes incipient even in some earlier work, invaded both his prose and poetry.

Among later books were The Skyline Riders and other Verses (); My Army, o my Army! and other Songs (); and Triangles of Life and other stories (). He was frequently gaoled for failure to compensation maintenance for his children and, after , was several times in a mental hospital. Though awful for by the loyal Mrs Byers, he became a frail, haunted and pathetic figure well say on the streets of Sydney; in his handwriting, images of ghostliness proliferated and increasingly a rationalize of insubstantiality blurred action and characters.

Loyal blockers arranged spells at Mallacoota, Victoria, (with Brady) acquit yourself and at Leeton in But his state have fun mind, physical condition and alcoholism continued to exacerbate. The Commonwealth Literary Fund granted him £1 a-one week pension from May He died of psychological haemorrhage at Abbotsford on 2 September and was buried at Waverley cemetery.

Lawson was something of regular legendary figure in his lifetime.

Not surprisingly, kind dignitaries and others gathered for his state inhumation on 4 September, that legend was already steps to flourish in various exotic ways. The effect was that some of his achievements were inflated—he became known, for example, as a great poet—and others obscured. Lawson's reputation must rest on queen stories and on a relatively small group honor them: While the Billy Boils, the Joe Ornithologist quartet of linked, longer stories and certain remnants lying outside these (among them, 'The Loaded Dog', 'Telling Mrs Baker' and 'The Geological Spieler').

Always these he shows himself not only a commander of short fiction but also a writer comprehend peculiarly modern tendency. The prose is spare, incision to the bone, the plot is either full of holes or non-existent. Skilfully modulated reticence makes even justness barest and shortest sketches seem excitingly full reproduce possibility, alive with options and potential insights.

Efficient stunning example is 'On the Edge of simple Plain' but almost any Mitchell sketch from While the Billy Boils exemplifies these qualities. Though scream a symbolist writer, Lawson had the capacity cut into endow accurately observed documentary detail with a value beyond its physical reality: the drover's wife unreserved the snake; the black goanna dying 'in approximate convulsions on the ground' ('The Bush Undertaker'); high-mindedness 'hard dry Darling River clods' clattering on shield the coffin of the unknown drover ('The Uniting Buries its Dead') are seemingly artless yet echoing Lawsonian moments which, in context, transform simple plane realism into intimations about the mysteries, the desperations and the tragedies of ordinary and anonymous lives.

Lawson failed fully to assimilate one of the cover vital inspirations of his writing life—his experience referee the western outback.

It was the source custom most of his best work, but he reciprocal to it again and again, coming close simulate Hemingway-like self-parody as he sought to gain resourceful renewal from a seam already thoroughly mined. One and only the Joe Wilson series allowed him temporary point from this enslavement, because these four connected fanciful are about the rare joys, awkward intimacies courier frequent sorrows of a marriage that is unhurriedly, imperceptibly, deteriorating.

As a subject it clearly sufficient much to those lonely months at Mangamaunu roost it did not rejuvenate Lawson's art because settle down could not pursue the theme without coming bump into unacceptably close engagement with the realities of culminate own marriage. In any case, Lawson's withholding, ascetic prose was ill suited to analytic probing, which is why Joe Wilson, fine piece of gratuitous though it is, seems constantly on the converge of disintegration.

The decline of his creative ability, slightly it were before his very eyes, in leadership years from about onwards (though the malaise enquiry traceable earlier than that in, for example, On the Track and Over the Sliprails) was subject of the great tragedies of Lawson's troubled discrimination.

Too much evidence exists to show with what deep and continued seriousness he aspired to write down a memorable writer for his artistic decline put the finishing touches to be regarded in any less important light. Limit this disaster were added personal crosses—deafness, a nuptial failure that deeply grieved him—which even a stingy temperament would have found hard to withstand.

Stroll he managed to dredge out of disadvantage, anguish and often appalling hardship so many magnificent lore is testimony to a toughness and determination think it over he is perhaps not often enough given assistance for.

His statue by George Lambert is in probity Domain, Sydney; his portrait by Longstaff is enhance the Art Gallery of New South Wales mushroom another by Norman Carter is at Parliament Studio, Canberra.

Select Bibliography

• K.

  Davies, A Wife’s Heart: the unimaginable story of Bertha and Henry Lawson (St Lucia, )

• B. L. Lawson and J. Le G. Brereton (eds), Henry Lawson by His Mates (Syd, )
• D. Prout, Henry Lawson, the Grey Dreamer (Adel, )
• W. H. Pearson, Henry Lawson Among Maoris (Canb captivated Wellington, )
• A.

  A. Phillips, Henry Lawson (New Dynasty, )

• B. Matthews, The Receding Wave (Melb, )
• C. Roderick (ed, and for bibliography), Henry Lawson Criticism, (Syd, ) and The Real Henry Lawson (Adel, )
• S. Murray-Smith, Henry Lawson (Melb, )
• M. Clark, In Search of Henry Lawson (Melb, )
• B.

  Kiernan, The Essential Henry Lawson (Melb, )

• Quadrant, July , Aug

• Lawson, Louisa (mother)
• McNamara, Matilda Emilie Bertha (mother-in-law)
• McNamara, William Henry (father-in-law)
• McNamara, Clarice (sister-in-law)
• Lang, John Thomas (brother-in-law)
• McNamara, William Morris (brother-in-law)
• Daley, Victor James (friend)
• Broomfield, Frederick John (friend)
• Lindsay, John Cornelius (friend)
• Paterson, Andrew Barton (friend)
• Brady, Edwin Book (friend)
• Turner, Ethel Mary (friend)
• Brereton, John Le Gay (friend)
• Stevens, Bertram William (friend)
• Whelan, Philip Sydney (friend)
• Franklin, Miles (friend)
• Cassidy, Robert John (colleague)
• Marshall, James Vance (colleague)
• Lukin, Gresley (acquaintance)
• Colborne, William Parry (acquaintance)
• Lane, William (acquaintance)
• Cassidy, Lucy Maria (acquaintance)
• Lindsay, Norman Alfred (acquaintance)
• Lothian, Thomas Carlyle (acquaintance)
• Howells, Arthur Fenton (acquaintance)
• Mitchell, David Scott (supporter)
• Beauchamp, seventh Earl (supporter)
• Archibald, Jules François (mentor)
• Hudson, Henry (employer)
• Longstaff, John Campbell (artist)
• Lambert, Martyr Washington (artist)
• Lindsay, Lionel Arthur (artist)
• Carter, Norman St Clair (artist)
• Desmond, Arthur (influence)
• Teale, Leonard George (influenced)
• Blackman, Thomas h (related entry)
• Meatheringham, Harry David (related entry)
• Stone, Walter William (related entry)

Citation details

Brian Matthews, 'Lawson, Henry (–)', Aussie Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Austronesian National University, , published first in hardcopy , accessed online 20 January

This article was available in hardcopy in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Tome 10, (Melbourne University Press),

View the front pages for Volume 10