Henry Lawson Poems

Description

A stunning collection from one of Australia's favourite poets. Readers have long embraced the passionate energy of Henry Lawson's poems. this collection of 177 poems showcases the very best of Lawson - heart-rendering tales of the human condition, rousing poems of social protest, images of comic characters, and classic portraits such as Middleton's rouseabout, as well as some of Lawson's lesser-known works, including the poignant verse addressed to his lost love, Hannah thornburn. Henry Lawson was a man burdened by poverty and deafness and haunted by the specters of alcoholism and madness. Against his tortured life, the spirit, humour and understanding evident in this collection show the breadth of Lawson's achievement and demonstrate why he has endured as one of Australia's great poets. Poems listed in chronological order, with title and first line indices. 'Such pride as a man feels when he has true greatness as his guest, this newspaper feels in introducing to a million readers a man of ability hitherto unknown to them. Henry Lawson is his name.' - New York Evening Journal 'the first articulate voice of the real Australian' - David McKee Wright in the preface to the first edition of Lawson's Selected Poems, 1918 'Any book of Lawson's should be bought and treasured by all who care for the real beginnings of Australian literature.' - the Book Lover Magazine (US)

Henry Lawson was born in Grenfell, NSW, in 1867. At 14 he became totally deaf, an affliction which many have suggested rendered his world all the more vivid and subsequently enlivened his later writing. After a stint of coach painting, he edited a periodical, The Republican, and began writing verse and short stories. His first work of short fiction appeared in the Bulletin in 1888. He travelled and wrote short fiction and poetry throughout his life and published numerous collections of both even as his marriage collapsed and he descended into poverty and mental illness. He died in 1922, leaving his wife and two children.