Biography of Henry Lawson

Henry Lawson was one of Australia’s most famous and beloved writers, distinguished in both poetry and short stories. He is part of the “Bush Ballad” school of poetry, and more generally the realist tradition of writing. He was born on June 17, 1867 in Grenfell, New South Wales. His father worked as a gold prospector and former sailor, and his mother was a feminist and social radical. While a young boy, Lawson developed an illness that led to a hearing deficiency, which later became near deafness. This descent into deafness was one of the most important catalysts for his turn to writing.

Lawson attended school sporadically and then worked for his father, who had become a building contractor. After his parents separated, he moved with his mother to Sydney. There, he was apprenticed to a coach painter in Clyde, a suburb of Sydney. Around this time, he started writing poems and publishing them in the Sydney press. He took up editing the Republican, a weekly radical paper his mother published. In 1891, he became a reporter for the Boomerang, a radical paper in Brisbane. He contributed poems and political pieces, and decided at this time that he wanted to be a writer.

Sydney was a tough period in Lawson's personal life—he did not have a permanent abode and drank heavily—but he published many pieces. Lawson was politically affiliated with The Bulletin, a Sydney-based newspaper that was highly influential in Australian life at the time, and well into the mid-twentieth century. The publication was distinctly pro-union, and focused primarily on Australian national identity and rural life. It was a natural home for Lawson and his focus on the Australian bush. In 1892, The Bulletin's literary editor even paid for Lawson's trip to Bourke, New South Wales, to encourage his writings on the bush. Lawson was deeply impressed with the resilience of the bushmen as they bore out a drought, and his experience there provided rich material and inspiration for much of his future writing.

Lawson engaged with socialist and literary circles. He spent a few months in 1893 in New Zealand, and returned in 1894 to take up a post at the Daily Worker. In the meantime though, the paper had folded; Lawson continued to drink and carouse. That year, he published his first collection of short stores, Short Stories in Prose and Verse. Other collections followed and were both popular and critical successes. Unfortunately, it was not enough to provide him a decent living, and he grew frustrated.

In 1896, Lawson married, but the marriage soon became strained over his dissolution and spending. For a time, they lived in New England, where Lawson worked as a teacher, but they returned to Sydney when he grew weary of it. He became a clerk in the public service and wrote more. He entered a rehab center for alcoholism and committed himself to be a teetotaler, which resulted in a burst of creativity and work in 1900.

That year, Lawson and his family traveled to England, a trip he had long desired. It was financed by contributions from Australian leaders hoping to promote literary connections. While things started out promisingly enough, Lawson returned to drink and his wife collapsed and had to enter an asylum. This trip to London ended in failure, and the family had to return to Sydney.

Upon their return, Lawson tried to commit suicide, and the following year his wife procured a judicial separation. Lawson continued to write, but never again reached the creative heights of his earlier work. His life was difficult, and at times he was homeless, a beggar, and in and out of asylums and hospitals for mental illness; he was also jailed for not paying child support. In September of 1922, he died of a cerebral hemorrhage.