Collins, Tom

Collins, Tom 

(pseudonym of Joseph Furphy). Born Sept. 26, 1843, in Yering, Victoria; died Sept. 13, 1912, in Claremont, Western Australia. Australian writer.

The son of a farmer, Collins worked as a farmer and an industrial worker. He was a founder of the democratic tradition and the realistic novel in Australian literature. He began his literary work in the 1880’s. In a novel about rural Australia, Such Is Life (1903), he showed the growth of the Australians’ national consciousness and the working people’s desire to reorganize society. The novel Rigby’s Romance (1905) reflected Collins’ democratic views. He was the author of the novel The Buln Buln and the Brolga (published, 1948), short stories about gold prospectors, ballads, and political poems (“The Death of President Lincoln,” 1867).

WORKS

The Poems. Melbourne, 1916.
In Russian translation:
”Na beregakh Port-Filippa: Otkrytie Rozhdestvenskoi zhily.” In Avstraliiskie rasskazy. Moscow, 1958.

REFERENCES

Franklin, M., and K. Baker. Joseph Furphy: The Legend of a Man and His Books. Sydney-London, 1944.
Barnes, J. Joseph Furphy. Melbourne, 1963.