Lawson, Henry Archibald

Lawson, Henry Archibald 

Born June 17, 1867, at the Grenfell Gold Mines; died Sept. 2, 1922, in Sydney. Australian writer.

Lawson worked as a house painter, a clerk, and a teacher in a Maori school in New Zealand. In his very first poems and stories Lawson exposed capitalism. His work reached its apogee when he published the poetry collection In the Days When the World Was Wide (1896); the short-story collections While the Billy Boils (1896), On the Track and Over the Sliprails (1900), and Joe Wilson and His Mates (1901); and the collection of verses and stories Children of the Bush (1902). His poetry was also collected in The Skyline Riders (1910), his poems and stories in The Rising of the Court (1910), and his stories in Triangles of Life (1913).

Lawson’s work, inspired by socialist ideas, describes the harsh life of the common people and contains some national and patriotic strains. His poetry was influenced by folk ballads and his prose by the tall tales told by migrant workers. Lawson was a founder of the realistic and democratic tradition in Australian literature.

WORKS

Collected Verse, vols. 1-3. Sydney, 1967-69.
Letters: 1890-1922. [Sydney, 1970.]
Collected Prose, vols. 1-2. Sydney, 1972.
In Russian translation:
Shapka po krugu. Avstraliiskie rasskazy. Moscow, 1954.
[Rasskazy.] In Avstraliiskie rasskazy. Moscow, 1958.
Izbrannye stikhi. Moscow, 1959.
Rasskazy. Moscow, 1961.

REFERENCES

Petrikovskaia, A. S. Genri Louson i rozhdenie avstraliiskogo rasskaza. Moscow, 1972.
Prout, D. Henry Lawson. Adelaide, 1963.
Roderick, C. A. Henry Lawson, Poet and Short Story Writer. Sydney, 1966.
Phillips, A. Henry Lawson. New York, 1970.

A. S. PETRIKOVSKAIA