New reputations of the 1920s and 1930s

Abstract

Where Christopher Brennan used once to be regarded by modern Australian poets as the finest of their precursors, that position is now more often occupied by Kenneth Slessor or, less frequently, John Shaw Neilson (1872–1942). Neilson, greatly admired as a lyrist by James McAuley and Judith Wright, grew up on his parents’ impoverished farm near the Victorian—South Australian border and later worked as an itinerant farm labourer, harvesting, droving, fencing, fruit-picking, clearing, road-making, shearing and so on. Never very strong physically, he found that his eyesight began to fail to the point where he could no longer see to write, and he had to ask astonished and sometimes unsympathetic workmates to write down what he had composed while labouring. Despite having less than three years’ formal schooling, Neilson was well read in English poetry. His father and uncle were also poets and they encouraged him to read and write. Neilson was familiar with the work of the English Romantics and major Victorians; English, Irish, Scottish, and American songs and ballads; and the Australian bush balladists.