author
Henry Lawson
1867–1922
A powerful voice in Australian literature, this poet and short-story writer is remembered for vivid, unsentimental portraits of bush life and ordinary working people. His writing helped shape how Australia imagined itself at the turn of the twentieth century.
8 Audiobooks
Over the Sliprails
by Henry Lawson
In the Days When the World Was Wide, and Other Verses
by Henry Lawson
Children of the Bush
by Henry Lawson
Joe Wilson and His Mates
by Henry Lawson
While the Billy Boils
by Henry Lawson
On the Track
by Henry Lawson
The Rising of the Court
by Henry Lawson
Verses popular and humorous
by Henry Lawson
About the author
Born near Grenfell, New South Wales, on 17 June 1867, Henry Lawson grew up in a struggling rural family and was encouraged to read by his mother, Louisa Lawson, a noted writer and campaigner. He left school young, worked a range of jobs, and began publishing poems and stories in the 1880s.
Lawson became famous for ballads and short fiction that captured the hardship, humor, and loneliness of life in the Australian bush. Rather than romanticizing the outback, he often focused on shearers, drovers, mothers, laborers, and other working people, bringing a plainspoken honesty that made his work widely loved.
He is now regarded as one of Australia’s central literary figures, often mentioned alongside Banjo Paterson, though his voice was distinctly his own. Lawson died on 2 September 1922 at Abbotsford in Sydney, and his importance was recognized with the first state funeral given to a writer in Australia.