author
Sidney Dickinson
1851–1919
An American-born journalist and critic who became one of the liveliest voices in Australia’s art world, he also wrote eerie firsthand accounts of the supernatural. His work moves between sharp cultural commentary and strange, memorable storytelling.
1 Audiobook
True Tales of the Weird: a record of personal experiences of the supernatural
by Sidney Dickinson
About the author
Born in Massachusetts in 1851, Sidney Dickinson was a journalist, lecturer, and art critic who built much of his career in Australia. The Australian Dictionary of Biography describes him as an energetic and well-educated writer who became known for championing Australian painters, especially the emerging Impressionists.
He was admired as a speaker as well as a writer, and his interests reached well beyond art. After his death in 1919, his book True Tales of the Weird was published in 1920, collecting accounts of supernatural experiences he had recorded over the years.
Dickinson’s career gives him an unusual place in literary and cultural history: part newspaper man, part arts advocate, and part explorer of the uncanny. That blend helps explain why his name still surfaces both in histories of Australian art and in classic collections of paranormal writing.