Henry Lawson

Henry Lawson (1867–1922) was born near Grenfell, New South Wales, on the goldfields, and left school at fourteen; largely deaf from childhood, he struggled with poverty, alcoholism and depression for most of his adult life. Alongside Banjo Paterson, he is one of the two defining voices of 1890s Australian “bush” literature, publishing mostly in the Sydney Bulletin. His short-story collection While the Billy Boils (1896), including “The Drover’s Wife,” established a starker, less romantic vision of the outback than Paterson’s own. He was the first Australian writer given a state funeral.