- 1970, 545 pages
- Published by Angus & Robertson Ltd
- Hardcover with dust jacket, grey boards
- Very good condition, minor dust jacket wear, fading and bumpy
Index included. This is the fourth volume in Colin Roderick's series of editions of Lawson's life and works.
At the present time the greatest service that can be rendered Henry Lawson is the publication of his letters. Now substantially published here for the first time, almost half a century after his death, these letters assembled from a multitude of sources, provide an uninibited report of his life, made by the man himself.
The literary ambitions of the young man appear in the letters that precede his visit to New Zealand in 1897 as a married man. The confidence of maturity wells out of the letters written in New Zealand. The tragedy of his life in London emerges from a number of the later letters. The scraps which he addresses to intimate friends after the failure of his marriage in 1902 reveal the rents in the fabric of his personality.
The nomadic life he led in his attempts to elude imprisionment is mirrored in the absence of addresses on the notes he wrote during the ensuing few years. The letters written to his friends from Darlinghurst Goal reflect the despair of his tormented mind. Of his insobriety, his fear of insantity, and his attempt at suicide he speaks for himself.
His determination to merit his retainer as a propagandist for the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Areas is patent in the letters, even if in the works his treatment of the Areas is satrical. The poverty that cursed his life haunts them from the beginning to end. Avove all they reflect his dedication to Australian literature.
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