AustLit

'In the year 1832 there appeared in an obscure and short-lived Sydney newspaper the first published account of the legend of Fisher's Ghost, a tale that still exerts a powerful grip on the imagination of Australians. It was presented in an anonymous thirty-stanza poem, "The Sprite of the Creek!" Ever since the poem's significance was recognised by Elizabeth Webby and Cecil Hadgraft in 1968 its authorship has been a puzzle. This paper, which draws on material on the National Library of Australia's Trove Digitised Newspapers website, traces the author of the "Sprite" through a series of pseudonymous identities over the thirty years 1830 to 1860 and, with the help of library manuscripts and official records, reveals a likely candidate: James Riley (ca.1795-1860), Irish-born ex-convict, "bush tutor" and associate of the Hume family, early explorers and settlers of the southern districts of New South Wales.'

Source: Article abstract.

'Eric Partridge is rightly known as a major lexicographer and the chronicler of slang: the American critic Edmund Wilson went so far as to describe him as “the word king” of the twentieth century. Many people would have at least one of his books such as Usage and Abusage of English, Origins, Dictionary of Catch Phrases or a version of his monumental Dictionary of Slang on their shelves. His role as a founder and proprietor of the Scholartis Press is also known, but to a lesser extent. His World War I army service—he was a genuine Anzac in that he was born in New Zealand but served in the Australian Imperial Force and saw active service at both Gallipoli and the Western Front—is just known. His outstanding war memoir, Frank Honywood, Private is hardly known although it deserves to be widely read. But very few people know that Eric Partridge also wrote and published fiction.'

Source: Article.