AustLit

Bartlett Adamson attended schools at Zeehan and Dundas in Tasmania. In 1914 he moved to New Zealand and worked for a time with the publishers Whitcombe and Tombs, who published his first book, Twelve Sonnets, in 1918. In 1919 Adamson returned to Australia and worked for Smith's Weekly in Sydney until 1923, and again from 1935 to 1950. In the meantime, the Sydneysider, a journal he had founded in the late 1920s, was forced to cease publication during the Depression. During the 1930s Adamson was actively involved with the Fellowship of Australian Writers and eventually became President, a position he held on three separate occasions. Meanwhile his political sympathies moved sharply to the left and he joined the Communist Party in 1943. Much of his poetry reflects his political leanings. Apart from his eight books of verse, Adamson published a book for boys, a crime novel and a book on the author Frank Clune (q.v.). He edited books on Australian bushrangers and wrote the words of the song 'Light of My Day', music by Ethel A. Brady, (Sydney: Paling, 1914). He also left behind a huge journalistic legacy.