AustLit

John Farrell was born at Buenos Aires in 1851, the son of Irish migrants. In 1852 the family arrived in Melbourne, attracted by the goldfields. Farrell had little education but read English poetry from an early age. In 1876 he married Elizabeth Watts, the union producing seven children. Farrell worked at a variety of occupations, including brewing and farming, before becoming a full-time writer and editor in 1884. Farrell's verse was first published in the Albury local press and his first Bulletin contribution appeared in 1882. He edited a number of newspapers and was an active member of the Single Tax League which was inspired by Henry George's Progress and Poverty. This activity and his journalistic duties left little time for poetry after 1890. Farrell's first significant book of verse, How He Died, appeared in 1887 and another collection, My Sundowner and Other Poems, edited by Bertram Stevens, appeared in 1904. Farrell's verse was widely admired by his contemporaries, but by later standards his satire is dated and his commemorative poems are excessively sentimental. Farrell died in Sydney in 1904.