AustLit

Frank Fowler was an English journalist and author who visited the Australian colonies during the years 1855-1858. He spent most of this period in Sydney, where he initially worked as a journalist at the Empire, and later helped establish a literary magazine, the Month. In Sydney, Fowler quickly became prominent within press and literary circles, and he briefly enjoyed celebrity status, by virtue of his well attended literary orations, and his successful stage play 'Eva' (an adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin). However, Fowler also emerged as a somewhat contentious figure, and outside his circle of friends and admirers, he attracted a good few critics and detractors. By 1857 he had fallen out with Henry Parkes (q.v.), then owner and editor of the Empire, and at various points he was at loggerheads with politician and literary critic William Forster (q.v.), poet Charles Harpur (q.v.), and numerous members of the Sydney literati.

In January 1858, Fowler stood unsuccessfully as a candidate for the seat of Sydney City in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly elections. He left Australia in April 1858, together with his wife Rachel and their infant son, apparently for family reasons (at the time, he had just received news of his mother's death in London). Soon after his return to England, Fowler published Southern Lights and Shadows (1859), his critique of colonial society.