AustLit

James Hebblethwaite trained as a teacher in England, and was headmaster of Lancashire schools and a lecturer in English from 1879 to 1890. In that year, he came to Tasmania to recover from ill health. After eight years spent teaching in Hobart schools he entered the Congregational ministry and became principal of a small private school in Latrobe on the northwest coast. In 1895, he married Mary Browne in Hobart. In 1903, having become an Anglican priest, Hebblethwaite returned to Hobart. Later, after serving in parishes in various parts of Tasmania, he settled at Woodbridge as vicar of the Channel parish from 1909-1916, when he retired. Mary Hebblethwaite died in 1909, and Hebblethwaite married Lucy Turner in 1914. The couple had one son and lived in the Channel parish until Hebblethwaite's death.

Soon after his arrival in Hobart, Hebblethwaite began contributing verse to newspapers and journals. He was the author of one novel, an Australian melodrama published in England and five volumes of poetry. The Australian Dictionary of Biography describes his verse as 'the voice of an individual devoted to the culture of Europe making an earnest attempt to appreciate and love the antipodean environment'.