Richard Birnie was a barrister, journalist and essayist. He first arrived in Perth, Western Australia, but Ann-Mari Jordens in her biography of Birnie in the Australian Dictionary of Biography Online writes that Birnie 'fell foul of the legal fraternity' and in 1859 the 'Executive Council gave him £200 to quit the colony'. Birnie resettled in Victoria but, Jordens writes, 'his legal practice was not successful, and he was in dire poverty when in 1870 James Smith, a prominent Melbourne journalist, had him appointed as an essay writer on the Australasian. For the next eighteen years his column 'The Essayist' and his frequent public lectures made him one of the best known literary figures of his day. He ... was prominent in the lively literary coterie of Melbourne in the 1860s and 1870s, and a member of the short-lived literary society known as the Cave of Adullam.'
Source: Ann-Mari Jordens, 'Birnie, Richard (1808–1888)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/birnie-richard-2997/text4385, accessed 17 September 2013.
