Harry Hooton left London for Australia in 1924, at the age of 16. He moved around the east coast in search of employment. Between labouring jobs, he began to have his writings, largely political in nature, published. He described himself as a Trotskyist, and was involved with the International Workers of the World - the 'Wobblies' - and became secretary of the Newcastle branch of the Peace Pledge Union, an international pacifist organisation.
Hooton contributed to the Newcastle Morning Herald and Miner's Advocate and in 1942 was offered a job by Brian Penton in Sydney, as a journalist with The Daily Telegraph. Here, he began to publish his poetry and became a well-known local figure. The author of three collections of poetry, he also ran the influential literary magazine 21st Century, which introduced progressive American writing into a conservative Australian literary climate. Hooton's work was not widely popular, but is notable for its individualistic and anarchic approach. During the 1950s he was a contributing editor to the literary journal Inferno Quarterly. With Garry Lyle and A. D. Hope (qq.v.) he published his writing in a three issue periodical, [Untitled: An Untitled, Unpretentious, Unadvertised and Unusual Selection of Verse and Prose], and also published a poetry broadsheet, Anarcho-technocracy: The Politics of Things (19--?).
In 1972, Hooton's life became the subject of the independent film, Harry Hooton, made by Arthur and Corinne Cantrill (q.v.).
