The first Australian writer of sensation drama, ahead of George Darrell and Alfred Dampier, Walter H. Cooper worked at a variety of occupations in his short life. He also attempted on several occasions to enter the world of politics, but was unable to gain office. Cooper's early career included a period as journalist with the Queensland Guardian, followed by a position as parliamentary reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald (1866). He joined the Argus for a short period, but returned to the Herald in 1871. During the late 1860s, he also turned his hand to writing for the stage. Arguably his most successful play, the melodrama Colonial Experience, was produced in 1868. Some of the other theatre works Cooper wrote and which were staged during the 1860s and early 1870s include two pantomimes, The History of Kodadad and His Brothers (1866) and Harlequin Little Jack Horner (1868); a farce titled The New Crime; Or, 'Andsome 'Enery's Mare's Nest (1868); the sensation dramas Sun and Shadow (1870), Foiled (1871), and Hazard; Or, Pearce Dyceton's Crime (1872); and the tragedy Rugantino the Ruthless (1872).

Cooper's interest in politics led to his acquaintance with Henry Parkes, and in 1872, he found himself acting as the politician's agent in both the Tamworth and Liverpool Plains electorates. The following year, he was appointed secretary to the Public Charities Commission. Cooper's desire to enter politics was thwarted soon afterwards, however, when his exuberance and forthright opinions put him offside with a number of sitting members. Although dissuaded by Parkes from contesting a seat in East Sydney during the 1874 elections, he nevertheless made a failed attempt in the Lower Hunter region. Despite this setback, Cooper continued to make important contributions to political debates over the next few years through his insightful analyses, published in both newspapers and private pamphlets. In 1874, he travelled to America, hoping to have his plays produced. When this did not eventuate, he returned to Australia and set his sights on entering the legal profession. Supported financially by Parkes, he was admitted to the bar in 1875 but found himself in dire financial straits for sometime afterwards, unable even to repay his benefactor. Not surprisingly, his relationship with Parkes deteriorated as a result. He managed to maintain his political momentum by becoming vice-president of the protectionist Political Reform League and a leading activist in the anti-Chinese agitation movemen. But within a few years, his tangled domestic affairs had begun to impose a strain on both his career and personal judgment.

By 1877, Cooper had managed to pay some of his debts off, but his decision two years later to leave his wife led to a bitter family dispute. At one point, a fight ensued between Cooper and his brother-in-law. The Evening News (15 February 1879, n. pag.) described the scuffle that eventuated, reporting that a gun had been fired. Although Cooper was not injured, the woman with whom he was having an affair was apparently grazed in the arm. Cooper shortly afterwards assaulted John Henniker Heaton, which led to his own arrest and a £10 fine and bond. With his personal situation on a downward spiral, Cooper found himself destitute within a year, and was forced to sell his possessions, including all his books. Writing to Parkes for help, he indicated that his life had been a bitter struggle against adversity, all the more potent 'because my own hand guided its weapons and Poverty, Humiliation and Friendlessness were my companions' (qtd Bede Nairn, Australian Dictionary of Biography, 1969, p.455).

Walter Cooper died shortly afterwards on 26 July 1880 from a combination of heart disease, haemorrhage, and exhaustion. An obituary published in the Sydney Morning Herald two days later suggested that he lacked the personal qualities that would have enabled his undoubted brilliance to shine consistently. Cooper left behind his wife, Ellen, and his six children (five sons and one daughter). One of the last plays to be staged during his life, Fuss; Or, A Tale of the Exhibition, is believed to have been written a year or two previously. Staged at the Victoria Theatre (Sydney) in April 1880, this three-act comedy shows Cooper's insight into human psychology at its best, as he delineates the characteristics of the various nationalities represented at the International Exhibition.

George Leitch established himself as a comedian between 1867 and 1874 in the English provincial towns and appeared in London for the first time in 1876. In 1881 he went to South Africa, and to Australia in 1882. He remained in the Australasian region until the late 1890s in association with such companies as Williamson, Garner and Musgrove, the MacMahon Bros and Brough and Boucicault.

Among the works likely written during his time in Australia and New Zealand are: Two Brothers ; Or, Suitors to Grind (ca. 1895) and The Old Homestead (ca. 1895). Leitch also adapted Marcus Clarke's For the Term of His Natural Life as a five-act play (a draft manuscript is held by the University of Queensland's Fryer Library).

Actor, playwright, director, academic. Richard Fotheringham grew up in country Queensland and received his university education at The University of Queensland. He has been active in Australian theatre throughout his adult life, founding the Popular Theatre Troupe in 1974 where he was resident writer and director for four years. He also wrote and acted for the Queensland Theatre Company during the 1970s. His roles for the RQTC included The Legend of King O'Malley (1971). He has written plays, television and film scripts, some of which are held at Fryer Library, University of Qld. In 1996 he was the recipient of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature's Walter Macrae Russell Award for an outstanding work of literary scholarship for his monograph In Search of Steele Rudd (1995).

Fotheringham has served as Head of the School of English, Art History and Media Studies at The University of Queensland and was Executive Dean of Arts until 2011 when he retired. His professional associations have included being a board member of the Queensland Theatre Company, treasurer of the Australasian Drama Studies Association (1989-1999) and consultant to the Community Cultural Development Board of the Australia Council for the Arts. He has also been joint editor with Veronica Kelly of the Australasian Drama Studies journal since 1982 and was a member and chair of the AustLit board of management. In 2011 Fotheringham also became Chair of the Queensland Performing Arts Centre.

Actor, dramatist, manager.

OVERVIEW:

Alfred Dampier was an English-born actor-manager and playwright whose career in Australia was largely carried out between 1874 and the early 1900s. During this time he was responsible for producing and premiereing a number of significant Australia plays and played an important part in helping develop the careers of many local actors.

BIOGRAPHY:

1847- 1884: The son of a buildrer, Alfred dampier was born in Sussex and completed his education at Charterhouse School, Surrey. He began his working life in a barrister's office but after dabbling with local amateur theatre productions, he eventually decided against a legal career and turned instead to the stage. One of his earliest known engagements was with a Manchester-based theatre company headed by Henry Irving. After Irving left for London in 1866, Dampier became its leading actor. Shortly afterwards, however, he also made the move to the English capital and set about developing his craft there. He eventually graduated to lead actor status, and was subsequently invited to visit Australia in 1873 by Henry R. Harwood and George Coppin. He made his Australian debut later that year in his own adaptation of Faust and Marguerite (Theatre Royal, Melbourne), and soon afterwards formed a company made up of mostly local actors. The decision by Dampier to concentrate his efforts in Australia would, over the next three decades, not only see his organisation become one of the leading theatrical troupes operating in the Antipodes, but also make his a household name.

Dampier's considerable reputation as a Shakespearian actor gave him the opportunity to mount numerous productions of the bard's works throughout the colonies over the next few years (although none fared as well as his later melodramas, the theatrical enterprises that, in fact, became his trademark). The success he garnered in Australia and New Zealand during the mid-1870s saw him attempt to reproduce similar results in America in 1878, but the tour did not ignite much interest. He returned to Australia for a period before trying his luck on several tours through the United Kingdom. After failing to establish himself in Britain, he eventually returned to Australia, where, between 1880 and 1885, he alternated seasons in Sydney and Melbourne with occasional regional tours. During this time, he began to develop his own writing craft. His most significant collaborations were with playwrights such as F. R. C. Hopkins and journalist John Stanley James (aka Julian Thomas/'Vagabond'). Another of his successes from this period of his career was The Flying Dutchman (aka the Phantom Ship), written by his wife Katherine Dampier (nee Russell). It was first staged in 1880.

1885-1889: For some three years, beginning in 1885, Dampier settled into an almost continuous season in Sydney, first at the Gaiety Theatre and later at the Royal Standard Theatre in Castlereigh Street. Debut productions staged during the early years included his own Under the Southern Cross (1885); a collaborative adaptation with John F. Sheridan of Uncle Tom's Cabin (1886); F. R. C. Hopkins's All For Gold (1886); and another original work, Our Emily (1886). It was during his time in Sydney, too, that Dampier strove more and more to promote both Australian drama and Australian stories, not just his own works but also those of other playwrights. The strategy paid off almost immediately when he scored a significant hit with For the Term of His Natural Life (1886), a co-adaptation with Thomas Somers of Marcus Clarke's famous novel. The following year he premiered another original drama, The Wreck of the Dunbar. Dampier's activies around this period also saw him organise a play competition as part of the country's centennial celebrations. He staged the winning entry, John Perry's The Life and Death of Captain Cook, on 28 January 1888.

At the end of 1888, Dampier moved his operations to the Alexandra Theatre, Melbourne. It was there, and in collaboration with Garnet Walch, that he wrote a string of original melodramas that effectively placed him among the most important and influential dramatists/actors/managers in Australian theatre history. These works included Marvellous Melbourne, which they co-wrote with J. H. Wrangham and Thomas Somers in 1889. The first of the Dampier/Walch melodramas, however, was The Count of Monte Cristo (1890). This was followed shortly afterwards by a hugely popular adaptation of Rolfe Boldrewood's Robbery Under Arms (1890), then For Love and Life (1890), The Miner's Rights (1891), The Scout (1891), The Trapper (1891), This Great City (1891), Wilful Murder (1892), and Help One Another (1892). Dampier also produced Walch's pantomime Jack the Giant Killer in 1891.

1890-1908: As with many of his theatrical contemporaries, the depression of the late 1880s/early 1890s had a drastic impact on Dampier's financial resources. He was eventually forced to close down his Melbourne season in 1892 and attempted to address the situation by mounting a tour of New Zealand. This ultimately proved a disaster, however, and he subsequently entered into a brief period of insolvency. His initial reaction to this situation was to return to England and attempt to revitalise his career there, but he fared no better than the last time. Even his production of Robbery Under Arms at the Princess Theatre (London) failed to attract much positive attention from the London critics, although his acting was given much praise.

By now resigned to the fact that Australia still held the most promise for him, Dampier returned in 1894 and set about trying to re-establish his somewhat tarnished reputation. The task was by no means easy. Victoria remained a difficult place for him to tour for several years (due primarily to the fact that he had been declared bankrupt in that state), and while the rest of the country was supportive, the theatre industy continued to struggle throughout the remainder of the decade in an economic environment shattered by the depression. Added to these problems was a scandal concerning daughter Lily Dampier's private life and frequent health problems that he and his wife endured throughout their later years. Despite these problems, Dampier managed to claw his way back to the position he had commanded at the peak of his career in the late 1880s, a factor that undoubtedly endeared him to both the critics and public alike during the remainder of his professional life. Indeed, Richard Fotheringham in the Companion to Theatre in Australia (1995) notes that during this period, Dampier came to be regarded as a courtly gentleman and scholarly actor, who, although not challenging the more prosperous operations of J. C. Williamson, William Anderson, and Bland Holt, was nevertheless a sentimental favourite of the Australian stage at that time (p.180).

Alfred Dampier died in Sydney on 23 May 1908 of a brain haemorrhage. He left behind his wife Katherine, who, as an actress, had played a significant role in his career, his two daughters, and a son, the actor Alfred Dampier Jnr (aka Fred). He also left behind a significant legacy of achievement. His role in helping develop both an Australian theatrical tradition and the industry itself certainly cannot be questioned. Later prominent actor-writers such as Bert Baily and Edmund Duggan are known to have acknowledged his influence on their early careers. In addition, a number of leading actors of the era found employment with him for extended periods of time, and in turn passed on their experiences to other actors, whether as peers or as pedagogues. Such actors include Harry Leston, Harry W. Emmett, Lachlan McGowan, Carrie Bilton, Harry Sefton, J. R. Greville, Harry Stoneham, and J. B. Atholwood (father of actress Sybil Atholwood).

Dramatist, librettist, journalist.

OVERVIEW

The most popular, and arguably the most successful, writer for the Australian stage during the 1870s and 1880s, Garnet Walch's career emerged in the wake of the country's previous leading dramatist, W. M. Akhurst (1850s-1860s). While many of his works were localised and updated adaptations (notably his pantomimes), it was his ability to tap into the public's mood and desires by expressing sentiments and making satirical allusions that made his works so popular. Walch wrote a wide array of genres and forms, including 'serious' dramatic works, comedies, pantomimes, melodrama, and vaudeville sketches. His career appears to have undergone two significant peaks, the first during the mid-late 1870s and the second, through his collaboration with Alfred Dampier, during the early 1890s.

Walch's career is tied in with many other leading theatre practitioners of the period, including Harry Rickards, George Darrell, Richard Stewart, W. S. Lyster, and R. P. Whitworth. A number of his works were also adapted by other writers and producers in later years, notably Archibald Murray and Samuel Lazar. Among the works Walch is most remembered for today are Australia Felix (1873), Marvellous Melbourne (1889), Robbery Under Arms (1890). He was the brother of Charles Edward Walch.

BIOGRAPHY

1843-1871: Garnet Walch was born in Hobart the year after his father arrived in the colony of Tasmania in 1842 as a major in the 54th Regiment. Some three years later, his father opened the Hobart branch of publishers Samuel Tegg. Under the stewardship of his eldest boys James and Charles, the business later become the successful publishing house J. Walch and Sons. In 1852, following the death of his father, Garnet returned to Europe, where he completed his education first at London's Denmark Hill Grammar and later at a private college in the German township of Hamelin. He moved back to Australia in his late teens and, after spending a brief period in Hobart making a poor attempt at a career as a clerk, he moved to Sydney. It was there that his writing ability came to the attention of George Ross Morton, editor of the Sydney Punch and himself an occasional dramatist. Over the next few years, Walch contributed regularly to several Sydney papers, and in 1867 took over the editorship of the Cumberland Mercury. Within the same year, he started his own paper, the Cumberland Times and published his first short novel, The Fireflash.

A marked increase in theatrical productions in Sydney during the late 1860s, largely a result of the flow-on from the huge number of gold-seekers arriving in the colony, began providing opportunities for anyone with a theatrically inclined imagination and a talent for writing. As with a number of his journalist peers, Walch began accepting commissions to adapt, localise, and update material for local theatrical managements. The availability of sources, notably English burlesques, pantomimes, and novels, provided these authors with creative frames into which they could inject topicality and local references for the popular culture audiences that attended them. The first production that can be attributed to Walch is the burlesque Love's Silver Dream, first staged in 1869. After it was well received by both critics and public, Walch was inspired to adapt several more works in quick succession, including Conrad the Corsair and Prometheus (both 1870) and Trookulentos the Tempter (1871) for George Darrell. Walch's immediate success at this new craft is not surprising, given that, as theatre historian Veronica Kelly points out in her preface to Australia Felix, he was 'ideally suited to write for the popular stage...[taking] his task lightly enough to contribute [a] genial irony and sense of the fantastic, and seriously enough never to patronise popular taste or feel the work beneath him' (p.27).

1872-1879: In 1872, Walch moved to Melbourne where he soon established himself as the successor to W. M. Akhurst in terms of being both Melbourne's and Australia's leading dramatist and music theatre writer. Indeed, by the end of that same year, he had the distinction of having two productions of True-Blue Beard (his own version and an adaptation by Archibald Murray) running simultaneously in Sydney and Melbourne. The following year, he was engaged as the secretary of the Melbourne Athenaeum on a stipend of £300. This position, which he held until 1879, provided him with an income that allowed ample opportunity to write for the theatre while enjoying financial security.

Thus, Walch wrote or adapted more than twenty music theatre works between 1872 and 1879. These include the pantomimes Australia Felix (1873), Beauty and the Beast (1875) Jack the Giant Killer and His Doughty Deeds (1878), and Babes in the Woods (1879); the sketch Mother Says I Mustn't, written especially for Harry Rickards (1972); the operetta Genevieve de Brabant (1873), which he adapted for W. S. Lyster; and the burlesques Pygmalion and His Gal (A Dear) (1873), written for Harry Rickards, and The White Fawn (1874).

In addition, there were plays with significant musical performances, notably The Great Hibernicon (1874) and 'musical entertainments' such as Rainbow Revels (1877) and If (1878), both written especially for Richard Stewart's family. Referring to the first of these works in her autobiography, Nellie Stewart recalls, 'Mr Walch suggested [to my father] that he should write an entertainment for us on lines broadly similar to that in which the Vokes Family in England had won such success, and that we should tour Australian with it ... I was enabled for once to sing and dance my fill, playing seven parts - school girl, Dutch girl, Irish girl, pantomime boy and so forth ... From its inception Rainbow Revels was so successful that Mr Walch wrote another medley called If' (pp. 39-40).

During the same period, Walch was also responsible for a variety of sketches and comediettas, including, for example, the sketch Shy, Shy, Dreadfully Shy (1872), the dramas A Terribly Strange Bed (1876) and Where Am I? (1876); and the comedies The Haunted Chamber and The Great Wager of £500 (both staged in 1876 by the magician Alfred Sylvester), Humble Pie (1877), and Perfidious Albion (1878). The mid-1870s also saw Walch begin his long-time association with actor/manager Alfred Dampier. Although their most recognisable collaborations, a series of highly popular melodramas, would not eventuate until the early 1890s, Walch initially provided some material for Dampier, beginning with Faust and Marguerite (1876). The following year, he wrote the popular stage production Helen's Babies (adapted from J. Habberton's best-selling novelette) for Dampier and his daughters Lily and Rose.

1880-1888: Despite the economic security of his Athenaeum position, and the frequent, though much lower, income from his theatre writing, Walch's financial situation steadily worsened over the late 1870s. Veronica Kelly indicates that Walch's 'characteristic generosity and optimism' was in evidence right up to the point where his losses could no longer be sustained. In 1880, for example, he sponsored a clandestine performance of Marcus Clarke's banned play A Happy Land (1880), chartering at his own expense a steamboat to carry the company to its destination, the beachside township of Frankston. The excursion was a financial disaster for Walch and he soon afterwards filed for bankruptcy ('Introduction', Australia Felix, p.33). 1881 saw Walch continue writing for the theatre, but at the same time he began collaborating with artist Charles Turner in an ambitious project he hoped would cash in on the Melbourne International Exhibition. The result, Victoria in 1880, which is described by Kelly as a 'triumph of colonial publishing,' failed to realise a financial return. The following year, he wrote the comedy-drama Her Evil Star for Mrs G. B. W. Lewis, along with several sketches for the Sylvester family and two pantomimes, as well as founding the short-lived weekly magazine Town Talk with writer R. P. Whitworth and cricketer John Conway. However, the stress of work and his poor financial situation finally saw Walch suffer a collapse early in 1882. A prestigious benefit was held in his honour, and although he contributed a new comedy, Walch soon afterwards took an extended break by sailing to Madagascar. The venture was paid for in part through the reports Walch sent back to the Argus.

Almost immediately after returning refreshed to Australia in late 1885, Walch supplied Harry Rickards with arguably two of the actor/manager's greatest-ever Australian-written musical entertainments, Bric-a-Brac and Spoons (Rickards staged both works frequently until 1890), along with a burlesque version of his earlier pantomime, Babes in the Woods. He continued to produce new theatre works during the remainder of the 1880s, while also writing various pamphlets, numerous newspaper articles, and (in 1887) a centennial celebration publication, The

Australian Birthday Book. He even produced several biographies, notably A Life of General Gordon and a monograph on J. C. Williamson. 1887 also saw him became editor of the Centennial Printing and Publishing Company. Some three years later, he again teamed up with Alfred Dampier to produce the first of a series of melodramas, the success of which effectively returned his career to the heights of the previous decade.

1889-1897: Walch and Dampier began their creative association in 1889, after the actor/manager moved his operations from Sydney's Royal Standard Theatre to Melbourne's Alexandra Theatre. One of their first collaborations was on Marvellous Melbourne, which they co-wrote with J. H. Wrangham and Thomas Somers in 1889. The first Dampier/Walch melodrama, however, was The Count of Monte Cristo, staged in 1890. The pair then presented arguably their biggest success, an adaptation of Rolf Boldrewood's Robbery Under Arms (1890), followed by such works as For Love and Life (1890), The Miner's Rights (1891), The Scout (1891), The Trapper (1891), This Great City (1891), Wilful Murder (1892), and Help One Another (1892). During the same period, Walch also wrote The Land Lubber (1890) for Katie Rickards, Jack The Giant Killer (1891) for Dampier, and the comedy-drama Silver Chimes, staged in Adelaide in late 1892.

By 1892, however, the combination of long-term drought and economic depression took hold of the Australian economy, forcing Dampier to eventually abandon his once unassailable theatrical fortress at the Alexandra. That year also effectively marked the beginning of the end for Garnet Walch's theatrical career. While it is known that he wrote another version of Sinbad the Sailor for J. C. Williamson (1893) and that he intended to try to promote several of his more recent productions in England and America, the success of this latter venture is unclear. A collaboration with John Grocott resulted in the publication of an opera-bouffe titled Kismet; Or, The Cadi's Daughter in 1894. No production details have yet been located, however. One of Walch's last known works to be produced in Australia was The Prairie King. A revival was staged in Sydney by the MacMahon brothers in 1897. Advertising indicates that it contained 'with startling vividness and romantic flavour, the life and customs of WILD AMERICA, with its Red Indians, Scouts, Cowboys, Mexicans, Chiefs, Half-breeds, Guides [and] Frontiersmen' (Sydney Morning Herald 6 Nov. 1897, p.2). From 1897 onwards, little else about Garnet Walch is known other than he retired from the theatre.

Described by Colin Roderick as an 'educated Imperial convict', James Tucker had been a student at a school attached to Stonyhurst College, Lancashire, a Jesuit seminary, from 1814 to 1821. As pupils were admitted normally at the age of eleven, it has been argued that Tucker was more likely born in 1803, rather that 1808, which was probably the year of his baptism. On 3 March 1826, under the name James Rosenberg Tucker, he was tried at the Essex Assizes, charged with writing and sending a threatening letter to his cousin. He was found guilty and transported to Australia for life. He arrived in Sydney Cove in February 1827 on the convict ship, Midas, giving his occupation as clerk and shopman.

In the convict colony of New South Wales he was sent to Emu Plains Agricultural Establishment at the foot of the Blue Mountains, where he may have taken part in theatrical activities. During the 1830s he worked at the colonial architect's office in Sydney, winning a ticket of leave in 1835. He lost and regained his ticket-of-leave several times for various offences, moving to Maitland, Port Macquarie, Goulbourn and Moreton Bay before disappearing from convict records. While at Port Macquarie Tucker seems to have initiated theatrical entertainments, and also is said to have written several literary works; manuscripts of two, Jemmy Green in Australia (a comedy, first published 1955) and The Grahames' Vengeance (a historical drama by 'Otto von Rosenberg'), and a novel, Ralph Rashleigh (by 'Giacomo di Rosenberg'), have survived.

The existence of these works was first noticed publicly in the Sydney Morning Herald in 1892, when their authorship was linked with Francis Greenway. In 1920 the manuscripts were brought to an exhibition organised by the Royal Australian Historical Society, whose president sent Ralph Rashleigh to London. It was published there in 1929, in a severely edited form, as a convict memoir. After research in 1949-51 Roderick established the connections between Tucker and the manuscripts, and was responsible for the editions of Ralph Rashleigh and Jemmy Green in Australia which were published in 1952 and 1955 respectively. Primarily a picaresque novel, Ralph Rashleigh also conforms to other genres such as the English criminal novel and the guidebook genre popular at the time.

Some scholars believe that Tucker died in Sydney in 1888, but others have linked him to the earlier death of a James Tucker at the Liverpool Asylum in 1866. Some commentators, notably M.H. Ellis in an exchange with Roderick in the Bulletin December 1952 to February 1953, have argued that Tucker was a copyist whose known writing, e.g. the 1826 letter, does not reveal the kind of literacy and education required of the author of Ralph Rashleigh. Despite the uncertainty surrounding the authorship of Ralph Rashleigh and Jemmy Green in Australia, they remain widely admired as two of the best works on the transportation system written in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Source: Tucker, James The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature. William H. Wilde, Joy Hooton, and Barry Andrews. Oxford University Press 1994. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. Queensland University. 13 November 2007 http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t182.e3190

Colin Roderick was a writer, editor, academic and educator. He is perhaps best remembered for promoting the study of Australian literature (at a time when it attracted little academic interest), and also for his biographical and critical studies of Henry Lawson.

Roderick was educated at Bundaberg State School, and gained a BA in 1936, via the University of Queensland's external studies program, whilst working as a school teacher. He then went on to obtain a BEd, and following a brief period in the Australian Army, a MA and MEd, and some years later, a PhD (conferred by The University of Queensland in 1954, for a dissertation on Rosa Praed). After World War II, Roderick took up a position with Sydney publisher Angus and Robertson, where he remained until the 1960s, eventually becoming editor-in-chief of the firm's educational division.

During the 1950s, as convenor and then honorary secretary of the Australian Literature Committee, Roderick was instrumental in having a chair of Australian literature established at the University of Sydney, and in this period he also helped Miles Franklin establish the Miles Franklin Award for the best Australian novel. (He served as a Miles Franklin Award judge from 1957 to 1991.)

In 1965 Roderick was appointed Professor of English at the later-named James Cook University, Townsville, where he became an energetic teacher. He started the Foundation for Australian Literary Studies, as well as inaugurating a lecture series and an annual book award (both of which were subsequently named in his honour). Following retirement from James Cook University in 1976, Roderick continued his research and writing, producing authoritative biographies of Miles Franklin, Banjo Patterson, and the explorer Ludwig Leichhardt . As Emeritus Professor he also continued his occasional lectures on Australian literature at European universities (he spoke French, German and Italian).

The National Library of Australia holds a significant collection of Roderick's papers in its manuscripts collection.

The son of a prominent Bath (England) brewer, George Darrell first arrived in Australia around 1865 after having run away from home whilst in his teens. After a brief period of time in Melbourne he spent the next few years fossicking for gold in New Zealand before returning to Australia. It was during this time that he learned the art of engraving and performed in local amateur theatrical productions. Darrell's first theatrical success came through Mde. Fanny Simonsen who engaged him to sing secondary roles in grand opera. One such part was Prince Paul in The Grand Duchess. In 1869 he took on the juvenile lead opposite Walter Montgomery during the famous actor's Melbourne season. Around this time Darrell married Fanny Cathcart, the widow of actor Robert Heir, who had come to Australia in 1863 with Charles Kean. The union was to prove a successful one, both personally and professionally, and Darrell soon rose to prominence as a lead actor in his own right, and as a principal cast member for several overseas companies touring the country.

George Darrell's career as a dramatist began around the late 1860s/early 1870s. One of his earliest works was an adaptation of the drama Man and Wife (1871). In 1872 he became lessee and director of the old Victoria Theatre, and engaged a company of actors, among them George P. Carey and Maggie Oliver. He also toured throughout Australia presenting combinations of plays and musical entertainments, several of which were his own creations. Among these early works are the musical sketch The Darrell's at Home and a play with music Matrimonial Manoeuvres. Between 1872 and his retirement some thirty-five years later, George Darrell wrote and produced no less than 23 original plays and ten dramatisations of already existing stories. Interestingly, his early works (at least up to 1876) seldom attempted to tackle Australian subjects. Thus it was not until Transported for Life (1876), first staged in New Zealand some two years after Darrell had returned to the Antipodes from an American tour, that local characters and situations become pivotal to his narratives. His first season in Australia in 1877 (which followed the tour of New Zealand) also saw him present a revival of an earlier work, The Trump Card (1874). Darrell simply changed the narrative from America to Sydney (for the Sydney season) and to Melbourne (when he played there in 1880).

In 1878 Darrell produced Back from the Grave, a melodrama which had its plot based on spiritualism and was set almost entirely in England. This was followed in 1879 by the war melodrama The Forlorn Hope; Or, A Tale of Tomorrow. Margaret Williams suggests that this last work finally saw Darrell come into his own as an Australian playwright (Australia on the Popular Stage, p120). The Naked Truth, an emotional drama staged in 1883 with a small amount of musical performance, was followed that same year with his most acclaimed work The Sunny South. Regarded as one of the most important Australian plays of the late nineteenth century, it had long seasons in Melbourne and Sydney before touring throughout most of Australia. It was also produced in London in 1884 and later in America. Darrell is said to have played the role of Mat Morley at least 940 times. Among his more successful dramas were: The Squatter, which included the George Darrell/David Cope composition "The Passion Song Waltz" (1885); The Soggarth, a play with incidental music composed by Walter J. Rice (1886); another play The New Rush (1886); a dramatisation of Nat Gould's novel The Double Event (1893); and one of his final productions The Land of Gold (1907).

George Darrell's last appearance in public was in 1916 when, at age seventy-five, he 'declaimed with surprising spirit his own well-turned lyrics "Around the Dardanelles," and Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade,"' at the George Marlow-run Shakespeare Tercentenary Festival (Green Room Feb. 1921, 12). His last few years were spent at Roslyn Gardens (Sydney). On Thursday 27 January 1921 Darrell left a note in his room telling his friends he was going on a long voyage. The following day his body was washed up on Dee Why Beach on Sydney's north shore.

John Baldwin Buckstone was an English playwright and actor. Some of Buckstone's plays were produced in the Australian colonies in the nineteenth century.

Born in Ireland, Edward Geoghegan studied medicine after leaving school. In June 1839, however, he was convicted in a Dublin court of obtaining paper under false pretences and sentenced to seven years in the Australian colonies. He arrived in Sydney the following year, aged twenty seven, on the ship Middlesex. Because of his medical training, Geoghegan was given 'special employment' during his confinement on the Sydney Harbour penal establishment at Cockatoo Island. His duties were as a dispenser in the medical department, and, within a short time, he was granted permission to go ashore once a week. During these periods of leave, he was able to make the acquaintance of people associated with the Royal Victoria Theatre. One of these was Francis Nesbitt (McCrone), who became his patron and encouraged him to try his hand at writing works for the local actors.

Geoghegan's literary and theatrical aspirations were put briefly on hold, however, when he was caught by the authorities in a raid on the island and found to have been acting as a courier of illegal items of trade. Reduced to a common labourer, with his leave stopped, Geoghegan's medical background once again saved him, and he was eventually restored to his previous position. The incident did not help his cause regarding an early release, however, and he was made to serve his full seven-year sentence. Once allowed to regain his leave rights, Geoghegan was able to return to his theatrical activities, and between 1844 and 1845, he became the most performed of the Royal Victoria's resident playwrights, with at least eight of his works staged. These were presented either under pseudonyms or anonymously, as there existed a prohibition on convict actors (and subsequently convict playwrights) appearing on colonial stages.

The plays known to have been written by Geoghegan during this period include his two most famous works: The Hibernian Father (1844) and The Currency Lass (1844), which was one of the first professionally produced plays with a local setting. His other works include Ravenswood (1843), The Last Days of Pompeii (1844), A Christmas Carol (1844), The Royal Masquer (1845), Captain Kyd (1845), Lafitte the Pirate (1845), and The Jew of Dresden (unperformed). While there are several other works that, though they are attributed to other authors, some historians believe are Geoghegan's (based on handwriting analyses), he was also on a number of occasions accused of plagiarism. There are at least two other plays that may possibly have been written by Geoghegan, but the manuscripts have unfortunately been lost.

Edward Geoghegan was given his ticket of leave in 1846 and initially tried to make a living through work at the Royal Victoria Theatre. Despite having been the most successful Australian-based playwright of the early 1840s, his craft had unfortunately yielded him less than six pounds in all, with the doubtful bonus of 'several poetical addresses' (qtd. in Roger Covell's Australia's Music: Themes of a New Society, p.xix). Without his patron (Nesbitt had left for Victoria, where he died the following year) and with no great prospects for him in Sydney, Geoghegan travelled south in search of work. A letter he wrote from Victoria in 1852 to the Colonial Secretary requesting the text of The Jew of Dresden so that he could recopy it for a possible London production is virtually all that has been found, although his play A Trip to Geelong is known to have been produced in Melbourne in 1861. Although little is known about Geoghegan from this time on, he appears to have retired from writing for the theatre. This likely due to his having settled in Singleton, NSW, where in 1866 the became the municipality's first Town Clerk.

Writer, columnist, dramatist.

David Burn initially pursued a career in the British navy, but this was cut short due to prolonged ill health. In 1826, he followed his mother to Hobart, arriving in May with his daughter, Jemima Frances (an infant son died on the voyage). His wife, Frances Maria (née Eldred), remained in Scotland. Burn's application for a land grant failed when he claimed assets that belonged to his mother, and he subsequently returned to Edinburgh in 1829. The following year, he divorced his wife and returned to Hobart where he purchased for £180 a 500-acre property (202 ha) called Rotherwood. Situated near the River Ouse in the district of New Norfolk, the land had previously been owned by Dr (Sir) Robert Officer. It was at New Norfolk on 6 November 1832 that he married Catherine, third daughter of Michael Fenton of Castle Town, County Sligo.

Burn went back to the United Kingdom in 1836 with his mother, establishing himself initially in England. In 1840, he addressed the Colonial Society Club, London, strongly urging the need for representative government in the colony, and contributed a series of 'Sketches of Van Diemen's Land' to the Colonial Magazine (1840-41). In November of the following year, he returned to Rotherwood and became active in such local affairs as the newly formed Chamber of Commerce. His aspirations for the colonists were reaffirmed in his pamphlet Vindication of Van Diemen's Land in A Cursory Glance at Her Colonists as They Are, Not as They Have Been Represented To Be (London, 1840).

In 1842, Burn accompanied Sir John and Lady Jane Franklin on their expedition to the west coast of Tasmania, which he described in his Narrative of the Overland Journey of Sir John and Lady Franklin and Party from Hobart Town to Macquarie Harbour, 1842 (first published in 1843). Two years later, he and his mother became insolvent. Around the same time Burn became embroiled in a law suit when the brother of his second wife, Michael Fenton, sought to protect her property from him. At one stage, Fenton challenged the legality of Burn's Scottish divorce from his first wife. In 1845, Burn left Tasmania for New South Wales, remaining there for a little over a year. During his time in Sydney, two of his dramas, The Queen's Love and The First Lieutenant were staged at the Royal Victoria Theatre (1845). Burn migrated to New Zealand in 1847, settling in Auckland, where he later edited the Maori Messenger (1849, 1855-1863) and the New Zealand Herald (1864-1865).

Burn retired in 1865 and died on 14 June 1875 at Auckland, aged 76. In his youth, he was associated with some English playwrights and acquired some talent as an actor and a writer. Although his collection of Plays and Fugitive Pieces in Verse (1842) is generally considered to contain little in the way of literary quality, his three-act play The Bushrangers is historically significant in that it was the first drama 'to be written out of a direct experience of Australian life' (Margaret Williams, Australia on the Popular Stage, p.3). Although written and first performed in 1829 (at the Caledonian Theatre, Edinburgh, on 8 and 10 September), the play was not staged in Australia until 1971. Burn also collaborated with composer Isaac Nathan (q.v.) to write the song 'Sir Wilfred' (from the romantic drama The Queen's Love, ca. 1844). Among other manuscripts and publications attributed to Burn is An Excursion to Port Arthur in 1842.

Adam Lindsay Gordon was born at Fayal in the Azores in 1833, but his family returned to England when his father retired from a commission with the Bengal cavalry. Gordon was educated at Cheltenham Great Public School and the Royal Military Academy. The knowledge and admiration of classical literature that is reflected in some of Gordon's poetry was fostered by the headmaster of Worcester Grammar School. From a young age Gordon was passionate about sports, particularly steeple-chasing for which he developed a lasting reputation. His family was displeased with his behaviour and, after he rode a horse to win a steeple-chase without the owner's permission, the young man was banished to Australia in 1853 with a handful of letters of recommendation.

Gordon began a career with the South Australian Mounted Police, but resigned several years later to establish a solid reputation as a horse-breaker. By the mid 1860s he had married and was a disinterested representative in the South Australian Parliament. Gordon continued to read deeply and published his first volume of poetry, The Feud, in 1864. This was followed by Ashtaroth: A Dramatic Lyric (1867), Sea Spray and Smoke Drift (1867) and Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes (1870). Gordon's poetry was well received by many critics and other poets such as Charles Harpur and Henry Kendall.

Gordon's legendary horsemanship and galloping rhythms made his poetry favourite material for recitation around Australia. But financial problems and a failed attempt to secure a claim on Gordon lands in Scotland drove Gordon to despair. He shot himself in the early hours of 23 June 1870. Following his death, Gordon's popularity increased. In 1934 he became the only Australian to be honoured with a place in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.

Gordon's literary reputation suffered when twentieth century critics, searching for realistic descriptions of Australia and themes of mateship, found little in Gordon's poetry. In the 1980s and 1990s, however, some critics revisited Gordon's poetry and challenged earlier evaluations by revealing Gordon's significance in the context of nineteenth century Australian culture.

Gordon was chosen as one of 150 great South Australians by a panel of The Advertiser senior writers to celebrate the 150th Anniversay of The Advertiser newspaper, 12 April 2008.

Dibdin was from an English theatrical family. His grandfather was the dramatist, actor, and composer, Charles Dibdin (1745-1814) and his uncle, Charles Jnr [Charles Dibdin the Younger] (1768-1833) was a dramatist and manager of Sadler's Wells Theatre in London. Dibdin's father Thomas Dibdin (1771-1841) was also a dramatist and composer. Dibdin lived in Sydney, New South Wales, in the 1840s. He was employed as a prompter at the Royal Victoria Theatre in Pitt Street. Maryanne Dever suggests that Dibdin also wrote the play Humphrey Clinker, an adaption of the novel The Expedition of Humphrey Clinker by Tobias George Smollett.

Source: 'Notes on the Play' by Maryanne Dever Australasian Drama Studies no. 14, April 1989, pp. 88-89; Jon A. Gillaspie, ‘Dibdin, Charles (bap. 1745, d. 1814)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2014 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/7585, accessed 15 July 2014]; 'Royal Victoria Theatre', Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (18 February 1841): 2; 'Adelong', The Gundagai Times and Tumut, Adelong and Murrumbidgee District Advertiser (15 August 1868): 3; 'News of the Week', The Gundagai Times and Tumut, Adelong and Murrumbidgee District Advertiser (22 August 1868): 2.

British dramatist, critic and editor of Punch magazine, some of whose plays were produced in the Australian colonies in the nineteenth century.

Richard Butler, Earl of Glengall, was an Irish playwright. Some of his plays were performed in Sydney, New South Wales, in the 1830s.

The English dramatist 'William Thomas Moncrieff' (William George Thomas) wrote more than a hundred plays for the English stage during the 1820s and 1830s. Although there is no evidence that he visited Australia, he wrote the play Van Diemen's Land, one of the earliest plays about Australia produced in London.

His plays included an adaptation for the stage of Pierce Egan's enormously popular series of sketches of London life, introducing into Tom and Jerry the character of Jemmy Green, a 'green' East-Ender. The play was produced in London in 1821 and later performed in Sydney in 1834. The character of Jemmy proved to be very popular and a similar figure of the 'new chum' appeared in Australian drama in the plays Jemmy Green in Australia by James Tucker and 'Life in Sydney: or, the Ran Dan Club', which was an adaptation of Life in London.

Moncrieff's work was sometimes published in nineteenth-century Australian newspapers including the Temperance Advocate and Australasian Commercial and Agricultural Intelligencer.

Considered one of the most influential men in American theatre during his lifetime, John Augustin Daly's career saw him work as a drama critic, theatre manager, playwright, director and producer. He had his first and greatest success as a dramatist in 1867 with the sensation melodrama, Under the Gaslight, and went on to write morew than a hundred other plays. It was as a theatrical manager and producer, however, that he is best remembered. His career in this area began in 1869 when he became the manager of the Fifth Avenue Theatre in New York City. Ten years later he built and opened Daly's Theatre at Broadway. He opened another Daly's Theatre in London in 1893.

Some of Daly's plays were produced in the Australian colonies in the nineteenth century. Others were adapted and/or burlesqued during the same period.

Eric Irvin left school at the age of 15. After working in a succession of casual jobs, he became a journalist. He served with the AIF in the Middle East and Borneo during World War II. In the 1950s he became chief sub-editor of a country newspaper, and from 1962-1973 he was a sub-editor with the Sydney Morning Herald. He retired in 1973 and died in 1993.

Irvin published widely in academic journals on the subject of nineteenth and twentieth century Australian theatre, edited plays and wrote a biography of the actor George Darrell. His Dictionary of the Australian Theatre 1788-1914 has become an essential reference work and a basis for further work in cultural history. Irvin also wrote two books of poetry and works of local history.

The University of Queensland presented him with an honorary Doctor of Letters for his contirubtion to theatrical writing.

Margaret Anne Williams is the daughter of Clare and George Ross Williams. She was educated at Coburg primary and high schools. Williams received a B.A. degree from the University of Melbourne in 1958 and a Ph.D. from Monash University in 1973. Williams taught in Australia, England and Ghana before being appointed a lecturer in the School of Drama, University of New South Wales in 1973. She was a committee member of the Playwright's Conference, 1976-1981 and a board member of Toe Truck Theatre Inc. 1978-1981. Williams wrote critical works on Australian theatre including nineteenth century Australian theatre history.

(Source: Who's Who of Australian Women, comp. Andrea Lofthouse (1982): 472-473).

J. H. Wrangham was the business manager of the Alexandra Theatre, Little Burke Street, Melbourne

Wilhelm Hiener holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Diploma of Education in Music. He has worked as a teacher, journalist, restaurant owner and antique dealer, and served with the South African Army in World War II.

Hiener migrated to Tasmania in 1961, where he became a senior English teacher, a theatre critic and broadcaster. He has contributed to numerous literary magazines and journals, both in Australia and internationally, including Australian Literary Studies, the Bulletin, English in Australia, Makar and Poetry Australia. His verse has also been anthologised. In 1968, he co-edited A Burglar's Life: The Stirring Adventures of the Great English Burglar Mark Jeffrey: A Thrilling History of the Dark Days of Convictism in Australia.

Hiener has won several awards, including the Poetry Magazine Award in 1967, the Realist Poetry Prize in 1968, and a Commonwealth Literary Grant in 1971. With his wife J. E. Hiener, he wrote 'The Birdcage', which was successfully performed by the University of Tasmania in 1965. Hiener has written in the genres of poetry, drama, short stories, Australian studies, education and journalism. By the 1990s Hiener was living in New Zealand.

Contemporary accounts in colonial Sydney newspapers name Morris Phillips as a playwright and actor who, shortly after his arrival in Sydney from London, performed in his play The Massacre of Jerusalem at the Royal Victoria Theatre, Pitt Street Sydney, on 13 September 1838. Phillips was also a dancer and he performed a dance 'Cat-Choca' on the same program. Phillips may also have worked as a printer. The review of the play in the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser on 15 September 1838 (2) advises Phillips 'to cut the stage and return to his printing.'

According to the entry on Australia in Reader's Encyclopedia of World Drama, '[i]n 1838 Morris (also Morrice) Phillips arrived in Sydney with a play, Fidelio' (38). Fidelio; or, The Fortress of St. Jacques, according to Allardyce Nicoll, was first produced at the Royal Pavilion, Whitechapel Road, Mile End, in London on 7 January 1837 (vol iv, 372).

Allardyce Nicoll lists a play The Warrior Kings; or, The Massacre of Jerusalem by an unknown author first produced at the Royal Pavilion on 30 November 1835 (iv, 551). This may be by Phillips but AustLit has not yet established that the play is by Phillips.

OCLC World Cat lists three plays by Phillips including Fidelio. The other two are The Death Guard; Or, The Rustic Banditti: In 3 Acts (1835); and The Heiress of Glenfillan; or, The Delegates and the Children of the Wreck (18–). Neither of the latter two plays are listed in Nicoll.

Source: Gassner, John and Quinn, Edward (eds). The Reader's Encyclopedia of Word Drama (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1969); Nicoll, Allardyce. A History of English Drama 1660-1900 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966; OCLC WorldCat. Web. 23/06/2014. See also 'Works About Their Works' for this author in AustLit.

E. S. Haviland lived in Sydney. Apart from her published works, she also wrote an unpublished play 'On Wheels: A Comedy in Three Acts' (1896).

Note: The Mitchell Library Catalog records that an Ellen Bridson wrote in the Library's copy of Voices from Australia that she was the "mother of Philip Dale". Research has now shown that Ellen Bridson was the birth name of E. S. Haviland, the wife of Cyril Haviland and that she used the words 'mother of' in the sense of 'gave birth' to the pseudonym Philip Dale.

Robert Whitworth had been a barrister's clerk in England, but made his name and his living in the colonies with a diverse literary career: as a journalist, novelist, playwright, and according to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, a 'prolific miscellaneous writer'. After emigrating to New South Wales with his newly married wife in 1855, Whitworth worked as an actor in Sydney and as a horsebreaker in the Hunter River district; he was at one stage also a riding master in a circus spectacular, until a serious accident ended this career path. Whitworth did not abandon his stage career entirely, however, and continued to act in productions of his own plays.

Whitworth travelled widely through the colonies. In Sydney, he wrote for the Empire and several short-lived magazines and spent some time in Queensland before moving to Melbourne in 1864. Here Whitworth developed his reputation as a journalist, working on newspapers including The Age, The Argus, and the Daily Telegraph. He was proprietor and editor of the magazine Town Talk in the late 1870s, and had also been editor of The Australian Journal for an uncertain period from 1874 - occupying the position formerly held by his close friend, Marcus Clarke. Whitworth also spent several years in New Zealand, principally in Dunedin, where he wrote for the Otago Daily Times and, using the pen-name 'The Literary Bohemian', for the The Otago Witness.

Aside from his output of journalism, stories, novels and plays, Whitworth was active in the production of gazetteers, guides, and histories. Whitworth's 'wide knowledge of life in the city, bush, goldfields and theatre is reflected in his work.' Colin Roderick also considers his 'bushranging episodes' the starting point for 'Rolf Boldrewood,' and discerns 'an influence in style and matter upon the better-known writer.'

(Sources: Adapted from Australian Dictionary of Biography (1966-.):VI, 394-95)

And from biography by Colin Roderick in Australian Round-up: Stories from 1790 to 1950)

Novelist, playwright, journalist, author.

OVERVIEW

One of the most successful writers in Australia during the last half of the nineteenth century and author of His Natural Life, arguably the most famous Australian novel of that period, Marcus Clarke produced a prodigious quantity of literary and journalistic writing in the fourteen years he spent in the country. His creative output involved more than twenty dramatic works (many of which were staged, and one of which was an opera), five published novels, over forty short stories (including children's stories), and three dozen or more works of prose and poetry. In addition to this, he contributed countless newspaper and magazine articles and columns and was employed as an editor for several newspapers and publishers. He also published under a variety of pseudonyms.

BIOGRAPHY

The only son of Chancery lawyer William Hislop Clarke (Marcus Clarke's mother died when he was four years old), Clarke was educated at Cholmeley School, Highgate (otherwise known as Sir Roger Cholmeley's School at Highgate). Expecting to enter the Foreign Service upon graduation, his life was turned upside down during the final year of his studies when his father suffered a breakdown, which either led to, or was the result of, financial ruin. In 1863, following his father's death, Clarke made the decision to immigrate to Australia. He was initially taken under the wing of an uncle, James Langton Clarke, a County Court Judge at Ararat (Vic), and spent the first few years in Australia engaged in a variety of occupations, including a clerk at the Bank of Australasia and a station hand. The reality of Australian agriculture made him appreciate the city life of ‘cigars and chat, champagne, chicken and all that’ (Hergenban,1972). He was far better suited to life as a journalist and author.  In 1867, he became a staff writer for the Argus, and wrote the 'The Peripatetic Philosopher’ column for that paper and its associated paper the Australasian.  The column saw Clarke's mischievous sense of humour first emerge in print. It often satirised Melbourne society, ranging over topics from witty recreations of royal visits to immersions in Melbourne’s ‘lower bohemia’ that exposed the seedier side of the city and its poverty. It brought him into direct conflict with his publishers and influential personalities on a number of occasions.

Clarke also wrote for the Herald, the [Melbourne] Daily Telegraph and the Age. He joined a literary consortium to buy the Australian Monthly Magazine, which he edited in 1868-9 renamed as The Colonial Monthly.  He published his novel 'Long Odds' in the magazine, although two instalments were contributed by his friend G A Walstab. He then began the comic weekly, Humbug, envisioned as a rival to Punch  magazine, but it too folded. It was during this period, that he became friends with a coterie of influential young writers of the time, notably playwrights Robert Percy Whitworth, Garnet Walch, and James Neild. He also met and married actress Marion Dunn in 1869.

1870-1874: Inspired by his association with the theatrical world, Clarke soon tried his hand at writing for the stage. Over a four-year period, beginning in 1868, five of his works were given a theatrical production: Foul Play (1868); the pantomime Goody Two Shoes and Little Boy Blue (1870); Peacocks Feathers (1871), adapted from Moliere; the semi-tragic drama Fernande (1871), adapted from Victorien Sardou; and the drama Plot! (1872). During the same period, Clarke continued to work as a journalist. In 1870, he was given the editorship of the Australian Journal, a position that did not last long, although he remained with the journal for some two and a half years. His stay was primarily due to the enormous success of his serialised story, and one of the great Australian novels, His Natural Life (it was given its better-known title for the 1882 reprint). The success he garnered from his first attempts at writing for the stage also gave Clarke the opportunity to write for Harry Rickards in 1872. The English variety performer/entrepreneur was then touring his first company through Australia. Clarke's contributions included the sketches 'Perfection' and 'Strolling on the Sands.' In 1875, he adapted John Strachan's pantomime Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star for George Coppin, Richard Stewart, Henry R. Harwood, and John Hennings, the lessees of the Theatre Royal, Melbourne. For the next five years, however, Clarke's theatrical output lapsed. This was to a large extent the result of his employment with the Melbourne Public Library, which had rigid rules of behaviour for its servants, including the earning of outside income. Clarke began at the Library in 1870 as Secretary to the Board of Trustees and in 1873 was appointed Sub-Librarian. He did continue to write, but was unable to contribute regular columns such as the 'Peripatetic Philosopher', and was also required to steer clear of overt political commentary, at least under his own name. It would appear, too, that his hectic lifestyle, not the least being sheer overwork, led to bouts of anxiety and other related health problems in the mid-1870s. The additional burden of debt also contributed to his poor well-being. Matters reached a head in 1874, when he was forced into insolvency.

1875-1881: A collaborative effort with Robert Percy Whitworth, an adaptation of the French comedy Reverses, was written in 1876 but not staged until 1879. Indeed, it was not until 1878 that Clarke had his next theatrical work staged, the musical burlesque extravaganza Alfred the Great. His non-music theatre works from this period onwards include The Moonstone, a romantic drama adapted from the Wilkie Collins novel, and the comedy Baby's Luck, co-written with actor John L. Hall. It has been speculated that Clarke's return to writing during the late 1870s may well have been the result of financial need. This situation did not improve for him, as he was again forced into bankruptcy in 1881. The motivation to write was still there, however. In the two years before his death in 1881 from erysipelas, Clarke produced some of his best work, particularly in respect of his dramatic writing.

Perhaps the most significant of his later productions was the libretto for a satirical operetta called The Happy Land (1880). Banned from performance in Victoria due to its controversial subject matter (much of it being aimed at the government of the day), the work stirred up much debate and returned Clarke once again to the position of public agitator. Following The Happy Land, Clarke had better box-office success with the comedies A Daughter of Eve and Forbidden Fruit, both of which were staged in Melbourne in 1880. These last two works also starred his wife Marion, who had returned to the stage for the first time since 1868. On his death, Clarke also left an unfinished comic opera libretto titled Queen Venus. A completed version, with music composed by visiting French composer Henri Kowalski (q.v.), was given its Australian debut as Moustique in 1889. (Kowalski had presented it in Brussels six years earlier).

Four years after his death, Clarke's most famous novel was transferred to the stage for the first time. More than a dozen different versions are known to have been staged between 1885 and 1913, including productions by Alfred Dampier, Thomas Somers, George Leitch, Dan Barry, and Edmund Duggan.

Arguably Australia's most successful playwright on the international stage during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, C. Haddon Chambers wrote at least eight society plays (generally referred to at that time as 'well-made' plays). A number of his works were also staged in America, Europe and Australia.

One of five children, Chambers was educated at Sydney's Fort Street School in Marrickville and Petersham. His father was civil servant who spent some twenty-five years with the Sydney Lands Department, and was there that young Charles spent the first four or five years of his working life. Although there is no indication that he had any interest in a literary career, it has been claimed that Chambers won a competition in high school with an essay on cruelty to animals (Theatre Magazine October 1909, p3). After leaving the Lands Department he found employment for a time as a canvasser for the Commercial Insurance Union, before travelling to England and Ireland courtesy of a small inheritance left to him by an uncle in Ireland. While on his way back Chambers by chance struck up a friendship with members of the Annis Montague Opera Company, then on its way to tour Australia and New Zealand. Although he returned to selling insurance upon arriving back in Sydney (this time with the A.M.P. Society), this was short-lived as he eventually took up an offer from Miss Montague to be her manager and in that capacity returned to England around 1882.

It was while travelling by train in England that Chambers had his second important chance meeting, this time with novelist Outram Tristram. Fascinated by the Australian's stories of home, Tristram urged Chambers to try his hand at writing. Among his first published works were contributions to Truth, The Hawk and The Century Magazine (Theatre Magazine October 1909, p4). His first attempt at writing for the stage was a curtain-raiser, The Open Gate. This was followed by Devils Caresfoot, a dramatisation of H. Rider Haggard's Dawn. It was Captain Swift (1888) however, that established Chambers' reputation as an emerging dramatist. Although set in England, as were all his theatre works, the central character in this play is a Queensland bushranger who has returned to England to escape the law. According to Chambers he only managed to get the play staged after cornering producer Herbert Beebolm Tree in a Turkish bath and reading him the first act. Tree himself appeared in the title role (Theatre 1 October 1909, p4).

Among Chambers' other known works to be staged, many of which were unpublished, are : The Tyranny of Tears, The Idler, John A' Dreams (aka John-a-Dreaming), The Honourable Herbert, The Queen of Manoa, The Golden Silence, Boys Together and The Fatal Card (both staged at London's Adelphi Theatre), A Modern Magdalene (ca. 1902), The Younger Mrs Parting (ca. 1905) and The Impossible Woman (ca. 1914). Chambers's translation of the French play Le Voleur (The Thief) is said to have been staged to much success in New York, with Kryle Bellow in the lead role (Brisbane Courier 16 November 1907, p13).

A popular English novelist and dramatist during the nineteenth century, Charles Reade is best remembered for The Cloister and the Hearth, a medieval romance. He completed a Bachelor degree at Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1835 and later became dean of arts and vice-president. In 1836 his name was entered at Lincoln's Inn in 1836. He was elected Vinerian Fellow in 1842, and called to the bar in 1843. Shorlty after completing a Doctor of Civil Law (D.C.L.) degree in 1847 he moved to London and abandoned law in favour of a literary career.

Reade began his new career as a dramatist, producing his first comedy, The Ladies' Battle at the Olympic Theatre in May 1851. It was followed by Angela (1851), A Village Tale (1852), The Lost Husband (1852), and Gold (1853). He established his theatrical reputation in 1852 with the two-act comedy, Masks and Faces, a collaboration with Tom Taylor, and as a novelist two years later with It is Never too Late to Mend. The novel was written as a means of trying to bring attention to abuses in prison discipline and the treatment of criminals. His greatest success as a dramatist, and also his last play produced before his death, was Drink (1879), an adaptation of Émile Zola's L'Assommoir.

Some of Reades plays were produced in the Australian colonies in the nineteenth century. Others were adapted and/or burlesqued during the same period.

A writer and editor whose career saw him work in a variety of genres, including drama, fiction, poetry, literary criticism, book reviews, social commentary, and children's fiction, Richard Horne's personal life was equally varied in its pursuits. Upon graduating from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, he applied for a position with the East India Company. When his application was rejected, Horne travelled to Mexico and served for several years as a midshipman in the Mexican navy. After leaving the navy, he sought work as merchant seaman, basing himself in America, but eventually returned to England to embark on a literary career. His first published poem appeared in the Athenaeum in 1828. Over the next two decades, Horne published several books and plays, and acted as editor for the Monthly Repository (1836-37). At one stage, he published in that magazine an account of his earlier adventures when travelling the world. Two of his earlier successes were the poetical tragedies Cosmo de Medici: An Historical Tragedy and Other Poems (1837) and The Death of Marlowe: A Tragedy in One Act (1837). Horne also published a work entitled An Exposition of the False Mediums and Barriers Excluding Men of Genius from the Public. In this work, he advocated the establishment of a literary and artistic society for the permanent support of men of superior ability in all departments of human genius and knowledge (ctd. Age 21 Jan. 1928, p26). Another notable publication was the two-volume work The History of Napoleon.

In 1843, Horne published what was to become his most critically and publicly acclaimed poems, the epic Orion. Indeed, it sold out its first three editions in a very brief time and was reprinted six times in its first year of publication. The poem's success was due not only to its capacity to capture the public's imagination but also because Horne placed several whimsical demands on the publishers, chiefly that the publication be sold at one farthing a copy, that not more than one copy should be sold to the one person, and that it should not be sold to a person who mispronounced the title. Following the publication of Orion, Horne published A New Spirit of the Age, the prose work for which he is best remembered. The work met with severe criticism when it was first published, however, due largely to the author's outspoken judgement of some of its subjects. In writing these essays on the men and women whom he considered best represented the literary spirit of the age, Horne was given a good deal of assistance by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, with whom he had long been friendly and in correspondence. At least four of Horne's plays are known to have been staged in London up until 1852, along with a re-written version of Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, which is believed to have been produced over the course of some fifty years in Australia, England, and America. He also published works for children, including Adventures of a London Doll (1850), published under the name 'Mrs Fairstar'.

In 1852, Horne travelled to Australia in search of a fortune on the Victorian goldfields. The quest was not successful, however, and instead he found himself taking on a number of short-lived government positions, including that of Commander of the Victorian Gold Escort (1852), Assistant Commissioner of Crown Lands for the gold fields (1853-54), and, some time later, a position as a territorial magistrate. When his somewhat erratic behaviour saw him eventually dismissed from the civil service, he returned to his career as a writer (from the late 1850s), a move that naturally included journalism. In addition to his occasional contributions to the Melbourne papers, Horne wrote several new book-length works, including a guide to would-be immigrants titled Australian Facts and Prospects (1859). In July 1860, his tragedy TheDeath of Marlowe was successfully staged at Melbourne's Theatre Royal, one result being that he was offered the chance to have a new work staged in the city. He soon afterwards produced the five-act comedy in blank verse A Spec in China, but it failed dismally. Lasting only two nights, the play was severely criticised in the local press. Apparently undeterred by this setback, Horne continued writing, although by this time he was otherwise employed by the Victorian government as registrar, and later warden, at the Blue Mountain goldfield near Trentham. It was while stationed there that he completed (in 1864) the lyric drama Prometheus the Fire Bringer. Horne returned to Melbourne around 1866 and within a short period of time re-established himself in the city's theatrical and musical circles, becoming at one stage president of the Garrick Club. As president, he organised in May 1866 a charity entertainment at the club for the Brooke Memorial Fund (Argus 8 May 1866, p.5). One of the items presented was a threnody (dirge or song of lamentation) that he co-wrote with composer Dr Joseph Summers (q.v.).

In October 1866, Horne's masque The South Seas Sisters, a collaboration with composer Charles Horsley (q.v.), was produced as one of the highlights of the opening of the Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition. Successfully received by both audiences and critics, it was given a second performance a few nights later. The following year, Horne again collaborated with Joseph Summers, contributing the text to the composer's cantata Galatea Secunda. That same year also saw Horne change his middle name from Henry to Hengist, allegedly taking the surname of a miner he had met in the goldfields. A collaboration with composer Carl Schmitt in the late 1860s led to the completion of a three-act opera titled Cazille. (Schmitt tried in vain to get the work staged, but succeeded only in having several excerpts from it presented during a benefit concert at the Sydney Masonic Hall in 1872.) Horne's failure to get Cazille produced exacerbated his disillusionment with Australia, and in 1869 he returned to England. A few years later, he was granted a civil list pension of £50 a year, which was soon after raised to £100. He continued to write, producing a number of works over the next decade or so, but none of these matched his earlier success.

Actor, writer, manager, director.

Born at Lismore, County Waterford, Ireland, son of Dennis Duggan, farmer, and his wife Mary Ann (nee Walsh), Duggan operated his own country touring company in the 1890s and was later an actor and stage-manager with the Charles Holloway-William Anderson (q.v.) company (ca. 1900).

In September 1912 Anderson handed over the King's theatre to Bert Bailey (q.v.) with Duggan as manager. The two men soon formed a creative partnership, writing and adapting a number of works under the combined name 'Albert Edmunds.' The new company opened with the famous dramatisation of On Our Selection, with Duggan playing the Irishman, Maloney. Another 'Albert Edmunds' play, The Native Born, followed in 1913. Duggan remained with the Bailey-Grant management at the King's, touring Australia and New Zealand in his own and other melodramas, and producing a revival of On Our Selection in Melbourne in 1920. He persuaded Steele Rudd (q.v.) to write The Rudd Family which he produced in 1928, starring as 'Dad'.

Duggan's two daughters, Eugene and Louie, became established stage actors and entertainers in their own right. Eugenie, who specialised in dramatic character roles, became Mrs William Anderson. Louie, was well-known as both an actress and variety entertainer during the late 1910s and 1920s.

John George Lang was born at Parramatta, New South Wales, in 1816, the grandson of emancipists. He was educated at Sydney College and matriculated to Trinity College, Cambridge, but was sent down for writing a blasphemous litany. Lang proceeded to read law at the Middle Temple and was called to the bar in 1841. That year Lang returned to Sydney with his wife, Lucy Peterson, whom he had married in 1839, and was admitted as a barrister to the Supreme Court. But Lang's convict ancestry made it difficult to pursue a career in Sydney, and he left for India in 1842. Lang continued to practise law there, and he is remembered for supporting Indian people during British rule. He mastered both Hindi and Persian languages, translating some poetry from Urdu to English, and founded the Mofussilite newspaper. As it carried anti-government reports, its file copies were destroyed, but more recently it has been re-established by writer/journalist Jai Prakash Uttarakhandi as an English/Hindi weekly to keep Lang's name alive. Lang died under 'mysterious circumstances' at Mussoorie, India, in 1864.

Lang is best known for his volume of stories, Botany Bay, or, True Tales of Early Australia (1859), containing he frequently anthologised 'The Ghost Upon the Rail', which Colin Roderick considers the first account of the story of Fisher's Ghost. Authorship of Legends of Australia (1842) has also been attributed to Lang, making him the first Australian-born novelist. His 1855 novel The Forger's Wife (Assigned to His Wife) draws on his knowledge of the convict assignment system and makes him a forerunner of Caroline Leakey and Marcus Clarke. Most of Lang's writing, however, is not set in Australia. Altogether he published nine novels, a travel book and one collection of stories. He was also a frequent contributor to several periodicals and newspapers.

English-born Helen Benbow arrived in Australia with her mother in 1854 following the death of her father. She lived in various gold mining towns in Central Victoria for over a decade before journeying back to England. She returned to Australia in 1871. In 1873 Benbow studied art at the National Gallery School, Melbourne, under the tutelage of Eugen von Guérard.

In late 1874 two of Benbow's plays were performed in Bendigo. One of these, For £60,000, then had a second season in Melbourne. Two years later it was performed in Sydney.

Benbow married a sea-captain, Robert McNab, and they had two children. She spent much of the rest of her life travelling, and living in England. After her brief period of theatrical fame, Benbow appears to have written little. With her sister, Anne Agnes Benbow (q.v.), she published the children's book, Australian Wonderland: A Fairy Chain. According to Richard Fotheringham, this book, published in 1899, 'may have been written many years earlier' while the sisters were still living in Victoria.

Source: Introduction to For £60,000, Australian Plays for the Colonial Stage, 1834-1899, Richard Fotheringham (ed.), 2006.

After leaving England, Thomas Walker travelled through several countries before arriving in West Australia. In 1874 he migrated to Canada, where he set up as a spiritual medium; he was implicated in a felonious killing but escaped indictment and left for England where he worked for the Preston Herald. He then worked as a spiritualist and journalist in the USA before coming to Sydney in 1877 under the sponsorship of Australian spiritualists. After a chequered career in NSW and some further wanderings overseas, during which he published a book of verse in South Africa, he abandoned spiritualism and established himself in Sydney as a secularist spokesman and populist campaigner. His second volume of verse, Bush Pilgrims, was published in 1885 and in the same year he enjoyed the success of his dramatisation of His Natural Life (1874) and the production of his own play, in which he acted, 'Marmondelle the Moor'. In 1887 Walker was elected to the Legislative Assembly, where he had a vociferous career, which suffered a reversal in mid-1892 when he inadvertently shot and wounded a clergyman. Convicted of being drunk and disorderly, he immediately set up as a temperance lecturer and in 1899 arrived in WA in that role. He wrote for and edited the West Australian Sunday Times, worked for the Kalgoorlie Sun and the Kalgoorlie Miner and in 1905 was elected to the Legislative Assembly, where he remained until his death in 1932, successfully combining politics, farming and law.

Adapted from the entry in the Oxford Companion to Australian Literature.

John Oxenford was an English playwright and translator. Some of his plays were produced in the Australian colonies in the nineteenth century.

Thomas William Robertson was a British playwright some of whose plays were produced in the Australian colonies in the nineteenth century.

The daughter of Sir William Manning, the famous lawyer and politician, Emily Matilda Manning grew up in Sydney. After her private school education she attended the University of Sydney and was encouraged to take an interest in literature.

When Manning was about nineteen, her name was romantically linked with David Scott Mitchell (q.v.), whose book collection later formed the basis of the Mitchell Library in Sydney. During 1864 some light-hearted poems were exchanged between the two. Manning soon left Australia for London where her connections permitted her to move in literary circles and she was able to meet Tennyson, Browning, Huxley and George Elliot. She commenced her journalistic career by writing for periodicals including Monthly Packet of Evening Readings and Golden Hours.

Manning returned to Sydney at the beginning of the 1870s to become one of the first regular women contributors to the newspapers and periodicals. She wrote articles for the Australian Town and Country Journal, Sydney Morning Herald and Sydney Mail either anonymously or under the pen-name 'Australie'.

In 1873 Manning married Henry L. Heron, a Sydney solicitor. She combined the roles of wife and mother with writing articles for magazines and newspapers and was also highly regarded as a literary critic. Her prose and verse portrayed empathy for her fellow human beings. During 1888 and 1889 she became the principal female journalist on the Herald's Women's column and for the year before her death she was associate editor of the Illustrated Sydney Herald.

Emily Manning died in August 1890 in Sydney, at the age of 45.