Brief Biography

Clarence (Clarrie or Den) Michael James Stanislaus Dennis was born in Auburn, South Australia on September 7, 1876, to James Dennis and his second wife Catherine (Kate) Tobin. For reasons that are unclear, though which are probably due to the boy's and the mother's ill-health and frailty, Dennis was looked after in his early years by his mother's aunts who lived nearby. In 1883, James Dennis took up the lease on a hotel in Gladstone in South Australia's mid-North and, a couple of years later, moved again, this time seven miles further north to the township of Laura, and the Beetaloo Hotel.

Dennis's mother died in 1890 leaving his father with 3 sons and a hotel to look after. This was never going to work successfully so two of Kate's unmarried sisters left their home in Mintaro (in the Clare Valley) and moved to Laura to help with the children's upbringing. For some time in his teens Dennis attended the Christian Brothers' College in Adelaide but had returned to Laura by the age of 17. At that time he took a job as a clerk to a local solicitor, and it was during this period that he published his first poem, when 19, titled "The Singular Experiences of Six Sturdy Sportsmen" - which concerned the exploits of Dennis and a group of his mates when lost in the Beetaloo Hills just outside Laura. The verse was published in the local Laura newspaper The Laura Standard. Some time later he worked on the staff of the Critic, an Adelaide weekly newspaper. By the age of 21 he was back in Laura working as a barman in his father's hotel, and a year or so later left Laura for Broken Hill in New South Wales.

In the early 1900s he was back in Adelaide and back on the staff of the Critic, finally ending up as the journal's editor. In 1905 he started a threepenny weekly newspaper with A.E. Martin called the Gadfly, which was to have a life-span of about three years. About 18 months into that time, however, Dennis left the paper and Adelaide and headed to Melbourne. He kept himself employed (though not very well) as a freelance journalist in Melbourne, until he came under the influence of the artist Hal Waugh who took him off to a camp he had established in the Dandenong Ranges about 40 miles east of Melbourne at a place called Toolangi. Dennis was to remain here or in this vicinity for the bulk of the rest of his life.

Over the next five years Dennis published a series of poems in various publications (such as The Bulletin) which would later be collected in his first book, Backblock Ballads and Other Verses, published in 1913. Although the book received favourable reviews, it did not sell very well and Dennis decided to try his luck in Sydney where he joined the staff of the union journal, The Call: The Ha'penny Daily. Again this sojourn did not last very long and he returned to Melbourne where he took up employment in the Public Service.

It was shortly after he left Sydney that he wrote to Angus and Robertson, the Sydney-based publisher, with his ideas for a book entitled The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke, based on several of the pieces in his first book. After a series of misunderstandings between Dennis and George Robertson of the publishers, the book was published in mid-October 1915. By 5 November 1915 the first edition of 2,480 copies (of which 2,166 were for sale) was sold out. A second edition of 5,000 copies in November also rapidly sold out, as did a third published on 3 December 1915. After nine months the book had sold approximately 51,000 copies. Later this grew to 66,148 copies of the book sold in Australia and New Zealand alone and did not include the totals for any copies of the editions published in Britain, Canada or the USA. The Bloke struck a nerve with Australian audiences and by September 1916 they had been dramatised for the stage, were performed in Sydney and Melbourne and were probably as popular as it was possible to be at that time.

On 9th October 1916 Dennis published The Moods of Ginger Mick based on a character from The Sentimental Bloke which was to sell 42,349 copies within six months. Dennis had become, by sales and by general sentiment, the Laureate of the Larrikin, and the best-known poet in Australia.

Dennis's next book, The Glugs of Gosh, broke with the tradition of The Bloke and presented a mixture of satire and fantasy masquerading as a book for children. It originally started life as a present for the son of a close friend who was recovering from a shooting accident. The book was a major departure in style for Dennis and aptly showed the breadth of his talent.

By 1917 Dennis was the most prosperous poet in Australian history and decided to marry Olive (Biddy) Herron of Melbourne. He and his wife applied for the lease of the property on which he had been living in Toolangi, and a short time later was able to gain definitive ownership of the land. Dennis had originally wanted to name the place "Seaview", which, given the distance from the sea seems something of a joke, but finally decided on the name "Arden". As Dennis wrote later: "There's the lit'ry association, there's the forest, there's my pen-name in the second syllable, and there's a character called Dennis in As You Like It. So 'Arden" it had to be."

Dennis's attachment to The Bloke continued with the publication of Doreen and Digger Smith, over the next few years, to be followed later by Rose of Spadgers in 1924. In the interim he wrote a book concerned with the men and the area of the Dandenong Ranges in Jim of the Hills. Dennis became attached to the staff of the Melbourne Herald in 1922 and the bulk of his work from that time on was devoted to pieces for the newspaper. Over the next sixteen years Dennis was to produce some 3,000-odd pieces of poems and prose pieces, the vast majority of which were never collected in his lifetime. The exception was the publication of his last book The Singing Garden. Dennis's wife, under the name Margaret Herron, compiled a collection entitled Random Verses in 1952, and the Melbourne journalist, Garrie Hutchinson produced another collection from this period (with an effort being made to not duplicate Herron's work) titled The C.J. Dennis Collection in 1987.

CJ Dennis died on 22 June, 1938 at the age of 61. He was buried in Box Hill cemetary the next day. The inscription on his tombstone reads:

After his death, J.A. Lyons, Prime Minister of Australia at the time, said: "I am sure that I speak for all Australians in expressing deep regret at the death of CJ Dennis. He was the Robert Burns of Australia. He created characters which have become immortal and he captured the true Australian spirit. Already his work is world-famous, and future generations will treasure it."

Since his death some seventy years ago, Dennis has probably fallen to third on the "classic" Australian poetry list behind Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson. Both of these poets have appeared on Australian currency notes. It might well be time to start a campaign to have Dennis so honoured when next the Reserve Bank decides to change the ten dollar bill.