Introduction

The aim of this website is to provide a picture of C.J. Dennis - his life and works - and to make it as a complete as possible. Such an ambition is quite ridiculous, of course, given the volume of material Dennis produced in his lifetime. But I'll try to do my best.

Although I'm not sure of the exact number (I doubt anyone is), Dennis appears to have produced somewhere in the vicinity of 4,000 pieces of prose and poetry during his 40 or so years as a writer. It would be hard to find another Australian writer who comes close to the sheer volume of material he produced. Some of this work is quite easy to find - the State Library of Victoria has microfilm copies of issues of the Herald newspaper where Dennis published approximately 3,000 pieces over a 25 year period - and some of it has been lost. Some of it has been extensively indexed and some has slipped through the net. It's my aim to bring as much of that work as possible back into the public domain so that current-day readers can get an appreciation of the range of subjects covered.

I have had to make a decision as to the best location on this web site for Dennis's work that was published in two or more places and have come to the following rules:
(i) works published after his death (such as those in Random Verse and The C.J. Dennis Collection) will show their first publication (e.g. the Herald) and will also mention their later appearance in various collections.
(ii) works published during Dennis's lifetime and later included in his major works (such as "A Spring Song" which was originally published in the Bulletin and subsequently included in The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke) will be included in the major book index and referenced from their original newspaper or magazine appearance.

You should be able to navigate around this site relatively easily by use of the menu in the left-hand column. Additional entries or sub-menu entries may be added from time to time but I expect the basic structure of this column to remain as you see it here.

Please note that C.J. Dennis died in 1938. He had no direct descendants and his work is now out of copyright (which I read as being 50 years after an author's death).