Admirers of his brilliant and typically Australian work will learn with pleasure that Mr. C. J. Dennis, famous as the creator of "The Sentimental Bloke," and the author of numerous other books of verse, has been specifically engaged to conduct a daily column for "The Herald." His contributions will be in his own characteristic vein, and the first of them will appear on Monday.

Mr Dennis's works are too well known throughout Australia and beyond it to need any lengthy description here. His achievements as humorist and satirist are familiar to everyone who appreciates Australian literature. In "The Sentimental Bloke" and "The Moods of Ginger Mick" he has accomplished in a memorable manner the portrayal of the self-contained, unassuming, sardonically humorous Australian who lives for his country, and, if need be, dies for it. He has attained high rank as a lyrical lampoonist of our politics and politicians, and many of his verses have been recited, not only in purely literary circles, but in the trenches of Gallipoli and on the battlefields of France, where his "Singing Soldiers" made known to the cheering Tommy and the appreciative poilu that this backblocks Milton was neither mute nor inglorious.

Besides the books mentioned, Mr Dennis is the author of "The Glugs of Gosh," "Jim of the Hills," "Doreen," "Backblock Ballads," and several other volumes. It was through verse that Dennis became a journalist; it was through journalism that his voice in verse was heard; and to verse and journalism together that he owes his fame. Wherever Australians are, there is Dennis also, whether on the film or in the printed page. He has told his tale in a tongue understanded of the people, so that of all Australia's poets, his is "first in peace, first in war, and first in the hearts of his country-men."

Humor and pathos are his - he has been baptised by printer's ink, but purified of that murky chrism by the running water and the clean winds of the Bush. He knows, too, the cities and their denizens, and his heart is with them. He has studied his types all over the Commonwealth, and has portrayed them in their habit as they live. He has been invited to prosecute his career in England, but, as he said in his preface to the fifty-first thousand of "The Sentimenal Bloke": "Even the flattering invitation of so great a man as H.G. Wells to come and work in the older land does not entice me from the task I fondly believe to be mine in common with other writers of Australia. England has many writers; we in Australia have few, and there is big work before us."

Dennis combines the qualities of the satirist, the humorist, and the philosopher; the capacity of pressman and poet. He was born in 1876 in the little South Australian town of Auburn, where his father, a retired sea captain, kept an hotel. His boyhood was spent in an agricultural and pastoral district, where horses were the chief topic of thought and conversation. He received his educaton at a State school and at colleges in Adelaide. He wrote his first verse at the age of six, and at one school he and four schoolmates produced "The Weary Weekly," the demise of which was due to a rather too personal cartoon which won Dennis a black eye.

Leaving school at the age of 17, Dennis became a junior clerk in an Adelaide stock and station agency. He spent his first week's salary on two of Dickens' books, and was discharged soon afterwards because he neglected his work for Rider Haggard's novels. He went home to Laura, S.A., and stayed there until he was 21, becoming in the meantime an ardent imitator of Kipling. The Adelaide "Critic" had encouraged him by the publication of his verses, and he joined the staff of that paper at the age of 22.

A year later he went to Broken Hill, arriving with 1/9 in his pocket. For eighteen months he worked by turn as miner, carpenter, railway construction laborer, photographer's canvasser, and insurance agent. It was a hard life and a thankless, and once he nearly perished from thirst and exhaustion while traversing the saltbush wastes between Broken Hill and Poolamacca. He returned to "The Critic," became editor, and in less than two years founded a bright and entertaining weekly, "The Gadfly." But the City of Churches refused to be stung for more than 18 months, at the end of which period the paper, which had been launched on a capital of £150, came to an end. With Dennis on "The Gadfly" were associated writers and artists who afterwards became famous beyond Australia, one of them being Will Dyson, the cartoonist.

After spending a month or two in Melbourne, Dennis settled at Toolangi in Gippsland, where he took possession of a sawmiller's disused hut, and kept loneliness at bay - this was before he was married - by writing political and topical verse and playing a banjo which he made out of native blackwood, galvanised iron, the skin of a cat, and the sinews of a wallaby.

About this time "Backblock Ballads" was published, and "The Sentimental Bloke" was begun. It was completed at the country home at Sassafras of Mr J. G. Roberts, a well-known Victorian bibliophile. Portion of the work was done in a disused omnibus, brought up from Melbourne as a week-end cabin, and fitted as a writing room.

Shortly before "The Sentimental Bloke" became a book, and long before its appearance in England and America, and its dramatisation as a movie film was thought of, Dennis took a position in the Navy office, and was afterwards transferred to the Federal Attorney-General's department as confidential secretary to Senator E.J. Russell. In view of pressing demands of his literary work he resigned his post, and retired to Toolangi, where he built a delightful country home, and devoted himself to the successful production of books.

The position he has accepted on the staff of "The Herald" necessitates his becoming a city resident once more, but he has not utterly abandoned the bush home on the main Dandenong Range, where so much of his best work was done.

The photograph at the head of this sketch shows what manner of man C.J. Dennis is. For the rest, he writes by preference with green ink, and (for a poet) he spells well.

Herald, 12 May 1922, p9

Note:
The photograph referred to in the last paragraph above has not been included due to the poor nature of the reproduction.