Clarence James Dennis (1876-1938) won popular acclaim in World War I with "The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke" (1915), and tens of thousands of copies of his slang-enlivened ballads were sold. In these poems and in the collections which followed, Dennis did for the larrikin what Louis Stone had done a little earlier in his novel, "Jonah". Henry Lawson said that the Doreen about whom Dennis wrote "stands for all good women, whether down in the smothering alleys or up in the frozen heights."

Dennis, who was born in South Australia, was a journalist for a long period in Adelaide and Melbourne. He published many books of light and satirical verse, including "The Moods of Ginger Mick" (1916) and "The Glugs of Gosh" (1917), but none of them reached the standard set in "The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke." Much of the slang which Dennis used in his verse is now out-of-date, but he had a skill in ingenious rhyming and a rich (if sentimental) brand of humour that give his lilting ballads a lasting iterest.

The photograph above shows a glimpse of Litte Lonsdale Street in Melbourne - part of the setting for Dennis's lyrics. In "The Play" (a larrikin commetary on 'Romeo and Juliet'), Dennis wrote:

      Wot's in a name?  Wot's in a string o' words?
      They scraps in ole Verona wiv the'r swords,
      An' never give a bloke a stray dog's chance,
      An' that's Romance.
      But when they deals it out wiv bricks an' boots
      In Little Lon., they're low, degraded broots. 

Note
The photograph mentioned in the text did not print well enough to be reproduced here. In any event, the scene seems more likely to have been taken in the back streets of Collingwood or Richmond than in Little Lonsdale Street.