Brief Biography

Adam Lindsay Gordon was born in 1833 at Fayal in the Azores where his mother's father had a plantation. He completed his education in England and was sent by his family to South Australia in 1853 where he enlisted in the mounted police. He was briefly a member of Parliament and lived in Western Australia and Ballarat before moving to Melbourne. During his time in Ballarat he suffered a severe head injury in a riding accident, was bankrupted by a fire in the livery stable and lost his infant daughter. The day after the publication of his poems in Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes he committed suicide on Brighton Beach in Melbourne. The poems that follow are all taken from that volume. He is the only Australian poet to be honoured with a bust in the Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey in London.

Bibliography

Poetry Collections
Sea Spray and Smoke Drift 1867
Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes 1870
Selected Poems of Adam Lindsay Gordon 1912

Biographies
The Life of Adam Lindsay Gordon 1934, by Edith Humpris
Adam Lindsay Gordon 1968, by C.F. MacRae
Adam Lindsay Gordon 1972, by W.H. Wilde
Adam Lindsay Gordon: The Man and the Myth 1978, by Geoffrey Hutton
Adam Lindsay Gordon: A Comprehensive Bibliography 1986, compiled by Ian F. MacLaren

References
Adam Lindsay Gordon by Joan Torrance

This page and its contents are copyright ©2001-05 by Perry Middlemiss, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Last modified: May 19, 2005.