Birthdays of important Australian authors are coming thick and fast at present. Today's is Edward Dyson's.
Dyson was born in 1865 near Ballarat in Victoria. His father was a mining engineer and Edward and his brothers all started off their working lives working in the goldmines in and around Victoria. Even though they came from solid working-class backgrounds Edward, and his brothers Will and Ambrose, all went on to artistic careers in writing or art. Will later married Norman Lindsay's sister Ruby. Though there was a lot of bad blood between Lindsay and Will after Ruby died of influenza in London.
Dyson supported his family by writing and editing at a time when such pursuits were poorly paid. He was very prolific. AustLit, the major resource for Australian literature, currently lists some 1635 items (poems, short stories and novel) in its catalog. This number is increasing all the time as further periodicals from the period of his working career are indexed. In any sense of the word he was prolific. He died in 1931 and is now largely forgotten.
I have published a number of his poems here on Matilda over the past few months and you can read a few more by Dyson on my Edward Dyson website. Major changes to this site are planned over the next few months.
