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19. Century of Australian song

Century of Australian song / edited by Douglas B.W. Sladen. Centenary ed. (London : Walter Scott, 1888)

Century of Australian song

Douglas Sladen was born in London but came to Victoria in 1879 where he graduated in Law from Melbourne University. He was then appointed the first lecturer in modern history at the University of Sydney. Returning to England in 1884, he became recognised as an authority on Australian literature. In 1888 as part of the enthusiasm surrounding Australia’s centenary he published three anthologies of Australian verse. Each includes a lengthy introduction. The third of them, Australian poets 1788-1888, begins with a statement, “To the reader”,

“Another Australian anthology!” the critical may say. “We have had two already, and from the same editor. What occasion was there for a new one?” (p. xix)

The selection in the anthologies is of necessity much the same, with a preponderance of bush ballads and nature poems. Gordon and Kendall are the names he promoted most vigorously. The introduction to A century of Australian song summarised the contents thus,

Those who have contributed to this volume are for the most part people who love the free air of the mountain-top and the mysteriousness of the forest, the fierce excitement of race and chase, the honest thrill of manly sports, amid the glory of nature – from the Australian sky down to the Fringed Violet of the Azure Wren. Not a few of them have, in what Gordon calls “the old colonial days,” had their lives hanging on a thread in the perilous march of exploration or guerrilla warfare with bushrangers and aborigines. This volume is essentially the work of people who have meditated in the open air, and not under the lamp; and if its contents oftentimes want the polish that comes only with much midnight oil. They are mostly a transcript from earth and sea and sky, and not from books. (p. 1-2)

R. H. Croll, in a short piece submitted to a poetry competition in the Bookfellow in May 1899, had a rather less reverent summary of the subject matter in Australian poetry at the time,

Cattleduffers, bold bushrangers, diggers, drovers, bush racecourses, And on all the other pages, horses, horses, horses, horses. (p. 21)

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