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Writers
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Writers Dogs thrive, and boyhood’s school needs painted rooms, And small-town culture fashionably booms When tenors or pianists challenge provincial ways And step from Progress into stand-still days. Oh, somebody keep this hometown not unchanging But ever memorable, that when the heart is ranging Beyond its citizenship and the old-pensioners, The droll and the dear may make eminent the years. ‘Hometown’, David Rowbotham
He worked on a number of newspapers in the 1880s and early 1890s including the Gympie Miner, the radical Brisbane Boomerang, and the Cairns Argus. In the early 1890s he travelled extensively in Europe, Canada and America. His account of his travels, A Queenslander's Travel Notes were serialised in the Darling Downs Gazette from 1893 before publication in book form the following year. In 1894 he joined the staff of the Sydney Bulletin and from 1896 he became the editor of its famous literary 'red page'. Here he published, critiqued, edited and advised writers such as Henry Lawson, Banjo Paterson, Barbara Baynton, John Shaw Neilson, Joseph Furphy, Miles Franklin, Steele Rudd and Mary Gilmore. He left the Bulletin in 1906 after falling out with manager over the establishment of a new quality magazine, The Lone Hand. Stephens then started his own bookshop and magazine, The Bookfellow, which lasted fitfully into the 1920s. Stephens is commemorated by a plaque in the Ladies Literary Society Display in the Toowoomba City Library.
Further Reading: Vance Palmer, A.G.
Stephens: His Life and Work, Melbourne: Robertson and Mullens, 1941. Norman Lindsay, 'A.G.
Stephens,' in Bohemians at the Bulletin, Sydney: Angus and Robertson,
1965. Leon Cantrell, ed.
A. G. Stephens: Selected Writings, 1978. Christopher Lee,
ed. Turning the Century: Writing of the 1890s, St Lucia: University
of Queensland Press, 1999. Please use the link list on the left to access various featured writers Biographies and Portraits.
Submissions and suggestions for writers not yet included can be sent to leec@usq.edu.au |
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