Notes on Author
Adam Lindsay Gordon
1833 - 1870ADAM LINDSAY GORDON was born in 1833 at Fayal in the Azores, the son of an officer in the English army. He was educated at Cheltenham College, the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich and finished his education at Royal Grammar School, Worcester from 1851 to 1853. The Royal Grammar School has recently opened a new building in his name to celebrate the 150 years since his attendance.
From an early age he had a passion for horse riding, and in particular steeple-chasing. It was for riding a race on a horse without the owners permission that his family sent him to South Australia in 1853 where he enlisted in the South Australian mounted police. After leaving the police in 1855 he became a horse breaker and a steeple-chase rider, and after the death of his parents in 1857 and 1859 he inherited £7000. during the 1860’s he married (Margaret Park, 1862) and was briefly a member of the South Australian Parliament. Next he moved to Western Australia and then to Ballarat in Victoria where he suffered a severe head injury in a riding accident, was bankrupted by a fire in his livery stable and lost his infant daughter (Annie, 11 months) and his wife left Ballarat (rejoined in 1869).
It was in 1864 that published his first volume of poetry, The Feud. This was followed by Ashtaroth: A Dramatic Lyric (1867), Sea Spray and Smoke Drift (1867) and Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes (1870). Gordon’s poetry was well received by many critics and other poets such as Charles Harpur and Henry Kendall.
Financial setbacks and a deepening depression caused him to commit suicide and he was found dead near his home at Brighton Beach, Melbourne, on June 23 1870, the day after the publication of his poems in Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes.
In 1932 a statue of Gordon was unveiled at Parliament House in Melbourne and in 1934 he became the only Australian to be honoured with a place in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.