Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis, better known as C. J. Dennis, was an Australian poet and journalist known for his best-selling verse novel The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke (1915). Alongside his contemporaries and occasional collaborators Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson, Dennis helped popularise Australian slang in literature, earning him the title 'the laureate of the larrikin'.
C. J. Dennis
Dennis, ca. 1890s
Cover of The Glugs of Gosh
The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke
The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke is a verse novel by Australian poet and journalist C. J. Dennis. Portions of the work appeared in The Bulletin between 1909 and 1915, the year the verse novel was completed and published by Angus & Robertson. Written in the rough and comical Australian slang that was Dennis' signature style, the work became immensely popular in Australia, selling over 60,000 copies in nine editions within the first year of publication.
The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke
Arthur Tauchert as Bill in The Sentimental Bloke (1918)