Henry Archibald Hertzberg Lawson was an Australian writer and bush poet. Along with his contemporary Banjo Paterson, Lawson is among the best-known Australian poets and fiction writers of the colonial period and is often called Australia's "greatest short story writer".
Lawson c. 1915
Grenfell, Lawson's birthplace, during the 2011 Henry Lawson Festival
Portrait of Lawson, c. 1902
Lawson (right) with J. F. Archibald, founder of The Bulletin
The bush ballad, bush song, or bush poem is a style of poetry and folk music that depicts the life, character and scenery of the Australian bush. The typical bush ballad employs a straightforward rhyme structure to narrate a story, often one of action and adventure, and uses language that is colourful, colloquial, and idiomatically Australian. Bush ballads range in tone from humorous to melancholic, and many explore themes of Australian folklore, including bushranging, droving, droughts, floods, life on the frontier, and relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
Cover of Old Bush Songs (1905), Banjo Paterson's seminal collection of bush ballads
First page of "The Dying Stockman," a bush ballad published in Banjo Paterson's 1905 collection The Old Bush Songs
Adam Gordon
Henry Lawson