One of the best known writers of short stories and verse (particularly ballads) from the 1890s is Henry Lawson. He was born on the goldfields in the Grenfell area in 1867, Lawson was one of five children. His father was a Norwegian sailor, Neils Larsen, who changed his name to Peter Lawson. His mother was Louisa Lawson, who assisted his career by purchasing a Sydney newspaper called the Republican in 1887, which published his work. The Bulletin, a popular Sydney magazine credited with aiding the development of Australian literature, took up his work that same year. Lawson married Bertha Bredt in 1896 and they had two children. After their separation in 1902 Lawson became an increasingly heavy drinker and sank into a personal and professional decline.
Lawson’s work is identified as part of a radical, nationalist and white-settler bush tradition. He is credited as being a major contributor to the emerging bush literary tradition, together with Joseph Furphy and A.B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson. Katherine Susannah Prichard later described his work as a point to depart from; she wanted to put colour into Lawson’s grey vision of Australia.
Lawson’s style is often described as realism, which is an objective focus on everyday people and events. However, more recent analyses reject the notion of Lawson as a objective reporter, and point to the literary qualities of his work. Stories such as “The Union Buries Its Dead” and “In a Dry Season” are examples of Lawson’s sketches from life. After his collection of short stories While the Billy Boils (1896) was criticised for its weak plots, his next collection, Joe Wilson and His Mates (1901) included stronger plots. Joe Wilson became emblematic of the Australian national character, notwithstanding that this collection was written in London where Lawson stayed for two years.
Lawson’s work helped shape perceptions of the Australian national character, whose source was in the bush. His bush types can be found in stories such as “The Drover’s Wife” and “The Bush Undertaker”. His work promoted the ideas of bush mateship and class egalitarianism. Lawson was also a champion of the urban poor.
Lawson’s representation of the bush and its characters was challenged by A.B. Paterson. Paterson presented a different perspective of bush life. Where Lawson wrote of mateship and the underdog, Paterson wrote of heroes and glory. The pair debated their sides of the argument in the pages of the Bulletin in 1892, where Lawson favoured the city over the bush, and Paterson took the opposite view. His more recent critics have noted exclusions in his version of national identity, such as the absence of women, Aboriginal people, and migrants.