While the Billy Boils

Henry Lawson (1867 Ä1922) was an Australian writer and poet. He is often referred to as Australia's greatest writer. Lawson became deaf at age 14 after an ear infection. Lawson's first published poem was 'A Song of the Republic'. In 1892 he traveled inland and experienced the harsh realities of drought-effected New South Wales. This trip influenced much of his writing. Lawson never glamorized the bush like Banjo Patterson. Lawson's most successful prose collection is While the Billy Boils, published in 1896. In this work he continued his assault on the romanticism of Patterson and developed Australian realism. Bruce Elder writes, "He used short, sharp sentences, with language as raw as Ernest Hemingway or Raymond Carver. With sparse adjectives and honed-to-the-bone description, Lawson created a style and defined Australians: dryly laconic, passionately egalitarian and deeply humane."