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WHO ARE WE? | TESTIMONIALS | LINKS | CONTACT DETAILS |
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for books by or about
for books about
to read our ARTICLES
to read our other ANECDOTES Dame Mary Gilmore (1) Dame Mary Gilmore (2) Frank Hardy Norman Lindsay Nettie Palmer & Friends Hill of Content George Robertson Miles Franklin E.J.'Ted' Banfield Frank Dalby Davison Henry Lawson Joan Lindsay
Bryce Courtenay Thomas Keneally John Marsden Ruth Park
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Barry Watts reads the mail ...
A Haughty Exchange of Letters
How could the poet respond to such a rebuke? Dennis when editor of the short-lived 'Gadfly' in Adelaide, early in 1907 "Your chastening letter to hand," Dennis duly wrote from Melbourne a fortnight later, "I'm glad you liked my stuff but grieved that you do not like my letter. I cannot say that I am overjoyed at the tone of yours ..." C.J. Dennis had written a series of rhymes that had appeared in The Bulletin under the title The Sentimental Bloke . He had proposed that Robertson publish them as a book. "The stuff," Dennis advised, "while not having any considerable literary merit, is, I believe, extremely popular."
What had Dennis's letter said that ruffled Robertson's dignity? He had told Robertson how the book was to be published and demanded a high royalty. Further, he had already arranged for Hal Gye to draw the illustrations and had asked Henry Lawson to write the Introduction. He would, he advised Robertson, consult on the binding later.
Fortunately Robertson and Dennis soon sorted out their differences and began a
memorable
partnership between writer and publisher that was to endure for another ten
books over two
decades.
"The Sentimental Bloke brightened up many dark days for me," Henry Lawson wrote
in his
Introduction, " I dips me lid and stand aside."
The reading public saluted, too. C.J. Dennis had caught the rising spirit of nationalism and expressed it in slang verse that people understood, learnt and recited. The book sold more than sixty-five thousand copies in its first year and remains in print today. Before The Sentimental Bloke was published Dennis was single, impoverished and in poor health. Less than two years later he was settling into married bliss as a man of some affluence in his own double-storied home near Healesville. "It's more than half a dream to me," he enthused to Robertson later, " things are materialising now that I fondly dreamed of years ago."
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George Robertson, above, later wrote "My pen often gets me in trouble."
front cover design for 'The Sentimental Bloke.'
Hal Gye from the English literary magazine The Bookman.
with bookman Robert Croll, left, and Dennis's biographer Alec Chisholm, middle.
In 1934 the touring English Poet Laureate, John Masefield, left, visited C.J.
Dennis
at his home at Toolangi,
near Healesville.
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WHO ARE WE? | TESTIMONIALS | LINKS | CONTACT DETAILS |
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