Charles Harpur

• Name — Charles Harpur • Birth Name — Charles Harpur • Born — 23 January 1813 • Birthplace — Windsor, New South Wales • Died — 10 June 1868 • Place of death — Eurobodalla, New South Wales • Occupation — teacher, farmer, writer • Notable Works — "The Creek of the Four Graves", "A Mid-Summer Noon in the Australian Forest"

Harpur was born on 23 January 1813 at Windsor, New South Wales. His parents were convicts. His father, Joseph Harpur, was originally from Kinsale, County Cork, Ireland. He had been sentenced to transportation for highway robbery in March 1800; at the time of Harpur's birth, he was parish clerk and master of the Windsor district school. His mother, Sarah Chidley, was originally from Somerset, and had been sentenced to transportation in 1805. Harpur presumably went to school in Windsor, but little information about his education is available. Later in life, he claimed that he taught himself the principles of English verse by obsessively reading William Shakespeare.

Harpur continually revised, redrafted and republished his works throughout his life, creating an "editorial nightmare". In all he is credited with over 700 poems, which exist in some 2,700 distinct versions. His major play, The Tragedy of Donohoe, exists in four distinct versions, with different titles, plots and names for the characters. Many of his works exist only in manuscript, or lie scattered among dozens of newspapers and journals. In the past, this hindered research into Harpur's work, because only a small portion was available in reliable and accessible texts. In the twentieth century, however, editors such as Charles Salier, Elizabeth Perkins and Michael Ackland greatly improved the situation, by publishing wide selections of Harpur's poetry in book form. In the twenty-first century, Paul Eggert embarked on an ambitious project to make every version of every Harpur poem available online, along with tools to examine Harpur's complex process of rewriting. The fruit of this project was the Charles Harpur Critical Archive, the first variorum edition of Harpur's poetry.

• Songs of Australia (1850) • A Poet's Home (1862)

• |Title — |Year — |First published — |Reprinted/collected in • "The Dream by the Fountain" — 1843 — The Australasian Chronicle, 10 June 1843 — Poems, George Robertson, 1883, pp. 136–140 • "The Beautiful Squatter" — 1845 — The Weekly Register of Politics, Facts and General Literature, 15 March 1845 — The Poetical Works of Charles Harpur, edited by Elizabeth Perkins, Angus and Robertson, 1984, p. 63 • "The Creek of the Four Graves" — 1845 — The Weekly Register of Politics, Facts and General Literature, 9, 16 and 23 August 1845 — The Bushrangers, a Play in Five Acts, and Other Poems, W. R. Piddington, 1853, pp. 63–70 • "A Mid-Summer Noon in the Australian Forest" — 1851 — The Empire, 27 May 1851 — Poems, George Robertson, 1883, pp. 118–119 • "A Storm in the Mountains" — 1856 — The Empire, 15 July 1856 — Poems, George Robertson, 1883, pp. 77–84 • "A Coast View" — 1857 — The Empire, 28 March 1857 — The Poetical Works of Charles Harpur, edited by Elizabeth Perkins, Angus and Robertson, 1984, pp. 260–263

• "Andrew Marvell" (1845) • "The Anchor" (1855) • "A Similitude" (1855) • "To My Infant Daughter 'Ada'" (1861) • "Love" (1907) • "Words" (1907) Nature • The Cloud (1857) • To an Echo on the Banks of the Hunter (1846) • On Leaving x x x, after a residence there of several Months. • The Bush Fire • The Scenic Part of Poetry Indigenous Australians • A Wail from the Bush (1845) Poetic craft • The Nevers of Poesy (1857) • The Poverty of Greatness (1845) • On Completing a Book (1851) Politics • The Great Change (1850) • The Tree of Liberty (1846) • Australia, Huzza! (1833) • A War-Song for the Nineteenth Century (1843) • This Southern Land of Ours (1855) • Is Wentworth a Patriot? (1845) Love • The Lass of Eulengo • Love is simple • The Tortures of Love (1844) • To Ellen (1856) Religion • Trust in God (1853) Teetotalism • The Spirit of the Bowl (1854) • The Merit of Sobriety (1857) Ballads • Alan of the Mill Epigrams • To a Girl Who Stole an Apple Tree • Whatever is, is Right(?) • The World's Way • Neither will do • Finish of Style • Evasion • Shortness of Life (1856) Unusual subjects • The Beautiful (1857) • Farewel (1846) • The Infinite in Space (1866)

Charles Harpur was born on 23 January 1813 in Windsor. Harpur held the nationality of Australia and United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

In the early 1830s, Harpur seems to have moved between Sydney and the Hunter Valley, but by 1833 he had settled with his parents in Sydney. At this time he began to publish his writings in newspapers. His earliest known publications were the poems 'An Australian Song' and 'At the Grave of Clements', which appeared in The Currency Lad on the 4th and 11 May 1833. In February 1835 he published parts of his first play, The Tragedy of Donohoe, in The Sydney Monitor, a radical newspaper edited by Edward Smith Hall. Harpur would continue to publish in newspapers throughout his life, eventually publishing hundreds of works in this manner. In Sydney, Harpur worked as a clerk and letter-sorter in the Post Office, while pursuing a career in the theatre. He acted in three plays at the Theatre Royal in October 1833: The Mutiny at the Nore by Douglas Jerrold, The Miller and His Men by Isaac Pocock, and The Tragedy of Chrononhotonthologos, a farce. His acting career ended ignominiously, when he unsuccessfully sued Barnett Levey, the proprietor of the Theatre Royal, for unpaid wages. His career at the Post Office ended equally poorly, after he quarrelled with the Postmaster-General. During these years, Harpur befriended many of Sydney's prominent literary and political figures, including Henry Parkes, Daniel Deniehy, and W. A. Duncan. Looking back at the end of his life, Parkes traced the development of his radical politics back to this circle of friends: I had now formed the acquaintance of two men of more than ordinary character and ability, Mr. Charles Harpur, one of the most genuine of Australian poets, and Mr. William Augustine Duncan, then proprietor and editor of the 'Weekly Register.' They were my chief advisers in matters of intellectual resource and enquiry, when the prospect before me was opening and widening, often with many cross lights and drifting clouds, but ever with deepening radiance. In 1988, as part of Australia's bicentennial celebrations, a plaque was laid at the site of Harpur's grave, describing him as "Australia’s first native born poet".

• Thoughts: A Series of Sonnets (1845) • The Bushrangers, a Play in Five Acts, and Other Poems (1853)

• Poems (1883) • Selected Poems of Charles Harpur (1944) • Rosa: Love Sonnets to Mary Doyle (1948) • Charles Harpur edited by Donovan Clarke (1963) • Charles Harpur edited by Adrian Mitchell (1973) • Early Love Poems (1979) • The Poetical Works of Charles Harpur edited by Elizabeth Perkins (1984) • Charles Harpur, Selected Poetry and Prose edited by Michael Ackland (1986) • Stalwart the Bushranger, with, The Tragedy of Donohoe edited by Elizabeth Perkins (1987) • A Storm in the Mountains and Lost in the Bush (2006) • Charles Harpur Critical Archive edited by Paul Eggert (2019)