John Le Gay Brereton
Illustration — John Le Gay Brereton (sitting) with Henry Lawson in 1897. John Le Gay Brereton (2 September 1871 – 2 February 1933) was an Australian poet, critic and professor of English at the University of Sydney. He was the first president of the Fellowship of Australian Writers when it was formed in Sydney in 1928.
Also recorded as Basil Garstang · John Brereton
John Le Gay Brereton
Item is held by John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland. · Public domain
- Born
- 1871. · Sydney.
- Died
- 1933. · Tamworth.
- Nationality
- United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Australia.
- Occupation
- university teacher, poet, literary critic, librarian and writer.
- Education
- Sydney Grammar School and University of Sydney.
- Languages
- English.
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wikidata · Q6244275 · wikipedia · John Le Gay Brereton
In this article
Early life
Early life
Brereton was born in Sydney, the fifth son of John Le Gay Brereton (1827–1886) and his wife Mary, née Tongue. His parents had travelled on the Dover Castle from England, arriving in Melbourne on 25 July 1859 and then moved to Sydney. The younger Brereton was educated at Sydney Grammar School from 1881 and the University of Sydney where he graduated BA (1894), reading English under Professor Sir Mungo MacCallum. He was editor of Hermes, the student literary annual, and became the university's chief librarian in 1915. Brereton became a vegetarian in his youth and never lapsed throughout his life.
Career
Career
His edition of Lust's Dominion was sent to the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium in 1914 but was thought lost in the German invasion; it was finally published there in 1931. So Long, Mick! a short one-act play in prose, was also published in 1931. Brereton contributed many letters and poems on diverse subjects to the Sydney Morning Herald, often under the pseudonym 'Basil Garstang'.
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Sydney.
Birth place
Tamworth.
Death place
Legacy
Brereton died on 2 February 1933 near Tamworth, New South Wales while on a caravan tour. He was a close friend of and collaborator with Henry Lawson (whom he met in late 1894 through Mary Cameron, later Dame Mary Gilmore), and Christopher Brennan. For at least part of his life, he was a disciple of Annie Besant. Brereton Park in East Ryde is named in his honour. Brereton admitted to being profoundly affected by Christopher Marlowe and Walt Whitman, and several of his emotionally intense poems addressed to men, such as 'Cling To Me' ("Cling to me, love, and dare not let me go; Kiss me as though it were our time to die, And all our comradeship had drifted by...Over our love what shelter can I throw?"), have been anthologised in collections of homosexual verse, including Australian Gay and Lesbian Writing: An Anthology (1993), Sexual Heretics: Male homosexuality in English literature from 1850 to 1900 (1970), and The Penguin Book of Homosexual Verse (1983).
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Part of the biographical narrative on this page reuses licensed material. Its origin, revision and licence are recorded here.
The biographical narrative on this page is based on the Wikipedia article John Le Gay Brereton, revision 1345633833 (EN edition), by its contributors. VALÉORINE has edited that text and built its own documentary record around it. The reused material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, and this page's reuse of it is offered under the same licence. Everything else on this page — the chronology, the holdings, the evidence, the plates and the connections — is VALÉORINE's own record. Sources and licences.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Australian Dictionary of Biography. John Le Gay Brereton (1827–1886) by H. P. Heseltine.
- 2.Heseltine, Harry P. (1965). John Le Gay Brereton. Lansdowne Press. p. 41
- 3.Professor Brereton's lecture at Sydney Morning Herald 12 September 1927, p. 10; at Trove
- 4.Books I Remember, The Lone Hand, Vol. 12 No. 70 (1 February 1913), pp97-98 https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-409777607/view?partId=nla.obj-409845722
Bibliography printed in the source article · 7
- The Song of Brotherhood, and Other Verses (1896)
- Landlopers (1899)
- Sea and Sky (1908)
- The Burning Marl (1919)
- Swags up! (1928)
- Knocking Round (1930)
- Henry Lawson, by his Mates, ed. (1931)
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The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 24 August 2026.
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