John Shaw Neilson
John Shaw Neilson was an influential Australian poet, born in 1872 to a Scottish immigrant father and an Australian mother. Raised in rural Victoria, Neilson faced financial hardships and limited formal education, which shaped his early life and poetic inspiration. He began writing poetry as a teenager, gaining recognition in local newspapers and eventually in the wider Australian literary scene. Despite struggles with health and vision, which forced him to dictate his work, Neilson published several collections, including "Heart of Spring" and "Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson." His poetry often reflected his connection to nature and the Australian landscape, embodying themes of rural life and personal experience. After a career that included a job with the Country Roads Board, Neilson retired to Queensland and continued to write until his death in 1942. His legacy includes a rich body of work that remains significant in Australian literature.
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Subject Terms
John Shaw Neilson
Australian poet.
- Born: February 22, 1872
- Birthplace: Penola, South Australia, Australia
- Died: May 12, 1942
- Place of death: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Biography
The Australian poet John Shaw Neilson, called Jock by his family, was the oldest son of John Neilson, who had immigrated to Australia from Scotland as a child, and Margaret MacKinnon, a native of Victoria, Australia. The elder Neilson, though a poet himself, had received almost no education and worked as a shepherd and small farmer; fighting drought and pests and not having the money to purchase good land meant that he and his family lived in financially poor conditions. The younger Neilson attended the Penola, Australia, public school for only one year before the family moved to Minimay as settlers. The rural remote area to which the family moved had no established school, so Neilson studied at home, poring over the works of poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Burns, and Thomas Hood, and wandering the countryside in his free moments. Neilson did get the chance to attend a traditional school for fifteen months when one opened four years after the family’s arrival in Minimay. In 1889, when Neilson was seventeen years old, the family moved to Dow Well, near Nhill, and Neilson and his father began working as farm and road workers.
Around this time, Neilson began composing poems which appeared in the local newspaper, with one poem appearing in Melbourne’s Australasian. In January, 1893, both father and son won prizes from the Australian Natives Association for their respective poems, John Neilson winning the senior prize for "The Pioneers," while his son, John Shaw Neilson, won the junior prize. Father and son relocated to Sea Lake in 1895, and a year later Neilson had some of his poems published in the Bulletin in Sydney. Poor health kept him from doing much writing for about four years, but he resumed contributing to the Bulletin between 1901 and 1906. His sight began failing him in 1906, forcing him to dictate most of his poetry during the remainder of his career. In 1911 some of his poems were published in the journal Bookfellow, and the Bookfellow publishing company between 1919 and 1927 published three volumes of Neilson’s poetry: Heart of Spring (1919), Ballad and Lyrical Poems (1923), and New Poems (1927).
In 1928, six years after his father’s death, Neilson became a messenger for the Country Roads Board in Melbourne and though he enjoyed his job, he longed to escape the city and return to nature, which was vital to his creativity. He received a small literary pension, and he continued to write, though not nearly as prolifically as he had in his younger years. His book Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson was published in 1934, and the final volume of original verses to be published in the poet’s lifetime, Beauty Imposes: Some Recent Verse, appeared in 1938. Neilson retired from the Country Roads Board in 1937 and moved to Queensland to live with friends, living the last years of his life on his literary pension. He died in Melbourne on May 12, 1942.
Author Works
Poetry:
Old Granny Sullivan, 1916
Heart of Spring, 1919
Ballad and Lyrical Poems, 1923
New Poems, 1927
Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson, 1934
Beauty Imposes: Some Recent Verse, 1938
Unpublished Poems, 1947
The Poems of Shaw Neilson, 1965 (revised and expanded 1973)
Witnesses of Spring: Unpublished Poems by Shaw Neilson, 1970
Shaw Neilson: Selected Poems, 1976
Green Days and Cherries, 1981
Shaw Neilson: Selected Poems, 1993
Nonfiction:
The Autobiography of John Shaw Neilson, 1978
Bibliography
Anderson, Hugh. "Neilson, John Shaw (1872–1942)." Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, adb.anu.edu.au/biography/neilson-john-shaw-764/text13553. Accessed 28 June 2017. This biographical overview on Neilson includes discussion of his major works and his status as both a laborer and a respected poet.
Hanna, Cliff. Jock: A Life Story of John Shaw Neilson. U of Queensland P, 1999. A comprehensive biography drawing on all known information on Neilson.
Hewson, Helen. John Shaw Neilson: A Life in Letters. Melbourne UP, 2001. Presents a variety of letters by, to, and about Neilson, providing insight into his life and career.
Hewson, Helen. "John Shaw Neilson: A Painterly Poet." Antipodes, vol. 23, no. 2, 2009, p. 161–67. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsggo&AN=edsgcl.217607971&site=eds-live. Accessed 28 June 2017. This profile of Neilson focuses on analysis of his style as similar to that of a visual artist.
Neilson, John Shaw. The Autobiography of John Shaw Neilson. Introduction by Nancy Keesing. National Library of Australia, 1978. National Library of Australia, www.nla.gov.au/sites/default/files/johnshawneilson.pdf. Accessed 28 June 2017. Neilson's autobiography, published posthumously, provides important insight into his life before and during his career as a poet.