A. B. Paterson

Australian writer

• Born: February 17, 1864
• Birthplace: Narrambla, New South Wales, Australia
• Died: February 5, 1941
• Place of death: Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Paterson’s popular poetry celebrating the Australian Outback helped to establish a national identity that led the country out of its colonial state into nationhood.

Early Life

Andrew Barton Paterson was born on a sprawling ranch in New South Wales, Australia’s original colony, on the southeastern edge of the continent. His parents, Andrew Bogle and Rose Isabella Paterson, were early settlers in the remote region called the Yass district. Known as Barty to his family, Andrew received his earliest education at home and then attended a school in the nearby town of Binalong. As a boy, he witnessed at firsthand the strength and courage of the country folk as they carved out their livelihoods in an inhospitable land. His early experiences served him well in adulthood, when he used his writing to celebrate the Australian landscape and the hardy breed of men and women who inhabited it.

At the age of ten, Andrew went to Sydney, the major city in New South Wales, to attend Sydney Grammar School. After finishing school when he was sixteen, he entered a Sydney law firm, Spain and Salway, as a clerk. In 1886, he became a full-fledged lawyer and with a partner established the legal firm of Street and Paterson.

While practicing law, Paterson started publishing verses in the Sydney Mail and the Bulletin. The latter, an influential national newspaper established in 1880, had a literary section with a strong nationalistic tone that specialized in fiction and verse that extolled life in rural areas—that is, the vast regions in the country’s center known as the “bush.” At the suggestion of the Bulletin editor, Paterson submitted a manuscript to Angus & Robertson, a pioneering Australian publisher. The Man from Snowy River, and Other Verses appeared in 1895 and established Paterson as the major literary figure in Australia and a best-selling writer in Australia second only to Rudyard Kipling, another poet from the British Empire. Within six months, five editions of Paterson’s book had sold out, and it remained in print more than a century later.

Life’s Work

As a lawyer and part-time poet, Paterson wrote under the pseudonym “Banjo”—a name that he borrowed from the family’s racehorse. In 1902, after returning from South Africa, where he served as a special correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald during the South African (Boer) War, he left the legal profession to pursue a writing and journalistic career. He retained his pen name and became known as A. B. “Banjo” Paterson.

In 1903 Paterson married Alice Walker and settled in Sydney. He and his wife had two children together. As a married man with a family, Paterson took up full-time journalistic work, first editing the Evening News, then the Australian Town and Country Journal. When World War I broke out in 1914, he went to Europe as a correspondent. Disappointed with his assignment, he returned home and enlisted in the Remount Service, an organization that furnished horses to members of the Australian cavalry serving in the Middle East. After the war ended in 1918, he returned to Sydney and took up the editorship of the Sydney Sportsman.

Paterson published two more poetry collections that were similar in subject matter to his first book and equally successful: Rio Grande’s Last Race, and Other Verses (1902) and Saltbush Bill J. P., and Other Verses (1917). He also tried his hand at fiction by publishing two novels, An Outback Marriage (1906) and The Shearer’s Colt (1936), and a book of short stories, Three Elephant Power, and Other Stories (1917). In 1934, he published Happy Dispatches , a memoir that recounted his travels, adventures, and experiences as a correspondent. He made an important contribution to Australian folk art by compiling the anthology Old Bush Songs (1905), a collection of fifty songs and ballads from Australian oral traditions that might have been lost otherwise.

In spite of Paterson’s literary glorification of life in the bush, he spent the rest of his years in Sydney, except for brief periods on a country property, which he gave up in 1919, when he settled permanently in the city. As a young man he had developed a strong interest in sports, including cricket, tennis, polo, and rowing, which he continued to follow. He devoted much of his time to his greatest passion, horses and the racetrack. Admiring horses for their endurance, courage, and skill, Paterson immortalized their feats in several of his ballads. Paterson’s rich and productive life ended on his death on February 2, 1941—a few days before his seventy-seventh birthday.

Significance

Even if A. B. Paterson had written nothing after The Man from Snowy River, and Other Verses, he would have gained a permanent place in Australian literature. During the same year that he published that book, 1895, he also composed the ballad “Waltzing Matilda” during a trip to Queensland, then a separate British colony north of New South Wales. That ballad’s nimble words and catchy tune, which was adapted from a Scottish song, soon spread around Queensland. It gained a wider audience in 1903, when the version known today was issued on sheet music. Often considered Australia’s unofficial national anthem, “Waltzing Matilda” represents Paterson at his best, as he captures the bush spirit by relying on the colorful slang that had evolved in the Australian Outback.

Paterson’s celebration of bush life in The Man From Snowy River, and Other Verses appeared at an opportune time. The 1890’s saw the rise of a movement toward the federation of Australia’s six colonies—New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, and Western Australia. In 1901, the Commonwealth of Australia was officially inaugurated, and Australia became a nation rather than a hodgepodge of colonies.

Paterson made one of the most significant contributions to federation through his unadorned and straightforward writing that helped to give the colonists a single national identity. Like the characters in Paterson’s ballads, they could see themselves as stalwart, courageous, and humble folk creating a distinctive culture, turning a harsh land into a prosperous one, and retaining their independence. The well-traveled, city-dwelling, and sophisticated Paterson transformed the bush into an Arcadia—one that never truly existed except in his imagination. In contrast to the realistic writing of his contemporary Henry Lawson (1867-1922), drought, fire, flood, dust and flies, economic hardships, isolation, and shattered lives never play a part in Paterson’s romanticized version of the Outback.

Paterson’s bush myth continues to define Australians, both at home and abroad, even though approximately 80 percent of Australia’s early twenty-first century population lived in five major coastal cities. Paul Hogan’s “Crocodile Dundee,” who first captured the imagination of international moviegoers in 1986, is a direct descendant of the expert horseman Clancy in “The Man from Snowy River” and the intrepid swagman in “Waltzing Matilda.”

Bibliography

Hall, Timothy.“Banjo” Paterson’s High Country. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1989. Photographs and text record the Snowy River region that was the setting for several of Paterson’s ballads.

Oliff, Lorna. Andrew Barton Paterson. New York: Twayne, 1971. Analyzes Paterson’s writing within a biographical framework. Excellent introductory study.

Roderick, Colin Arthur. Banjo Paterson: Poet by Accident. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1993. Takes a contemporary look at Paterson and focuses on his continuing influence. Provides extensive biographical materials and discussions of Paterson’s work.

Semmler, Clement. The Banjo of the Bush: The Life and Times of A. B. Banjo Paterson. Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1984. A thorough biographical study that sets Paterson’s life and writing within the Australian context.

Smith, Roff. “Australia’s Bard of the Bush: The Real Man from Snowy River.” National Geographic (August, 2004): 2-29. Lavishly illustrated article that stresses Paterson’s continuing influence on Australian attitudes toward the bush through firsthand observations, contemporary interviews, and biographical details. Excellent introduction to the man and his work.

Webby, Elizabeth, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Surveys the development of Australian writing in all genres and places Paterson in the larger picture.

Wilde, William H., Joy Hooton, and Barry Andrews, eds. The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature. Melbourne, Vic.: Oxford University Press, 1985. Includes an extended discussion of Paterson’s life and work, as well as a history of “Waltzing Matilda.”