Francis Adams (writer)

Francis William Lauderdale Adams
Francis Adams ca. 1889 - 93
Born	(1862-11-27)27 November 1862 Malta
Died	4 September 1893(1893-09-04) (aged 30) Margate, England
Occupation	Writer
Spouse(s)	Edith Goldstone

Francis William Lauderdale Adams (27 September 1862 – 4 September 1893) was an essayist, poet, dramatist, novelist and journalist who produced a large volume of work in his short life.

Adams was born in Malta the son of Andrew Leith Adams F.R.S., F.G.S., an army surgeon, who became afterwards well known as a scientist, a fellow of the Royal Society, and an author of natural history books set in different parts of the British empire. Francis' mother, Bertha Jane Grundy, became a well-known novelist. Francis was educated at Shrewsbury School and from 1879 served as an attaché in Paris. He took up a teaching position as an assistant master at Ventnor on the Isle of Wight, for two years. He joined the Social Democratic Federation in London in 1883. In 1884 he married Helen Uttley and migrated to Australia where he started work as a tutor on a station at Jerilderie, New South Wales, but soon moved on to Sydney and then Queensland, and dedicated himself to writing.

In 1884 Adams published a volume of poems, Henry and Other Tales (London), his autobiographical novel, Leicester, an Autobiography' (1884). In 1886 a collection of Australian Essays on topics such as Melbourne, Sydney and the poet Adam Lindsay Gordon was published in Melbourne and London. During the time in Australia he contributed to several periodicals, including The Bulletin.

Adams then went to Brisbane and published 'Poetical Works' (1886, Brisbane) which is a quarto volume of over 150 pages printed in double columns. His wife died giving birth to a baby boy, Leith, who also died. Adams remained in Brisbane until the early part of 1887, and published a novel, Madeline Brown's Murderer, (1887, Sydney).

After a short stay in Sydney Adams married again, returned to Brisbane, and remained there until about the end of 1889 writing leaders for the Brisbane Courier. At the end of 1887 Adams published his best known collection of verse Songs of the Army of the Night, which created a sensation in Sydney and,later, went through three editions in London. He returned to England in early 1890 and published two novels, John Webb's End, a Story of Bush Life (1891, London), and The Melbournians (1892). A volume of short stories, Australian Life, came out in 1892. Adams' health was failing rapidly from an incurable lung-disease and he spent the winter of December 1892 – February 1893 in Alexandria to finish his book attacking the British occupation of Egypt. The result, 'The New Egypt' was released after his death in 1893. His first novel A Child of the Age, was published posthumously in 1894 by John Lane in the Keynote Series. It vividly describes the schooldays (at 'Glastonbury') and poverty-stricken struggles of would-be poet and scholar, young orphan Bertram Leicester, and is understandably suffused with a fin-de-siècle melancholy. Other posthumous publications were 'Tiberius'—a striking drama, with an Introduction by William Michael Rossetti, which presents a new view of the Emperor's character while the last of his posthumous publications was 'Essays in Modernity' in 1899.