John Farrell (Australian poet)
| John Farrell | |
|---|---|
| Born |
December 18, 1851 Buenos Aires, Argentina |
| Died | January 8, 1904 (aged 52) Sydney, New South Wales, Australia |
| Occupation | poet and editor |
| Language | English |
| Years active | 1878–1904 |
John Farrell (18 December 1851 – 8 January 1904) was an Australian poet and journalist.
Farrell was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, third son of Andrew Farrell, a chemist, and his wife Mary née Parley. His parents left Dublin, Ireland in 1847 and settled in Buenos Aires. Towards the end of 1852 Andrew Farrell went to Victoria (Australia), with his wife, and children, and engaged first in gold-digging, and then in carrying, before settling down as a farmer. John Farrell was initially educated by his parents and later at a private school. His mother died in 1862, and he had little formal education although his father encouraged his taste for reading. The boy worked on farms, and when he was 19 worked in a brewery at Bendigo, Victoria. He spent some time in Darwin, Northern Territory, gold-digging and then travelled around Australia for some time, working as a brewer again, spending time as a farmer or brewer for several years.
In 1878 Farrell published, using the name John O'Farrell, Ephemera: An Iliad of Albury, a small pamphlet of verse, and a rare Australian publication.Two Stories, a Fragmentary Poem was published in Melbourne in 1882, and about this period he began to be a regular contributor to The Bulletin. He was then working in a brewery at Albury, New South Wales and in 1883 was a partner in a brewery at Goulburn. He became much interested in the tenets of Henry George after reading Progress and Poverty. In January 1887 a collection of Farrell's verses was published in Sydney entitled How He Died and Other Poems which was favourably reviewed. Also in 1887 he sold his brewery interests and went to Sydney hoping to obtain employment as a journalist. He bought a paper, the Lithgow, New South Wales Enterprise, but was unable to make it a financial success, and in 1889 returned to Sydney to edit the Australian Standard, a single tax paper for which Farrell did much writing. In 1888 Farrell started a paper called, "The Land Nationalizer" at Lithgow, and it was as the advocate of the single-tax doctrine that he was first known outside purely literary circles.
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