At seventeen he was apprenticed to an itinerant tailor; for the next four years, while wandering about the province, he began writing poems, stories, and sketches, which he circulated among his friends.
In 1864 he submitted some dialect poems and other material to the Grazer Tagespost (Graz Daily Mail) and found in its editor, Dr. Adalbert Svoboda, an enthusiastic and lifelong supporter. Additional patrons were found who brought the young poet to Graz and offered aid in the form of money and books. An attempt to steer Rosegger toward a career as a bookseller proved misguided; a post offered him in 1864 with a book dealer in Laibach proved so uncongenial that Rosegger returned to Graz that same year. There, with Svoboda's help, he attended the business and trade college until 1869.
Alarmed by rumors of her son's dissolute ways in the city, Rosegger's mother journeyed to Graz in 1865 to check on her twenty-four-year-old son's behavior. Apparently her fears were allayed. Two years later the Rosegger farm had to be sold at auction, leaving the heavily indebted family with barely enough to survive. Rosegger's reaction to his family's ruin was: "Ich habe keine Heimat mehr.
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