SOURCE: Green, H. M. “Verse, Satire, Drama; Essays and Criticism.” In A History of Australian Literature: Pure and Applied, Volume I, 1789-1923, pp. 98-120. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1961.

In the following excerpt, Green examines the poetic works of Charles Harpur and summarizes the careers of several lesser Australian poets and verse dramatists.

[Charles] Harpur's poetry cannot quite be said to belong to the literature of exile. He was not, like other Australian poets of his day,¹ a transplanted Englishman, but on the way to becoming an Australian, though he had not got very far: he did his best to throw aside the veil that reading, tradition, custom, habit of mind had hung between the new country and its white inhabitants, and if he was unable to throw it aside entirely, at least he wore it thinner here and there; here and there he succeeded in approaching, though not in...