History Talk: Australian Colonial Poet Charles Harpur

Where:  Moruya Golf Club
When:   Saturday 20 July 2.00 pm
Cost:      Free but donation appreciated

More Information:
Email: moruyamuseum@gmail.com; tel: 0427738300

Authors Paul Eggert and Chris Vening will discuss their new book The Letter of Charles Harpur and his Circle. Harpur, a renowned Australian colonial poet with ties to the Moruya District, is the focus of this first-ever published collection of his letters. The book includes correspondence with poet Henry Kendall and future NSW premier Henry Parkes.

In his later years Harpur lived on his farm ‘Euroma’ on the Tuross River while serving as a gold commissioner on the Nerrigundah goldfield.  His widow Mary Harpur, outlived him by thirty years and continued to farm at Euroma while fighting to publish his poems.

For further details on the book see:

• Sydney University Press

“Charles Harpur occupies a similar position in Australian literary history to Walt Whitman in America: not only the country’s first major poet, but one attempting self-consciously to correlate national mythologies with wider cultural styles and traditions. Harpur’s extensive prose commentaries on his own poetry, too often overlooked, testify to his intellectual ambition, and this long overdue collection of his letters significantly expands our understanding of his work. Paul Eggert and Chris Vening’s exemplary scholarly edition performs a signal service for studies not only of Australian literature but nineteenth-century poetry in general.”

Professor Paul Giles