Writing a Radical Identity: Francis Adams in Australia (1884-1890)

Dr Meg Tasker explores the life and work of one of Australia’s most intriguing critics and writers, Francis William Lauderdale Adams (1862-93). Born in Malta to British parents, Adams spent only six years in Australia between 1884 and1890 but was passionately committed to exploring its potential as a democratic ‘Athens of the South’. His 1888 volume of radical verse ‘Songs of the Army of the Night’ included the Eureka-inspired poem, “The Australian Flag’.

Adams made an enduring contribution to the radical Australian literary canon despite his tragically early death in 1893. He wrote many books, novels and plays and his writing appeared in the Bulletin, the Australian Worker, Centennial Magazine, and many other periodicals. In 1953, Mary Gilmore wrote, “No one today knows the way Francis Adams swept the feeling, young and just-awaking minds of Australia when he wrote. I would say that ninety percent of the revolutionary verse…sprang from Adams.”.

Dr Meg Tasker was Lecturer and Associate Professor in Literature and Humanities at the University of Ballarat/Federation University until 2018. She has a special interest in 19th century Australian and British writers. Active for many years in the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) and the Australasian Victorian Studies Association (AVSA), she served as General Editor for AVSA’s online journal, the ‘Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies’. Her critical biography of Francis Adams, ‘Struggle and Storm’, explored the life and work of one of Australia’s most intriguing critics and writers, Francis Adams.

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Image: Francis W.L. Adams, ca. 1884-1890, Gove & Allen. State Library of New South Wales, Y0KD2aa1.