'Since Henry Lawson became deaf at the age of fourteen six years before he was first published, his experience of impairment and disability profoundly affected both the style and the content of his writing. This is something he was well aware of. In a Fragment of Autobiography he wrote that his deafness was ' a thing which was to cloud my whole life, to drive me into myself, and to be, perhaps, in a great measure responsible for my writing' (Roderick 185) Reading his writing with this in mind, it's clear that he meant not simply that his deafness was the reason he put pen to paper, but that it influenced his word choices, themes, perspectives, and techniques. ' (Introduction)