Cirrus@Austlit

'William Martin Leggett was scarcely more than a boy when his verse began appearing in New Brunswick newspapers, and in his early twenties in 1833 when his celebrated collection The Forest Wreath was published. He was hailed as a prodigy, but when he left for England in 1845 to pursue a career in letters he may as well have sailed off the edge of the earth. From that point, as one Canadian source puts it, “his life and career are shrouded in mystery”. This paper unravels the mystery, using contemporary newspapers, official records and Leggett’s own correspondence. It reveals that, once in England, he invented a new identity, enlisted in the Army and was shipped out to New South Wales. There this gifted and eccentric man would remarry, raise a second family, lead a precarious, semi-nomadic existence as poet, reporter, teacher, gold digger, sheep station manager, soup kitchen attendant, police spy and free selector, and go to his grave claiming that he was the son of the king of England.'

*Source: Author's abstract.