Max Williams had a very deprived childhood in the slums of Redfern, New South Wales, during the 1930s Depression. He was committed to Mittagong Boys' Home at the age of ten and spent most of the next thirty years in prison. In 1969 Williams was convicted of being an accessory to murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Following a successful appeal he was acquitted in 1972. Williams learnt the boot-making craft from his father. He has been an apprentice clown, a prison reformer, a fisherman and a critic. In 1973 Williams was granted his first Writer's Fellowship.
(Adapted from The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature ed. William H. Wilde et.al. (1994):817).
