Richard Rowe, journalist and children's writer, visited Australia (1853-1858). His father, a Wesleyan minister, died when he was young, and the family moved to Colchester, England where Rowe attended school and received a classical education. Rowe remained an usher at the school which had moved to Bath, until, at the age of twenty-five, he emigrated to New South Wales. By 1856 Rowe was working as a journalist on the Sydney Morning Herald, and he became associated with the circle of the literary patron N. D. Stenhouse. He was also involved with The Month, the colony's first dedicated literary journal, in which his serial novel, Arthur Owen : an autobiography (1858-59) appeared.
One of Rowe's articles for the Sydney Morning Herald, entitled 'Confessions of a Drunkard', was an autobiographical account of the alcoholic excesses which blighted his health and soured his experiences in the colony. It was written at Stenhouse's home in September 1856 after Rowe had been released from prison on bail. Once recovered from his drinking bout, Rowe went to Muswellbrook as a language tutor in the home of John H. Keys. This is where he met Frank Fowler (q.v.), a young English journalist who attempted to stimulate the colony's literary life with a series of public lectures, establishment of the Literary Association of New South Wales and the launching of The Monthly. Unfortunately Rowe was caught in the cross fire of a public attack on Fowler by Charles Harpur (q.v.) which ended with a cruel and anonymous poem by Harpur being published by Henry Parkes (q.v.) in the Empire. It referred to Rowe in this vein:
Yet not to him the noble task assign,- Not he stern Satire's dignity should ape,- Who, having tasted, "lost his upright shape, And downward fell into a grovelling swine".' (64).
Dispirited, Rowe was desirous of returning to England, writing 'I daily get sicker of this loathsome land... Exposure to rough weather hardens the softest skin, and I have had my share of squalls in New South Wales.' (64). With the help of his friend and patron Stenhouse, Rowe collected the best of his writing and managed to get it published by J. R. Clarke (publisher of The Month) as Peter 'Possum's Portfolio (1858). This publication helped Rowe pay for his passage back to England. Rowe left Sydney for London on the 16 June 1858 with letters of introduction to Stenhouse's literary friends in Edinburgh. He ultimately returned to London where he died in straitened circumstances at his home in Upper Holloway from the effects of an operation related to a cancer of the tongue in 1879.
Rowe was a frequent contributor to the English magazines, Leisure Hour, The Sunday at Home, Cassell's Family Magazine and Chamber's Journal. He also wrote Episodes in an Obscure Life (1871); Friends and Acquaintances (1871), Backward Glances (1874), Picked Up in the Streets, or Struggles for Life Amongst the London Poor (1880), Passages from the Diary of an Early Methodist (1880) and How Our Working People Live (1882). Other works of fiction included Jack Afloat and Ashore (1875) and A Haven of Rest, and Dr. Pertwee's Poor Patients (1878).
E. Morris Miller and Frederick T. Macartney's Australian Literature: A Bibliography to 1938: Extended to 1950 (1956): 413 comments: 'His fiction consists chiefly of stories of adventure and school life, written for boys and girls, included in the above list as a matter of historical interest.'
(Source: Ann-Mari Jordens The Stenhouse Circle: Literary Life in Mid-Nineteenth Century Sydney (1979): 51-69. 'Obituary', The Times, (15 December 1879): 11)).
