'Austin South' (W. Edward Graham), was the son of Darling Downs grazier and Queensland politician William Graham (1836-1892), and the elder brother of A. Douglas Graham. He was educated at the Brisbane Grammar School, and then the University of Melbourne, where he attended Trinity College. He was admitted to the Queensland Bar in 1904, but the following year took up a teaching appointment at Tamworth Grammar School. He subsequently returned to Brisbane, where he practiced as a barrister.
In 1891, he published two chapters of a futuristic novel involving a 'Utopian Brisbane', which espoused the single tax theories of Henry George, under the title The Land and the People. A version of this work also appeared as a serial in the South Australian labour newspaper the Voice in 1893, with the title In Those Days, or, Life in the Twentieth Century, however the serial was never concluded, and it remains unclear as to whether a complete version of the work was ever finished.
As 'Austin South', Graham also wrote a number of poems, short stories and essays; these appeared at intervals in the Queenslander, Centennial Magazine, the Boomerang, the Bulletin, Steele Rudd's Magazine, and the Brisbane Courier. His other known works include The Great Illusion: Capitalism, Socialism and the Workers (1926) and The Senior Partner: A Study of Capital and the Capitalistic System (1927), both of which were published under his actual name. During the 1920s and 1930s, Graham was active within the Brisbane Charity Organisation Society.
