As a young poet, John Alexander Ross McKellar's work earned him the encouragement of Kenneth Slessor, Hugh McCrae and H. M. Green. Going directly from Sydney High School to work in the Bank of New South Wales, McKellar read widely and fluently in the classics and also established himself as an athlete. He began writing poetry in 1920, with his first published poems appearing in New Triad in 1928. A collection of poems, Twenty-Six, selected by Slessor, was published in 1931. A poet of outstanding promise, he died suddenly of pneumonia in 1932. The verses entitled 'Rare Print' were written during his last illness.
