David Hennessey David Hennessey i(A4867 works by) (a.k.a. John David Hennessey; J. D. Hennessey)
Born: Established: 16 Dec 1847 London,
c
England,
c
c
United Kingdom (UK),
c
Western Europe, Europe,
; Died: Ceased: 1935 Dromana, Mornington Peninsula (Port Phillip Bay), Mornington Peninsula, Melbourne, Victoria,
Gender: Male
Arrived in Australia: 1875
The material on this page is available to AustLit subscribers. If you are a subscriber or are from a subscribing organisation, please log in to gain full access. To explore options for subscribing to this unique teaching, research, and publishing resource for Australian culture and storytelling, please contact us or find out more.

BiographyHistory

John David Hennessey was the son of John, a cabinet maker, and Eliza Hennessey (nee Shuttleworth). His parents migrated to Queensland in 1860, leaving Hennessey with relatives. In 1872 he entered the Wesleyan College, Richmond to study for the Methodist ministry. He left England for Queensland, keeping a diary of his voyage on the Lammermuir. Fryer Library, Queensland, has a photocopy of the 'Diary of David John Hennessey during His Voyage to Australia, January Eighteen Seventy-Five', a colourful, dramatic narrative.

Hennessey started work as a minister in Stanthorpe in May 1875, where he met James Brunton Stephens (q.v.). Stephens, whom Miller described as a 'poet-schoolmaster', frequently attended Hennessey's services (Australian Literature From Its Beginnings to 1935, p.470). Hennessey left Stanthorpe in 1877 to his second charge at Tenterfield. He married Harriet Butcher in May 1878. After a few more years in the ministry, working in Toowoomba and Brisbane, Hennessey retired from the Methodist Church and joined the Congregational ministry. He continued to preach in various Brisbane churches although 1884 marked his turning to journalism. He had already started a monthly paper, The Christian Messenger, that became a weekly issue and, when a branch office was opened in Sydney, was renamed The Intercolonial Christian Messenger . In 1886 the name was changed to The Australian Christian World edited by Hennessey from 1886 to 1891. He thus played an important part in establishing a religious press in Australia.

Hennessey's wife had died in 1886 and he remarried in 1891. After he sold his interest in The Australian Christian World, Hennessey took his family to Wynnum to attempt growing pineapples. Three of his novels, The Dis-Honourable, An Australian Bush Track and Wynnum all show evidence of having been written in the Wynnum-Redland Bay district. In 1894 Hennessey established an agricultural newspaper, The Australian Field, and in 1896 he issued The New Chum Farmer with Hundreds of Practical Hints on Agriculture and Dairying. His firm of Hennessey and Harper published some of his novels and advertised itself as publisher, printer and author's agent. He wrote and worked for Edmund Barton and the Federalist, an association which may have led to his appointment as secretary to the Royal Reception Committee and secretary to the Commonwealth Celebrations Committee at the time of federation.

The new century marked Hennessey's departure to Victoria, where he used the name David Hennessey for literary purposes instead of J.D. Hennessey or John D. Hennessey. He was publishing short stories and serials in Australian and English magazines. The Sea-Cliff Towers Mystery, published in twenty-nine chapters in Good Luck: An Australian Christmas Annual (1898), was republished in 1915 as The Caves of Shend by Hodder and Stoughton. The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature describes his novels as being 'characterised by graphic descriptions of the Australian scene, both contemporary and past; sensational, melodramatic plots; and romatically happy conclusions'.

In Victoria Hennessey assumed a double career as author and minister. He bought Twickenham House in Richmond where he edited a Victorian church paper, continued his journalistic writing and wrote The Outlaw, a novel that won four hundred pounds in Hodder and Stoughton's novel competition in 1913. In 1927 Twickenham House was sold and Hennessey and his wife went to live at Dromana on the Mornington Peninsula. Hennessey died there after what one obituary described as 'a varied career'.

Exhibitions

Most Referenced Works

Notes

  • Also wrote The New-Chum Farmer, with Hundreds of Practical Hints on Agriculture and Dairying, 2nd ed., Sydney :Hennessey, Harper,1897.
  • Hennessey wrote a 'Diary of David John Hennessey during His Voyage to Australia, January Eighteen Seventy -Five'; a photocopy of the handwritten diary is held in the Fryer Library, University of Queensland.

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon A Tail of Gold London : Hodder and Stoughton , 1914 Z498206 1914 single work novel
1914 winner Hodder and Stoughton Novel Competition
y separately published work icon The Outlaw Toronto : Hodder and Stoughton , 1913 Z154604 1913 single work novel
1913 runner-up Hodder and Stoughton Novel Competition Australasian Section
Last amended 30 Sep 2008 11:04:53
Other mentions of "" in AustLit:
    X