Cirrus@Austlit

Charles Harpur was born to emancipist parents and was educated at the Government School at Parramatta. He worked erratically at a number of jobs, including teaching and farming, and was, for a time, assistant gold commissioner at Araluen. He married Mary Doyle, the subject of his love sonnets, in 1850. In 1867 his second son, Charles, was killed in a shooting accident, compounding his despair after devastating floods destroyed his farm at Eurobodalla. Harpur died in 1868 from tuberculosis.

Heeding William Charles Wentworth's call for a national poet, Harpur sought to achieve this status by modelling his poetry on the style and traditions of English verse. Harpur's first book appeared in 1845, but it was The Bushranger--A Play in Five Acts--and Other Poems (1853) that first drew the attention of readers and critics in Sydney. Two more books followed: The Poet's Home (1862) and The Tower of the Dream (1865). Harpur was primarily considered a nature poet after his death because the philosophical tenor of his writing was lost to readers when H. M. Martin's heavily edited Poems (1883) was accepted by critics as the standard work. But research in the latter decades of the twentieth century revealed the complexity of the poems before Martin's editorial interventions, and uncovered extended philosophical investigations in Harpur's manuscripts.

Critics have also explored the social commentary that Harpur published in a number of newspapers, revealing his deep concern for egalitarianism and democracy. And, while rejecting all religious denominations, Harpur's poetry was written with an unshakeable belief in God.