Brian Matthews

Brian Matthews (1936–2022) was an Australian literary scholar, biographer and short story writer. He is considered Australia's foremost scholar of Henry Lawson and Lawson's mother Louisa.

Life and career Matthews was born in St Kilda, Victoria on 27 December 1936. He was educated at De La Salle College and Melbourne University.

In the 1970s, although he had a secure position at Flinders University, he undertook a PhD on George Orwell. After its completion, he focused entirely on Australian literature and culture. His chief preoccupation throughout the 1980s was a work that began as a biography of Henry Lawson's mother, Louisa. When Louisa appeared in 1987, it proved to be a much more radical form of biography than had originally been envisaged. It went on to win the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal,