Christopher Brennan

Christopher John Brennan (1 November 1870 – 5 October 1932) was an Australian poet, scholar and literary critic.

Biography Brennan was born in Haymarket, an inner suburb of Sydney, to Christopher Brennan (d. 1919), a brewer, and his wife Mary Ann née Carroll (d. 1924), both Irish immigrants. His education took place at two schools in Sydney: he first attended St Aloysius' College, and after gaining a scholarship from Patrick Moran, he boarded at St Ignatius' College, Riverview. Brennan began forming a theory about the descent of Aeschylus' extant manuscripts in 1888. before being given a position as assistant lecturer in French and German in the department of modern languages and literature and in 1920 the position of associate professor in German and comparative literature at the University of Sydney. In 1914, he produced his major work, Poems: 1913.

After Brennan's marriage broke up in 1922, he went to live with Violet Singer, the 'Vie' of his later poems,

Brennan Hall and Library at St John's College within the University of Sydney, the Christopher Brennan building in the university's Arts Faculty, and the main library at Saint Ignatius' College, Riverview are named in his honour.

There was for several decades a Christopher Brennan Society "founded in... the 1970s by Axel Clark, Robin Marsden and John Fletcher", whose patrons included "some who knew Brennan: Professor A. R. Chisholm; Margaret Delmer; Professor Ralph Farrell; Sister Peter, of the Sisters of Charity; Walter Stone; Professor G. P. Shipp; Richard Pennington".