Edward Dyson

Edward George Dyson (4 March 1865 – 22 August 1931) was an Australian journalist, poet, playwright and short story writer. He was the elder brother of illustrators Will Dyson (1880–1938) and Ambrose Dyson (1876–1913), with three sisters also of artistic and literary praise.

Dyson wrote under several – some say many – nom-de-plumes, including Silas Snell. In his day, the period of Australia's federation, the poet and writer was "ranked very closely to Australia's greatest short-story writer, Henry Lawson". With Lawson known as the "swagman poet", Ogilvie the "horseman poet", Dyson was the "mining poet". Although known as a freelance writer, he was also considered part of The Bulletin writer group.

Early life

He was born at Morrison's Diggings near Ballarat in March 1865, to George Dyson and Jane, née Mayall. Brother Will would marry Ruby Lindsay while Ruby's brother Lionel would marry the Dyson sister Jean.

He was educated at the government schools in those towns until the age of thirteen. He and his child friends would also be fossicking and re-washing hillsides.

At a 12-year-old he began to work as an assistant to a travelling draper (leading to the 1911 poem "Tommy the hawker") as well as various jobs "below and on top" in the Victorian and Tasmanian goldfields: Driving a whim horse at Ballarat, mining at Clunes and Bungaree, and panning shallow alluvial for gold at Lefroy, Tasmania, and on the Pinafore field, finding its largest nugget. About 1883 the family settled in South Melbourne, where he became a factory hand. Acceptance of his writings allowed Dyson to leave the factory and earn his livelihood solely from his stories, verses, and paragraphs. His first real success came in 1889 when his short story A golden shanty was used as the title-piece in The Bulletins Christmas anthology.

The year 1893 saw Dyson side with Lawson in a poetry slam on Banjo Paterson's bush idealism, as part of the Bulletin Debate, where he submitted the poem "The Fact of the Matter", which was later reworded and renamed "The drovers in reply". It was to the point of publication in January 1919, a few months before Dyson's personal health significantly impacted his capability to work due to the global Spanish flu. The anthology was well received as showing "his remarkable ability in seizing the soldier's point of view, and his dexterous use of language, plain and colored". His writing style whilst generally humorous, farcical or with exaggeration, tended to be laboured.

Dyson did an enormous amount of work for many years until he broke down under the strain. In 1914 aged 49, he married twenty-two-year-old Dorothy Boyes, who was described as "one of the beauties of Melbourne, and has attained some prominence as a composer". Boyes had previously put one of Dyson's works to music.

By 1923 Edward Dyson was feeling weakened from an appendicitis operation,

Novels

In the Roaring Fifties (1906) The Missing Link (1908) Tommy Minogue (1908) Tommy the Hawker and Snifter his Dog (1911) Loves of Lancelot (1914) The Escapades of Ann (1919) The Grey Goose Comedy Company (1922)

Short story collections

Below and On Top (1898) Fact'ry 'ands (1906) (also a play) Benno and Some of the Push: Being Further 'Fact'ry 'ands' Stories (1911), published by the Railway Bookstall Company The Golden Shanty (1911) Spats' Fact'ry : More fact'ry 'ands (1914)

Major short stories

"The Golden Shanty" (1887) "The Funerals of Malachi Mooney" (1900)

Poetry collections

Rhymes from the Mines and Other Lines (1896) 'Hello, Soldier!': Khaki verse (1919), thirty-seven poems, printed on brown paper, with illustrations from Will Dyson, Ruby Lind, and George Dancey

Selected list of poems TitleYearFirst publishedReprinted/collected in "Cleaning Up" 1892 The Bulletin, 4 June 1892 Rhymes from the Mines and Other Lines, Angus and Robertson, 1896, pp.23-25 "The Old Whim Horse" 1892 The Bulletin, 30 July 1892 Rhymes from the Mines and Other Lines, Angus and Robertson, 1896, pp.19-22 "The Fact of the Matter" 1892 The Bulletin, 30 July 1892 Not collected "Peter Simson's Farm" 1896 The Argus, 22 February 1896 Rhymes from the Mines and Other Lines, Angus and Robertson, 1896, pp.117-122Others' "The Worked-Out Mine" (1889) "The Trucker" (1890) "Struck It At Last" (1892) "When the Bell Blew Up" (1893) "The Rescue" (1894) "Bullocky Bill and His Old Red Team" (1895) "When Father Petree Prayed : A Recollection" (1895) "A Friendly Game of Football" (1896) "Men of Australia" (1898) "At the Football Match: Last Saturday" (1897) "The Letters of the Dead" (1915) "Hello, Soldier!" (1918)