Jarrahland Jingles. A Volume of Westralian Verse
Perth, The 'Sunday Times' Publishing Company, 1908.
Octavo, 191 pages.
Two-colour pictorial hessian with frayed overlapping edges on flush-cut boards (as issued); small light mark to the leading edge; a few spots of foxing; acidic newspaper cuttings have discoloured three openings (pages 86-87, 90-91, and 126-127, basically only marginally in the first two instances); overall, an excellent copy. The cuttings are still present (now in a Mylar sleeve); nine of them contain additional Dryblower poems from what looks like the war years.
'Dryblower' (or 'Dryblower Murphy') was Australian journalist and poet Edwin Greenslade Murphy (1866-1939). Following the 1892 gold rush of 1892 Murphy arrived in Coolgardie in 1894; later that year he 'helped Billy Clare to launch his "Coolgardie Miner", contributing a weekly gossip column, including jingles, using the pen-name "Dryblower". This originated when a friend sent one of his rhymes to the Sydney "Bulletin", saying that it had been written by a local dryblower; Murphy used the name for the rest of his life... "Jarrahland Jingles" ... was one of the first books of substantial verse published in Western Australia and contained a preface by C.W.A. Hayward that applauded Murphy's "playful banter" and "stinging satire", but Hayward noted that much of it was "quick pressure work" and gave only two poems real praise. Murphy's verses became better known than those of any other Western Australian writer' ('Australian Dictionary of Biography').
Item #120306
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