Backblock Ballads and Other Verses

Backblock Ballads and Other Verses is the first collection of poems by the Australian writer C. J. Dennis, published by E. W. Cole, Melbourne, in 1913. It includes his famous poems "Wheat" and "The Austra-laise", as well as the first book publication of several poems that would later appear in The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke.^[1]

The collection consists of 58 poems from a variety of sources. The bulk of the collection was later re-issued in 1918 under the title of Backblock Ballads and Later Verses.^[1]

The title is a homage to Rudyard Kipling's Barrack-Room Ballads and Other Verses.^[2]

Dennis included a "Glossary" of terms used in the poems at the end of the book, which he sub-titled "For the use of the thoroughly genteel".

Writing about the collection in The Sunday Times from Sydney a reviewer stated: "In Australia we have had some very good light versifiers. C. J. Dennis is one of the best of these something between Gilbert and Goodge. His work is always readable, and in humorous vein he is always amusing. For the most part his humor is tinged with satire."^[3]

In the Melbourne Herald Archibald T. Strong commented: "These ballads, with a few exceptions, pretend to be nothing more than entertaining jingles. Considered as such, their merit is very uneven, but the best of them possess a most acceptable raciness and humor. By far the best part of the book is that written in that specific variety of impure English which may be termed pure Australian."^[4]

The collection was originally published in July 1913^[5] by E. W. Cole, owner of Cole's Book Arcade in Bourke Street, Melbourne.^[2]

The collection contains stories that were originally published in The Bulletin, The Critic, The Gadfly, The Lone Hand, and Adelaide's Evening Journal newspaper.^[2]

• 1913 in Australian literature