Authors

Australian · 1833–1870

Adam Lindsay Gordon

Adam Lindsay Gordon was a South Australian poet and jockey whose verse ballads of riding, danger, and stoic endurance made him the first Australian poet to achieve international recognition. Born in the Azores to British parents, he emigrated to South Australia at nineteen and worked as a mounted police trooper, horse breaker, and steeplechase rider. His poetry, including 'The Sick Stockrider' and 'How We Beat the Favourite,' captures colonial Australian masculinity with genuine lyric force. He shot himself the day after his last collection was published; his statue now stands in Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner.