Henry Clarence Kendall Biography | Poet

Henry Clarence Kendall (1841-1882), Australian poet, son of a missionary, was born in New South Wales on the 18th of April 1841. He received only a slight education, and in 1860 he entered a lawyer’s office in Sydney. He had always had literary tastes, and sent some of his verses in 1862 to London to be published in the Athenaeum. Next year he obtained a clerkship in the Lands Department at Sydney, being afterwards transferred to the Colonial Secretary’s office; and he combined this work with the writing of poetry and with journalism. His principal volumes of verse were Leaves from an Australian Forest (1869) and Songs from the Mountains (1880), his feeling for nature, as embodied in Australian landscape and bush-life, being very true and full of charm. In 1869 he resigned his post in the public service, and for some little while was in business with his brothers. Sir Henry Parkes took an interest in him, and eventually appointed him to an inspectorship of forests. He died on the 1st of August 1882. In 1886 a memorial edition of his poems was published at Melbourne.