Barcroft Boake (poet)
Barcroft Henry Thomas Boake (26 March 1866 – May, 1892) was an Australian poet.
Born in Sydney, Boake worked as a surveyor and a boundary rider in New South Wales and Queensland, but is best remembered for his poetry, a volume of which was published five years after his death. A sufferer of bipolar disorder, he is believed to have committed suicide. His body was found hanging by the neck from a stockwhip at Middle Harbour in Sydney eight days after he disappeared on 2 May 1892. One writer on Boake's life has mentioned that the suicide took place during the 1891-93 depression when the poet was unable to find work, also noting that "it has been suggested that he killed himself for the love of one of the McKeahnie girls," sisters of the horseman Charlie McKeahnie.[1]
Notes
- ^ Hugh Capel. "Maybe This is the Snowy Horseman," Canberra Times, February 25, 2002
Bibliography
- Barcroft Boake. Where the Dead Men Lie: and Other Poems, 1897.
- Hugh Capel. "Tragic End for a Bush Poet," The Canberra Times, March 27, 2002
External links
- Barcroft Henry Boake at Boake.net
- Barcroft Boake (1866-1892) at Middlemiss.org
- Cecil Hadgraft, 'Boake, Barcroft Henry Thomas (1866 - 1892)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 3, MUP, 1969, pp 186-187.
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