Steele Rudd

Steele Rudd, 1910

Steele Rudd , actually Arthur Hoey Davis (born November 14, 1868 in Drayton , † October 11, 1935 in Brisbane ) was an Australian writer.

Davis was one of thirteen children of a blacksmith. He left Emu Creek School at the age of twelve and worked on farms in his home region. In 1885 he became an employee of the Curator of Interstate Estates in Brisbane, from 1889 he worked in the sheriffs office of the Supreme Court . In 1893 he became secretary to the Treasury Committee of the Queensland National Bank . In 1894 he married Violet Christina Brodie , with whom he had three sons and a daughter.

From 1889 he published in the Chronicle stories about the rowing sport, which he signed with Steele Rudder (after the essayist Richard Steele and the rudder of the boats); from this his pseudonym Steele Rudd arose. His first sketch from country life appeared in Bulletin in 1895 under the title Starting the selection . The Bulletin published an illustrated collection of these short stories as On Our Selection in 1899 and as its sequel Our New Selection in 1903 .

In 1902 Rudd was promoted to deputy sheriff. In this capacity he had to give the signal for the execution of the murderer Patrick Kennif , a disturbing experience which he described in The Miserable Clerk in 1926 . Rudd lost his job in 1904 as a result of Arthur Morgan's Special Retrenchment Act . His wife Violet then founded Steele Rudd's Magazine , which existed until 1907.

After the magazine collapsed, Rudd had to sell a farm in Nobby / Queensland and transferred the rights to the stage version of On Our Selection to Bert Bailey , who successfully staged the play at the Palast Theater in Sydney in 1912 , but Rudd only paid scanty royalties paid. 1913 Rudd became president of the Darling Downs Polo Association , 1914-15 he headed the regional recruiting committee of the Shire of Cambooya , a local government area south of his native town Toowoomba.

A collapse in his wife's health after one of her sons was wounded on the Somme forced the family to return to Brisbane in 1917. In 1919 Violet Davis collapsed completely and was placed under curation until the end of her life in 1952 and hospitalized in Toowoomba. Rudd reactivated his magazine in 1917 under the title Steele Rudd's Annual . His play Grandad Rudd was also staged in 1917 . He served as administrator of the equestrian section of the exhibition of the Royal National Agricultural and Industrial Association 1920-24 and in 1921 became vice president of the Queensland Authors 'and Artists' Association .

In 1922 he toured Australia with a copy of Raymond Longford's film version of On Our Selection . In 1923 he met Winifred Hamilton in Brisbane , who was co-editor of his magazine, which was published in 1924-25 as Steele Rudd's and 1926-27 in Sydney as Steele Rudd's and the Shop Assistants' Magazine , but was never financially successful. The failure of the film adaptation of The Romance of Runnibede and the bankruptcy of the producer of the stage version of The Rudd Family put him in further financial distress, from which he was finally freed in 1930 by the magazine Bulletin and a pension of the Commonwealth Literary Fund .

Winifred Hamilton separated from him in 1932 and Rudd lived with Beatrice Sharp from then on . In May 1935 he was awarded the King's Silver Jubilee Medal . He died of cancer a few months later in Brisbane General Hospital . He found his final resting place in Brisbane's Toowong Cemetery . Rudd published twenty-four books and six plays, and seven of his works were made into films.

Web links

Commons : Steele Rudd  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

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• Dictionary of Australian Biography - Davis, Arthur Hoey
• Steele Rudd in the Internet Movie Database (English)