Selected Poems of Adam Lindsay Gordon

Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833-1870), poet and horseman, was born on 19 October 1833. His real love was steeplechasing yet he had sufficient poetic talent to develop into a more substantial writer than he ever became. Long after he died, enthusiastic admirers made pilgrimages to his grave, to Dingley Dell and to other places associated with him. A bust unveiled on 11 May 1934 in Westminster Abbey by the Duke of York attests his extraordinary popularity. His literary reputation has now declined. His popular ballads with their narrative drive and vitality are in marked contrast to his more ambitious poems which, heavily imitative of Romantic and Victorian poetry, are marred by carelessness and inattention to detail. But his successes and failures in his poetry, as in his own life, are a reflection of the tastes and interests of his time.

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