Works
One of his most famous poems is "Waltzing Matilda", which was set to music and became one of Australia's most famous songs. Others include "The Man from Snowy River", which inspired a movie in 1982 and inspired a TV series in the 1990s, and "Clancy of the Overflow", the tale of a Queensland drover.
In 1905 he published a collection of bush ballads entitled Old Bush Songs.
Paterson's poems mostly presented a highly romantic view of rural Australia. Paterson himself, like the majority of Australians, was city-based and was a practising lawyer. His work is often compared to the prose of Henry Lawson, a contemporary of Paterson's, including his work "The Drover's Wife", which presented a considerably less romantic view of the harshness of rural existence of the late 19th century.
Paterson authored two novels; An Outback Marriage (1906) and The Shearer's Colt (1936), wrote many short stories; Three Elephant Power and Other Stories (1917), and wrote a book based on his experiences as a war reporter; Happy Dispatches (1934). He also wrote a book for children The Animals Noah Forgot (1933)
Contemporary recordings of many of Paterson's well known poems have been released by Jack Thompson (actor), who played Clancy in The Man from Snowy River (1982 film).
Media reports in August 2008 stated that a previously unknown poem had been found in a war diary written during the Boer War.
Read more about this topic: Banjo Paterson
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“Your hooves have stamped at the black margin of the wood,
Even where horrible green parrots call and swing.
My works are all stamped down into the sultry mud.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“His works are not to be studied, but read with a swift satisfaction. Their flavor and gust is like what poets tell of the froth of wine, which can only be tasted once and hastily.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In doing good, we are generally cold, and languid, and sluggish; and of all things afraid of being too much in the right. But the works of malice and injustice are quite in another style. They are finished with a bold, masterly hand; touched as they are with the spirit of those vehement passions that call forth all our energies, whenever we oppress and persecute..”
—Edmund Burke (1729–97)