Charles Harpur (23 January 1813 – 10 June 1868) was an Australian poet and playwright. He is regarded as "Australia's most important nineteenth-century poet."
Life
Early life on the Hawkesbury
Harpur was born on 23 January 1813 at Windsor, New South Wales. His parents were convicts. His father, Joseph Harpur, was originally from Kinsale, County Cork, Ireland. He had been sentenced to transportation for highway robbery in March 1800; at the time of Harpur's birth, he was parish clerk and master of the Windsor district school. His mother, Sarah Chidley, was originally from Somerset, and had been sentenced to transportation in 1805. Harpur presumably went to school in Windsor, but little information about his education is available. Later in life, he claimed that he taught himself the principles of English verse by obsessively reading William Shakespeare.
Sydney and first publications
In the early 1830s, Harpur seems to have moved between Sydney and the Hunter Valley, but by 1833 he had settled with his parents in Sydney. At this time he began to publish his writings in newspapers. His earliest known publications were the poems 'An Australian Song' and 'At the Grave of Clements', which appeared in The Currency Lad on the 4th and 11 May 1833. In February 1835 he published parts of his first play, The Tragedy of Donohoe, in The Sydney Monitor, a radical newspaper edited by Edward Smith Hall. Harpur would continue to publish in newspapers throughout his life, eventually publishing hundreds of works in this manner.
In Sydney, Harpur worked as a clerk and letter-sorter in the Post Office, while pursuing a career in the theatre. He acted in three plays at the Theatre Royal in October 1833: The Mutiny at the Nore by Douglas Jerrold, The Miller and His Men by Isaac Pocock, and The Tragedy of Chrononhotonthologos, a farce. His acting career ended ignominiously, when he unsuccessfully sued Barnett Levey, the proprietor of the Theatre Royal, for unpaid wages. His career at the Post Office ended equally poorly, after he quarrelled with the Postmaster-General.
During these years, Harpur befriended many of Sydney's prominent literary and political figures, including Henry Parkes, Daniel Deniehy, and W. A. Duncan. Looking back at the end of his life, Parkes traced the development of his radical politics back to this circle of friends:I had now formed the acquaintance of two men of more than ordinary character and ability, Mr. Charles Harpur, one of the most genuine of Australian poets, and Mr. William Augustine Duncan, then proprietor and editor of the 'Weekly Register.' They were my chief advisers in matters of intellectual resource and enquiry, when the prospect before me was opening and widening, often with many cross lights and drifting clouds, but ever with deepening radiance.
Farming in the Hunter Valley
Harpur had left Sydney two years before and was farming with a brother on the Hunter River. In 1850, he married Mary Doyle and engaged in sheep farming for some years with varying success.
Move to Eurobodalla and death
In 1858, he was appointed gold commissioner at Araluen with a good salary. He held the position for eight years and also had a farm at Eurobodalla. Harpur found, however, that his duties prevented him from supervising the work on the farm and it became a bad investment.
Two verse pamphlets, A Poet's Home and The Tower of a Dream, appeared in 1862 and 1865 respectively.
In 1866, Harpur's position was abolished at a time of retrenchment, and in March 1867 he had a great sorrow when his second son was killed by the accidental discharge of his own gun. Harpur never recovered from the blow. He contracted tuberculosis in the hard winter of 1867, and died on 10 June 1868. He was buried on his property, "Euroma", beside the grave of his son. He was survived by his wife, two sons and two daughters. One of his daughters, writing many years later, mentioned that he had left his family an unencumbered farm and a well-furnished comfortable home.
In 1988, as part of Australia's bicentennial celebrations, a plaque was laid at the site of Harpur's grave (), describing him as "Australia’s first native born poet".