An Unsentimental Bloke: The Life and Work of C J Dennis by Philip Butterss

Book Description

Secondhand. Very good condition. Wear to book corners and edges. Some crinkling to tail right corner of half-title page, otherwise interior is excellent.

The Sentimental Bloke and Doreen are famous characters in Australian popular culture, but their creator deserves to be better known. C J Dennis (1876-1928) transformed the larrikin from a street thug into a respectable image of Australian identity and helped shape the Anzac legend.

Many people regarded Dennis himself as a sentimental bloke, but this book shows him to be a much more complex and sometimes darker personality. It examines not only his humorous and lovable side but also his struggles with alcohol and depression, his political activism, his marriage, and his financial dealings.

An Unsentimental Bloke traces Dennis's early years in rural South Australia, his work on a bohemian newspaper in Adelaide and his move to Melbourne as a freelancer for the Bulletin, his period of political involvement, followed by enormous successes (he was more popular than Banjo Paterson or Henry Lawson ever were), spectacular fall, and re-emergence as an elder statesman of Australian letters. (back cover)