Arthur Henry Adams

Not to be confused with Arthur Henry Adams, president of U.S. Rubber Co.

Arthur Henry Adams (6 December 1872 – 4 March 1936) was a journalist and author. He started his career in New Zealand, though he spent most of it in Australia, and for a short time resided in China and London.

Biography

Arthur Adams was born in Lawrence, New Zealand, and educated at the University of Otago, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts and began studying law. He then abandoned law to become a journalist in Wellington, where he began contributing poetry to The Bulletin, a Sydney periodical. He moved to Sydney in 1898, and took up a position as private secretary and literary advisor to J.C. Williamson, a noted theatrical manager.

In 1900 Adams travelled to China to cover the Boxer Rebellion as a journalist for the Sydney Morning Herald and several New Zealand papers. He would later return to New Zealand before moving to London in 1902, where he published several works including The Nazarene (1902) and London Streets, a collection of poems (1906). Adams returned to Australia in 1906, he took over from A. G. Stephens as editor of the Bulletin's Red Page until 1909.

In addition to his poetry, Adams wrote both plays and novels. His most successful play was Mrs. Pretty and the Premier, which was produced in 1914 by the Melbourne Repertory Theatre.

Works

Verse

• Maoriland: and Other Verses (1899)
• Collected Verses of Arthur H. Adams (1913)
• Australian Nursery Rimes (1917)
• Fifty Nursery Rhymes with Music (1924)

Prose

• Tussock Land (1904)
• London Streets (1906)
• Galahad Jones (1910)
• A Touch of Fantasy (1911)
• The Knight and the Motor Launch (1913)
• Double Bed Dialogues (1915)
• Grocer Greatheart (1915)
• The Australians (1920)
• Lola of the Chocolates (1929)
• A Man's Life (1929)

External links

• Arthur Henry Adams—a collection of some of his sonnets.
• AustLit entry – detailed biographical information on Adams
• Works by Arthur Henry Adams at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)