The Anzac Legacy of CJ Dennis

 The Anzac Legacy of CJ Dennis

Reviewed By  Nan van Dissel       September 29, 2026

 

Author  C J Dennis (1876–1938). Edited Darryl Stuart. Forward General Sir Peter Cosgrove AK CVO MC.

Distributor:      Amazon AU
ISBN:                 9781923720152
Publisher:         Big Sky Publishing
Release Date:   7 September 2026  

   Website:   https://www.amazon.com.au/Anzac-Legacy-Dennis-Laureate-Larrikin/dp/1923720155

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The Laureate of the Larrikin

At the height of his career Clarence Michael James Dennis, better known as C.J. Dennis had book sales which significantly eclipsed those of Banjo Paterson and Henry Lawson; he was officially the most successful poet in Australia’s history. To commemorate 150 years since the birth, in 1876, of this now largely forgotten popular poet of the early twentieth century, Darryl Stuart has collated Dennis’s ANZAC poetry from 1908 to 1938 in a most attractive hard backed picture book sized volume; it is the first collection of its kind.

Darryl Stuart’s introduction gives the reader insight into the poet’s life and writing career, while ‘The Anzac Legacy of C.J. Dennis’ highlights C.J. Dennis’s previously unrecognized contribution to this legacy. At the beginning of every section, Stuart contextualizes the poem and why he has only included certain verses of the original poem; the poems are presented chronologically. Here he empathetically explains how the poem relates to the veterans returning home and the challenges they faced; they are a rare collection of how the Anzac legacy evolved.

Prolific influential Australian artist and writer, Harold Fredrick Neville Gye’s wonderful illustrations enhance the narrative and bring the characters of Dennis’s poems alive, while the ‘Glossary for the Thoroughly Genteel’ allows the reader to gain a greater appreciation of Dennis’s poems, which have been written in the vernacular spoken by many Australians at that time.

I agree with General Sir Peter Cosgrove AK CVO MC, who has written the forward, that this is an important work, which has brought C.J. Dennis back to ‘our present day’.

Fiction, General, Historical, Poetry