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Hugh McCrae
OBE
Hugh McCrae in 1909
Born(1876-10-04)4 October 1876
Melbourne, Australia
Died17 February 1958(1958-02-17) (aged 81)
Spouse(s)
Nancy Adams
​
​
(m. 1901; died 1943)​

Janet Le Brun
​
​
(m. 1946; div. 1948)​
Children3, including Mahdi McCrae (artist)
FatherGeorge Gordon McCrae
RelativesGeorgiana McCrae (grandmother)

Hugh Raymond McCrae OBE (4 October 1876 – 17 February 1958) was an Australian writer, noted for his poetry.[1]

Life and career

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McCrae was born in Melbourne, the son of the Australian author George Gordon McCrae and grandson of the painter and diarist Georgiana McCrae. Originally he trained as an architect, but later took up drawing, writing and acting,[2] settling eventually in Sydney and later in the New South Wales town of Camden. His works are notable for a sense of lightness and delicacy, and he produced, in addition to a volume of memoirs, a considerable body of verse, and a light operetta, an edition of his grandmother's journal, and a volume of prose pieces.[3]

McCrae starred as Australian poet Adam Lindsay Gordon in W. J. Lincoln's 1916 feature film The Life's Romance of Adam Lindsay Gordon, shot in and around Melbourne. In the 1920s, Australian-born composer John Gough set McCrae's poem "Song of the Rain" (from the collection Colombine) to music.[4] McCrae wrote a fantasy play, The Ship of Heaven, which was produced by the Independent Theatre in 1933, for which Alfred Hill composed and conducted the music.[5]

McCrae was well known to a number of distinguished figures in Australian artistic and literary circles. He is remembered for his friendships with Norman Lindsay and Kenneth Slessor, but he was also friendly with such figures as Christopher Brennan and Shaw Neilson.[3] At one time he shared an apartment in New York with Pat Sullivan, the creator of Felix the Cat. When a film about Felix the Cat was being planned, "Sullivan suggested that McCrae should do the drawings while he (Sullivan) supplied the ideas. McCrae refused and has regretted it ever since."[2]

McCrae was awarded the OBE in 1953.[2] Writing after his death in 1958, Mary Gilmore declared that he was Australia's "most outstanding poet", that his poetry "came diamond-like in its perfection of form". "Nothing was too small or too great to attract him," she wrote, adding that "no matter how swallow-like he skims a surface, the deeps are below; he never wrote the shallow."[6] However, he has not retained his critical standing, and is now esteemed mostly as the poet who first offered "an alternative to the balladry that had dominated Australian poetry".[7] Judith Wright called him "a singer, not a thinker, [who] freed the notion of poetry from the portentousness of the Nationalist and radical schools".[8]

Personal

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McCrae married Nancy Adams in Melbourne in May 1901, and the couple moved at once to Sydney.[8] They had three daughters, including artist Mahdi McCrae. Nancy died in 1943. He married Janet Le Brun in July 1946, but their marriage was dissolved in 1948.[8] McCrae died in 1958; Dame Mary Gilmore wrote a farewell poem.[9]

Bibliography

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  • Satyrs and Sunlight (1909)[10]
  • Colombine (1920)[11]
  • Idyllia (1922)[12]
  • The Du Poissey Anecdotes (1922)[13]
  • Satyrs and Sunlight (1928; Fanfrolico Press)[14]
  • Georgiana's Journal (edited, 1934)[15]
  • My Father and My Father's Friends (1935)[16][17]
  • The Mimshi Maiden (1938)[18]
  • Poems (1939)[19]
  • Forests of Pan (1944)
  • Voice of the Forest (1945)[20]
  • Story-Book Only (1948)[21]
  • The Ship of Heaven (1951)[22]
  • The Best Poems of Hugh McCrae (1961)[23]

References

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  1. ↑ "Hugh Raymond McCrae (1876–1958)". Hugh Raymond McCrae (1876–1958) by Martha Rutledge and Norman Cowper. Australian Dictionary of Biography. Retrieved 16 April 2025.
  2. 1 2 3 Bradish, C. R. (2 May 1953). "Playboy of the Poetic World". Sydney Morning Herald: 9.
  3. 1 2 "Biography of Hugh McCrae". PoemHunter. Retrieved 7 February 2020.
  4. ↑ Penton, Brian (4 May 1929). "Australia: Discovered by England: The Work of John Gough". Sydney Morning Herald: 13.
  5. ↑ "Independent Theatre". Sydney Morning Herald: 10. 7 October 1933.
  6. ↑ Gilmore, Mary (26 February 1958). "Farewell, Hugh McCrae". Tribune: 7.
  7. ↑ Wilde, William H.; Hooton, Joy; Andrews, Barry (1994). The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature (2nd ed.). South Melbourne: Oxford University Press. p. 488. ISBN 978-0-19-553381-1.
  8. 1 2 3 Martha Rutledge and Norman Cowper. "McCrae, Hugh Raymond (1876–1958)". Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. ISBN 978-0-522-84459-7. ISSN 1833-7538. OCLC 70677943. Retrieved 8 February 2020.
  9. ↑ Gilmore, Mary (1958), [Farewell Hugh McCrae], retrieved 8 September 2024
  10. ↑ "Satyrs and Sunlight by Hugh McCrae". National Library of Australia. Retrieved 15 July 2026.
  11. ↑ "Colombine by Hugh McCrae". National Library of Australia. Retrieved 15 July 2026.
  12. ↑ Special edition bound for Rose Lindsay at Library of New South Wales McCrae, Hugh (1923), 'Idyllia', poems by Hugh Raymond McCrae, 1923, with illustrations by Norman Lindsay, retrieved 8 September 2024 - Fisher Library copy -McCrae, Hugh; Lindsay, Norman (1922), Idyllia, N.L. Press, retrieved 8 September 2024
  13. ↑ McCrae, Hugh (1922), The Du Poissey anecdotes : to which are joined, Some conversations with a great man by Benjamin Harcourt, revised and edited by Hugh McCrae, Printed for Art in Australia, retrieved 8 September 2024
  14. ↑ McCrae, Hugh; Lindsay, Norman (1928), Prospectus. Satyrs and sunlight : being the collected poetry of Hugh McCrae, Fanfrolico Press, retrieved 8 September 2024
  15. ↑ McCrae, Georgiana; McCrae, Hugh (1934), Georgiana's journal : Melbourne a hundred years ago, Angus & Robertson, retrieved 8 September 2024
  16. ↑ McCrae, Hugh (1935), My father, and my father's friends, Angus and Robertson, retrieved 8 September 2024
  17. ↑ McCrae, Hugh; Mackaness, George; Great Britain. Scottish Education Department (1935), My father and my father's friends : original manuscript, 1935
  18. ↑ McCrae, Hugh (1930), The mimshi maiden, Halstead Press, retrieved 8 September 2024
  19. ↑ McCrae, Hugh (1939), Poems, Angus and Robertson, retrieved 8 September 2024
  20. ↑ McCrae, Hugh (1945), Voice of the forest : poems, Angus and Robertson, retrieved 8 September 2024
  21. ↑ McCrae, Hugh; Rowe, John (1948), Story-book only, Angus and Robertson, retrieved 8 September 2024
  22. ↑ McCrae, Hugh; Hill, Alfred (1951), The ship of heaven : a musical fantasy in three acts, Angus and Robertson, retrieved 8 September 2024
  23. ↑ McCrae, Hugh; Howarth, R. G. (1961), The Best Poems of Hugh McCrae, Angus and Robertson, retrieved 8 September 2024
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