Man was made to mourn / by Francis MacNamara, ca. 1850- ca.1861

PXA 1780

fonds

1850

Graphic Materials, Photographs

902323

3 photographs - black & white: - 20.3 x 25.3 cm

Francis MacNamara, known as Frank the Poet, was born in Ireland ca. 1810. Convicted of smashing a shop window and stealing a piece of cloth, he was transported to New South Wales in 1832. In 1839 whilst employed as a shepherd with the Australian Agricultural Company he wrote the anti-authoritarian satire, 'A Convict's Tour to Hell'. He received a ticket-of-leave in January 1847, a conditional pardon later that year and a full pardon in July 1849. Moving to Melbourne, he subsequently vanished from the record apart from an appearance in 1861 at the Mudgee goldfields where he made a genealogy for a local innkeeper and an illuminated copy of Burns' 'Man Was Made To Mourn'. Other poems attributed to him include 'The Seizure of the Cypress Brig', 'The Ballad of Martin Cash', and the celebrated 'The Convict's Lament' (also known as 'Moreton Bay').

Reference:
Australian Dictionary of Biography, Supplementary Volume, MUP, 2005.

2 photographs of an original illustrated manuscript of Robert Burns' poem 'Man Was Made To Mourn' by Francis MacNamara, dated Novr. 26 1850.
1 photograph of another version of this poem by MacNamara (at ML A 807). It shows a number of differences in the way the text is set out, the wording at the top and in the illustration.

Copyright status:: in copyright - created after 1955
Please acknowledge:: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales and Courtesy copyright holder

Pic.Acc. Update Record - Information transferred from Pic.Acc.6658 as part of the eRecords Project, 2012-2013

Good condition