Adam Lindsay Gordon was once the most honored among Australian poets. He alone of Australasian writers has the distinction of a place in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey, where his bust was unveiled 11 May 1934. He also was revered by popular balladists of the 1890s--such as "Banjo" Paterson, Henry Lawson, Will Oglivie, and Bancroft Boake--who did so much to create a national mythology centered on the bush. They looked back to Gordon as a major precursor because of his depictions of outback existence and the life of the turf and because of his suicide in the scrub of a Melbourne bayside suburb. Lawson, disenchanted with the prospects for local writers, advised an aspiring young author either to flee overseas, or, like Gordon, "to study elementary anatomy, especially as applies to the cranium, and then shoot himself carefully with the aid of a looking-glass." Boake hung himself with a...