Few Australian writers have experienced the particular combination of veneration and obscurity accorded to Francis Webb, a gifted thinker fondly read by other poets yet little known by ordinary readers. Webb's disrupted early life instilled in him a peripatetic nature and, by early adulthood, a full-blown case of schizophrenia. The most significant features of his life--his deep Catholic conviction and his lifelong struggle with psychological illness--are two of the more prominent impulses in his work. The technical complexity and emotional intensity of his poetry are a consequence of the interaction of all these elements.

Born in Adelaide on 8 February 1925, Francis Charles Webb-Wagg--he dropped the "Wagg" surname before high school--was the third child in a family of three girls and a boy. His father, Claude, operated a music shop, where he also taught; Webb's mother, Hazel, died of influenza in 1927. His father sent the children to live with their...