C. J. DENNIS DEAD

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 145, 22 June 1938, Page 12

C. J. DENNIS DEAD

WROTE "SENTIMENTAL

BLOKE"

(Received June 22, 2 p.m.) MELBOURNE, This Day. Mr. C. J. Dennis, the Australian poet who wrote "The Sentimental Bloke," has died at the age of 62.

Clarence James Dennis's name was famous to an earlier generation, for his "Sentimental Bloke" and "Ginger Mick," who wefe created during the World War. He was born at Auburn, South Australia, in 1876, and educated at the State School at Gladstone, South Australia, and at Christian Brothers' College, Adelaidei In 1897 he joined the literary staff of the "Critic," and in 1904 became its editor. In 1906 he founded the "Gadfly," a satirical illustrated weekly, in Adelaide, and later joined the literary staff of the Melbourne "Herald." In 1913 he published his "Backblocks Ballads," and in 1915 he rocketed to fame with his "Sentimental Bloke," a vernacular account of the life and loves of an Australian Cockney. E. V. Lucas reviewed him I under the heading "Of a Bonzer Australian Poet," and he received great attention in London. In Australia and New Zealand his triumph was immense. The book was dramatised and finally filmed, and in 1016 he followed it with "The Moods of Ginger Mick," a hardened warrior who was a friend of the Sentimental Bloke, a ifabbitdealert and a "dinkum Aussie." After these books came "The Glugs of Gosh," "Doreen," and "Digger Smith," and since the war "Jim of the Hills" (1919), "A Book for Kids" (1921), and "Rose of Spadgers" (1924). He married in 1924 Miss Olive Herron, ■