AustLit

' In 1873, the Presbyterian clergyman, John Dunmore Lang, selected and published a collection of his own poetry, the earliest dating from the 1820s when he was establishing a place for himself in New South Wales (NSW). Coming from the same part of Scotland as Robert Burns (Lang was born in 1799 in Greenock, Burns in 1759 some fifty kilometres south in Alloway, near Ayr), Lang might be expected to demonstrate an approach to writing verse and a way of looking at the world similar to his distinguished, internationally renowned countryman, who was so deeply affected by the region in which he was born and lived. Admittedly they were of different generations, and whereas Burns, the son of a poor tenant farmer, was largely self-educated, Lang excelled at the University of Glasgow. But by Lang's time, Burns had posthumously become iconic. Yet as Burns' star continued to rise, with annual suppers conducted in the colonies to celebrate his 'immortal memory', Lang was lambasted in Sydney newspapers, journalists sometimes expecting that their readers would recognise the source of inspiration for their humour in an implied comparison such as the one in the epigraph above.'  (Publication abstract)