AustLit

Arthur Patchett Martin (usually referred to as Patchett Martin) was a member of the Eclectic Society and co-editor the Melbourne Review from 1876 until 1882, when he left for England. There, in 1886, he married the widowed Harriet Anne Bullen, who, as Mrs H. Patchett Martin (q.v.), later edited two Australian anthologies. Martin was a notable Nineteenth Century advocate of Australian literature, and his work The Beginnings of an Australian Literature (originally delivered as a lecture at South Place Institute, London) was published in the UK in 1898.

After leaving Australia, Martin worked as a journalist, writing regularly for the Pall Mall Gazette, and also briefly editing the periodical, Literary Opinion. His other works include Australia and the Empire (1889), True Stories from Australasian History (1893), and Life and Letters of the Right Honourable Robert Lowe, Viscount Sherbrooke (1893). He also edited a children's anthology, Over the Sea : Stories of Two Worlds [1891].

In the later 1890s, Patchett Martin and his wife lived on the Isle of Wight. He died in 1902, at Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, whilst convalescing from illness.