AustLit

Hanna challenges the common view (perpetuated by several biographies and many articles) of John Shaw Neilson as a simple, rustic man who was surprisingly able to produce poems of significant literary quality despite his lack of literary understanding. Hanna argues that the poet was a skilled craftsman and a complex artist, citing documentary evidence and the critical opinion of several critics to demonstrate that Shaw Neilson did, indeed, know what he was doing.