AustLit

'At twenty-one years of age Bernard O'Dowd edited and compiled for the Australasian Secular Association, Melbourne, the Lyceum Tutor ... which included selected catechisms of freethought and an anthology of appropiate verse. In a verbal statement, ... November, 1948, O'Dowd acknowledged all the unsigned and undesignated contributions in verse and prose as his own compositions. These comprised some twenty poems (including three 'contributed') and most of the prose catechisms. In this manner O'Dowd first introduced his muse anonymously to an Australian public.' (E. Morris Miller, 'Bernard O'Dowd's Early Writing', Meanjin Vol.8 no.4, Summer 1949, p. 233.)