Norman Lindsay(1879-1969)

Australian illustrator and novelist Norman Lindsay was born in Creswick, Victoria, in 1879. His father was a physician, but Norman and his brothers had a streak of artistic and literary talent in them (which Norman passed on to his son, the writer Jack Lindsay). At 16 years of age Norman got a job as an illustrator on a Melbourne newspaper, and in 1901 he became the chief cartoonist on the "Sydney Bulletin". Lindsay has worked in virtually all mediums of art--watercolors, lithographs, pen-and-ink drawings, etchings, engravings, even sculpturing in cement. He became Australia's best-known illustrator, and it wasn't long before he branched out into writing, in which he also met with great success. Many of his novels were on the "rowdy" side--a reaction to the somewhat oppressive and puritanical aspects of Australian life at the time--full of men drinking, "wenching" and getting in all sorts of trouble, and readers really took to them. His work was not only popular in Australia (where much of it was censored) but also in America (where none of it was censored).

He died in Sydney in 1969, age 90.