Joseph Furphy
Who was Joseph Furphy?
Australian writer (1843-1912)
Biographical data adapted from Wikipedia’s article on Joseph Furphy (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Biography
Joseph Furphy was born on 26 September 1843 in Yering, Victoria, Australia, to Irish immigrant parents who had settled in the area during a wave of European migration. He spent much of his life working as a bullock driver in the Riverina district of New South Wales. This job greatly influenced his writing and gave him firsthand knowledge of the rural workers, squatters, and station hands who appear in his stories. Writing under the pen name Tom Collins, Furphy developed a unique style full of humor, digressions, and a strong democratic feel based on his observations of life in the bush.
Furphy is best known for his novel Such Is Life, published in 1903 by the Bulletin newspaper's book imprint after years of revisions. The novel, which pretends to be diary entries from a government official named Tom Collins, is famous for its unusual structure, philosophical side notes, and vivid depiction of Australian colonial life in the 1880s. The manuscript was first submitted to the Bulletin in 1897 in a much longer version, and Furphy spent years shortening and improving it before it was finally published. Editor A.G. Stephens was crucial in getting the book published, and Furphy communicated with him often during the process.
Besides Such Is Life, Furphy wrote two other novels using material cut from the original manuscript: Rigby's Romance, which came out in a newspaper before being published as a book, and The Buln-Buln and the Brolga, released after his death. These books also explored the characters and themes of the Riverina setting, though they didn't gain as much attention as Such Is Life. Furphy also wrote poetry and short sketches for Australian periodicals, including the Bulletin, which was the leading literary journal at the time.
Later in life, Furphy moved to Western Australia, where his son lived, and eventually settled in Claremont. He died there on 13 September 1912, just a few days before his sixty-ninth birthday. Although he received some recognition while alive, especially from literary figures who appreciated his work, his reputation grew significantly after his death. Over time, many critics and readers have come to see Such Is Life as a key work in Australian literature.
Before Fame
Furphy grew up in rural Victoria and had only a limited formal education, which he made up for by reading widely and eagerly throughout his life. His father arrived in Australia during the gold rush, and Joseph grew up in a colonial society still shaping its cultural and political identity. After working various labor jobs, he spent about ten years as a bullock driver hauling supplies across the Riverina, gathering the real-life experiences that would later appear in his fiction.
It wasn't until his forties, after moving to Shepparton in Victoria and working at his brother's iron foundry, that Furphy started writing seriously. The steady job at the foundry gave him time to write and revise, and during this period, he created the expansive manuscript that would become Such Is Life. His journey to literary recognition was slow, marked by years of patient revisions, correspondence, and waiting, shaped both by the limited publishing options in colonial times and the unusual nature of his work.
Key Achievements
- Publication of Such Is Life (1903), now regarded as a classic of Australian literature
- Creation of the pseudonym Tom Collins, one of the most recognisable authorial personas in Australian literary history
- Contributed poetry and prose to the Bulletin during its most influential period in Australian cultural life
- Authored two additional novels, Rigby's Romance and The Buln-Buln and the Brolga, extending his fictional portrait of colonial Riverina society
- Provided an early and sustained literary articulation of a distinctly Australian democratic and nationalist sensibility in prose fiction
Did You Know?
- 01.The Furphy water cart, a type of water tank on wheels used by the Australian military and made by Furphy's family business, gave rise to the Australian slang term 'furphy' meaning a rumour or false report.
- 02.Furphy submitted his original manuscript of Such Is Life to the Bulletin in 1897 with a cover letter describing it as 'temper, democratic; bias, offensively Australian,' a phrase that became one of the most quoted self-descriptions in Australian literary history.
- 03.The novel Such Is Life is structured as diary entries spanning only seven non-consecutive days across several months, yet the narrative expands through digressions and interpolated stories to fill an entire novel.
- 04.Furphy taught himself a considerable amount of classical and philosophical literature while working manual labour jobs, and Such Is Life contains references to Shakespeare, Carlyle, and Omar Khayyam alongside its depictions of bullock drivers.
- 05.Rigby's Romance and The Buln-Buln and the Brolga were both carved from the original oversized manuscript of Such Is Life, meaning all three of Furphy's novels essentially share the same source text.