A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists/Adams, Francis William Lauderdale

3615852A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Rationalists — Adams, Francis William Lauderdale


Adams, Francis William Lauderdale, Australian poet. B. Sep. 27, 1862. Ed. Shrewsbury School and Paris. After teaching for two years at Ventnor College (I. of W.) he went to Australia and joined the staff of the Sydney Bulletin. In 1885 he published an autobiographical novel, Leicester, which attracted much attention, and in 1887 a volume of verse, Songs of the Army of the Night, which gave high promise of his future—a promise unhappily extinguished by consumption. Several of his finest poems (especially "To the Christians" and "The Mass of Christ", are very severe against Christianity, while they breathe an ardent human idealism. Mr. H. S. Salt edited his poems in 1910, including the remarkable "Mass of Christ" with the other poems. Throughout them runs a hectic scorn of "the bastard God" of the Churches. D. Sep. 4, 1893.