The portrait likely to emerge in this article will be more that of a trend in Australian literature than of a writer named Frank Hardy.

Most people know a good deal about Frank Hardy, the writer and the man, little or nothing is known about the social forces which created him or his part in the ideological struggle which has characterised Australian literature for one hundred years.

One hundred years? He’s not that bloody old, surely!

But I did know Mary Gilmore well and Henry Lawson’s widow, Bertha, and the first writer I tried to model myself upon was Lawson, especially his early writings about the great economic depression of 1888–93 (‘Faces in the Street’, ‘Arvie Aspinall’s Alarm clock’, etc.).