Author: Murray, Henry Nairne
Biography:
MURRAY, Henry Nairne (d 1849: ancestry.co.uk)
Few details are available about his life, but he lived in Edinburgh before emigrating to Tasmania, likely in the early 1820s—his “Valedictory Song: On leaving Scotland for Van Diemen's Land” was published in the Hobart Town Gazette in July 1824. The earliest of the dated poems in Effusions is from 1812; one poem, dated 1817, was written for and recited at the inaugural meeting of “The Troubadours,” an Edinburgh literary club. He continued writing poems and publishing them in periodicals in Australia but, although various collections were announced as forthcoming, he published no other books of verse. He was a teacher; his The Schoolmaster in in Van Diemen’s Land: A Practical Treatise on Education appeared in 1834. The poems published in Australia indicate that he was married and had children. He died at Richmond, Tasmania. (ancestry.co.uk 30 Mar 2020; National Library of Australia digitised newspapers 30 Mar 2020) SR