Out Back (poem)

"Out Back"
by Henry Lawson
First published in	The Bulletin
Country	Australia
Language	English
Publication date	30 September 1893
Lines	40
Full text
Out Back at Wikisource

"Out Back" (1893) is a poem by Australian poet Henry Lawson.

It was originally published in The Bulletin on 30 September 1893 and subsequently reprinted in several of the author's collections, other periodicals and a number of Australian poetry anthologies.

Critical reception

In a review of In the Days When the World was Wide and Other Verses in The Sydney Morning Herald a reviewer referred to the poem's "pitiless realism".

Reviewing the same volume in The South Australian Register a reviewer called the poem a "powerful piece of realism".

Publication history

After the poem's initial publication in The Bulletin it was reprinted as follows:

• The Worker, 15 December 1894
• In the Days When the World was Wide and Other Verses by Henry Lawson, Angus and Robertson, 1900
• The Queenslander, 14 December 1901
• An Anthology of Australian Verse edited by Bertram Stevens, Angus and Robertson, 1907
• The Golden Treasury of Australian Verse edited by Bertram Stevens, Angus and Robertson, 1909
• Selected Poems of Henry Lawson by Henry Lawson, Angus and Robertson, 1918
• Winnowed Verse by Henry Lawson, Angus and Robertson, 1924
• Selections from Australian Poets edited by Bertram Stephens and George Mackaness, Cornstalk Publishing, 1925
• New Song in an Old Land edited by Rex Ingamells, 1943
• Out Back and Other Poems by Henry Lawson, W. H. Honey, 1943
• Poets of Australia : An Anthology of Australian Verse edited by George Mackaness, Angus & Robertson, 1946
• A Treasury of Colonial Poetry, Currawong, 1982
• A Campfire Yarn : Henry Lawson Complete Works 1885-1900 edited by Leonard Cronin, Lansdowne, 1984
• A Collection of Australian Bush Verse, Peter Antill-Rose, 1989
• An Australian Treasury of Popular Verse edited by Jim Haynes, ABC Books, 2002

See also

• 1893 in Australian literature
• 1893 in poetry

References