A D Hope Contents page

A.D.Hope (1907–2000) was born in Cooma, in the Southern tablelands of New South Wales. His father was a Presbyterian minister, and Hope spent his childhood in New South Wales and the remote Tasmanian countryside. He studied at the University of Sydney, graduating in 1928, and took up a scholarship to Oxford University. Like James McAuley, he failed to gain an academic post at first, and after a hesitant start became a lecturer in education at the Sydney Teachers’ College. Eventually he took up academic posts in Melbourne and Canberra, where he held the chair of English at the Australian National University. In his later years his office was situated in the eponymous A D Hope Building. His first book, The Wandering Islands, was published in 1955 when he was in his late forties, and he went on to publish over fifteen collections of poetry and many critical reviews and essays, winning many prizes and awards in the process. He despised free verse, and his poetry is technically orthodox and formally conservative, with a strong sexual element. He was married, with three children.

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