Lesbia Harford (9 April 1891 – 5 July 1927) was an Australian poet, novelist and political activist.

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Lesbia Harford
Lesbia Harford (9 April 1891 – 5 July 1927) was an
Australian poet, novelist and political activist. Lesbia
Harford was born Lesbia Venner Keogh, the daughter of
Edmund Keogh, a financial agent, and his wife Helen
(née Moore), she was born with a congenital heart defect
that affected her health throughout her short life.
Life
Lesbia was educated at convent schools in Melbourne and Ballarat, but gave up her
Catholic faith at a young age, and in her teenage years took part in meetings of the
socialist Unitarian minister Frederick Sinclaire’s Free Religious Fellowship.
Lesbia was educated at the Sacré Cœur School at "Clifton", Malvern, Victoria; Mary's
Mount school at Ballarat, Victoria; and the University of Melbourne, where she
graduated LL.B. in 1916. She was one of the university's few women students and one
of its few opponents of Australia's part in the First World War.
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Lesbia advocated free love in human relations. She herself formed lifelong parallel
attachments to both men and women, most notably to Katie Lush, philosophy tutor at
Ormond College.
Writing
Harford had begun writing verse in 1910, and in May 1921 Birth, a small poetry
magazine published at Melbourne, gave the whole of one number to a selection from
her poems.
In 1927 three of her poems were included in Serle's An Australasian Anthology. The
critic H.M. Green wrote "She has written some of the best lyrics among today's and
certainly, I would say, the best love lyrics written out here."
Mrs Keogh thought Lesbia's writing was "beautiful" and in 1939 was still trying to get her
novel and more poems published. In 1941 a small volume (54 poems) of The Poems of
Lesbia Harford, edited by Nettie Palmer for Melbourne University Press, "revealed a
poet of originality and charm."
In 1985 a much larger selection of poems appeared, edited by Marjorie Pizer and
Drusilla Modjeska with a long introduction by Modjeska, acknowledging that some of
Harford's sexual relations were with women and much of her love poetry was
addressed to them. Les Murray published 86 of these poems and a page of biography
in a 2005 anthology. Lehmann and Gray's obese 2011 Australian poetry since 1788
prints only thirteen poems (given "as much space as Brennan") but provides a scholarly
and detailed critical biography.
The biggest selection in print is Collected Poems, which has 250 poems, a two-page
foreword by Les Murray and an eight-page introduction by the editor, Oliver Dennis.
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Harford wrote a long-lost 190-page novel, The Invaluable Mystery, eventually published
in 1987 with a foreword by Helen Garner and an introduction by Richard Nile and
Robert Darby.
Poetry Collections
The Poems of Lesbia Harford, Nettie Palmer, ed. (Melbourne: Melbourne
University Press, 1941).
The Poems of Lesbia Harford, Marjorie Pizer and Drusilla Modjeska, eds.
(Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1985).
Collected Poems: Lesbia Harford, Oliver Dennis, ed. (UWAP, 2014).
Suggested Further Reading
Drusilla Modjeska, ‘Introduction,’ The Poems of Lesbia Harford (Sydney:
Angus and Robertson, 1985), pp. 1–38.
Nettie Palmer, ‘Foreword,’ The Poems of Lesbia Harford (Melbourne:
Melbourne University Press, 1941), pp. [2]–[3].
Jeff Sparrow, ‘ “Signed Up in a Rebel Band”: Lesbia Harford Re-Viewed,’
Hecate 32.1 (2006): pp. 8–35.
Ann Vickery, ‘Lesbia Harford: Writing Revolution,’ Stressing the Modern:
Cultural Politics in Australian Women’s Poetry (Cambridge: Salt Publishing,
2007).
Body And Soul
 Lesbia Harford
Buddha In The Workroom
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 Lesbia Harford
Closing Time: Public Library
 Lesbia Harford
Day’s End
 Lesbia Harford
Deliverance Through Art
 Lesbia Harford
Fatherless
 Lesbia Harford
Flowers And Light
 Lesbia Harford
Girl’s Love
 Lesbia Harford
God Speaks
 Lesbia Harford
Grotesque
 Lesbia Harford
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Hecate’s Due
 Lesbia Harford
In The Public Library
 Lesbia Harford
Inventory
 Lesbia Harford
Lawstudent And Coach
 Lesbia Harford
Learning Geography
 Lesbia Harford
Lie-a-bed
 Lesbia Harford
Little Ships
 Lesbia Harford
Lovers Parted
 Lesbia Harford
Machinist Talking
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 Lesbia Harford
Machinist’s Song
 Lesbia Harford
Martha
 Lesbia Harford
Miss Mary Fairfax
 Lesbia Harford
Mortal Poems
 Lesbia Harford
Noli Me Tangere
 Lesbia Harford
Periodicity
 Lesbia Harford
Polytheist
 Lesbia Harford
Pruning Flowering Gums
 Lesbia Harford
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Raiment
 Lesbia Harford
Revolution
 Lesbia Harford
Skirt Machinist
 Lesbia Harford
Street Music
 Lesbia Harford
Street Scene—Little Lonsdale St.
 Lesbia Harford
Suburban Dames
 Lesbia Harford
Summer Lightning
 Lesbia Harford
The Contest
 Lesbia Harford
The Electric Tram To Kew
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 Lesbia Harford
The Folk I Love
 Lesbia Harford
The Immigrant
 Lesbia Harford
The Invisible People
 Lesbia Harford
The Melbourne Cup
 Lesbia Harford
The Moonlit Room
 Lesbia Harford
The Nuns And The Lilies
 Lesbia Harford
The Psychological Craze
 Lesbia Harford
The Silent Dead
 Lesbia Harford
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The Sisters
 Lesbia Harford
The Two Swans
 Lesbia Harford
The Tyrant
 Lesbia Harford
The Wife
 Lesbia Harford
Three Teachers
 Lesbia Harford
To Leslie
 Lesbia Harford
Weekend At Mt. Dandenong
 Lesbia Harford
White Sunshine
 Lesbia Harford
Work-Girls’ Holiday
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