Adam Lindsay Gordon

A memorial bust of Adam Lindsay Gordon was unveiled by the Duke of York on 11th May 1934 in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. It is situated on a pillar near the bust of Lord Tennyson and the inscription reads

ADAM LINDSAY GORDON POET OF AUSTRALIA BORN 1833 DIED 1870.

The sculptor was Lady Hilton Young (widow of Captain Scott of the Antarctic and later Lady Kennet). Adam was born on 19th October 1833 at Horta on Fayal, in the Azores, the only son of Captain Adam Gordon (1796-1857) and his wife Harriet (1806-1859). He was educated at Cheltenham in England, where his father became a professor. In 1853 he left for South Australia to join the mounted police. He later became a horse breaker and steeplechaser. In 1862 he married Margaret Park (d.1919) but their only child Annie died in infancy. His first volumes of poems were published in 1867 and his reputation chiefly rests on his Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes. Adam shot himself near his home at Brighton, Melbourne on 24th June 1870 and his grave is in the cemetery there.

Further Reading

"Adam Lindsay Gordon. Westminster Abbey Memorial Volume" by Douglas Sladen (1934) (this also deals with Gordon's ancestry and poetry).

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004

See also The Adam Lindsay Gordon Commemorative Committee Inc.