""John Shaw Neilson (1872-1942) is one of Australia's finest and best-loved lyric poets. This comprehensive selection of letters to, from and about him fills a long-felt need, providing a vivid personal and social history. "The selection begins in 1906 when A. G. Stephens began The Bookfellow. From this crucial point, and during the next thirty-five years, we follow Neilson the man: farming and working in the bush, keeping in touch with his scattered family, and finay moving in 1928 to Melbourne and a job as an interdepartmental messenger with the Country Roads Board in Carlton. "Helen Hewson has chosen and edited her material from more than a thousand existing letters, most of which have not been published previously. They cover family, social and publishing correspondence, in addition to the detailed letters about writing poetry which passed between Neilson and his three very different editorial advisers, A. G. Stephens, Robert H. Croll and James Devaney, his first biographer. "Other writers of the period who corresponded with Neilson included Robert Bridges, Mary Gilmore, Christopher Brennan, and Vance and Nettic Paimer, and the letters are full of revealing details about his association with many contemporary institutions and personalities. "John Shaw Neilson: A Life in Letters establishes a social background and a literary context which ends any suggestion that Neilson is merely a 'bush poet' or 'a simple singer'. This complex poet participated in an intricate network of literary relationships and literary production, and it is only through reading the letters that one realises the degree to which he reflected on his own and other people's poetry and writing." (Front flap)