Louis Stone

Louis Stone (21 October 1871 – 23 September 1935) was an Australian novelist and playwright.

Early life

Stone was born in Leicester, England, baptized as William Lewis, son of William Stone, a basketmaker, and his wife Emma, née Tewkes. In 1884 the family emigrated to Brisbane, and then a year later, to Redfern in Sydney.

He grew up in poverty. His father, who was a marine, was largely absent.

Stone qualified as a primary school teacher in 1895 and had temporary teaching positions until he obtained a regular teaching job at Cootamundra. In 1901 Stone was transferred to South Wagga Wagga where he met Thomas Blamey who was influenced by Stone.

Writing career

Around 1908 Stone married Abigail Allen and also began to write a novel Jonah, published in London in 1911.

According to Geoffrey Dutton, Stone was intimately familiar with the setting for Jonah, spending time in Waterloo and Paddy's Market, studying the local larrikins and their speech. The novel was warmly accepted by H. G. Wells, Galsworthy and George Bernard Shaw. It was not a financial success, until popularity was finally attained in the nineteen sixties and seventies after it was put on high school reading lists.H. M. Green, in his History of Australian literature, Vol.I (1984), described Stone as, "The most outstanding of the novelists of city life and one of the most outstanding of all the period's novelists." Green regards the most striking character in Jonah not the protagonist, Jonah Jones, but Mrs Yabsley, the enormous, illiterate old washerwoman, whom he describes as, "one of the most real and memorable characters in Australian literature."