Frederick Macartney

Who was Frederick Macartney?

Frederick Thomas Bennett Macartney, poet and critic, was born in Port Melbourne, Australia. His byline was often Frederick T. Macartney.

He attended Alfred Crescent State School until he was 12,after which he held various jobs as a shop-assistant, before working as a bookkeeper on a Riverina station in 1910-12.

In 1921 Macartney went to Darwin as an assistant to the administrator of the Northern Territory, Frederic Charles Urquhart, and to the government secretary. Appointed public trustee in 1922, by 1924 he was the 'legal Pooh-Bah' of the Territory: sheriff, clerk of courts and judge's associate, registrar of companies, bankruptcy, and births, deaths and marriages, and returning officer.

In 1929, Macartney wrote A Sweep of Lute-strings, Being the Title Excusing a Very Few Love-rhymes. In 1945, he co-authored Papers. In 1947, he published Australian Poetry, a collection of twenty poems by Australian poets.

In 1956, he edited and updated E Morris Miller's Australian Literature from its Beginnings to 1935, under the title Australian Literature, a Bibliography to 1938, Extended to 1950. Also in 1956, he wrote the foreword to The Sonnet in Australasia, a Survey and Selection.