Biography
Frank Dalby Davison, also known as F.D. Davison and Freddie Davison, was an Australian novelist and short story writer. Whilst several of his works demonstrated his progressive political philosophy, he is best known as "a writer of animal stories and a sensitive interpreter of Australian bush life in the tradition of Henry Lawson, Joseph Furphy and Vance Palmer." His most popular works were two novels, Man-shy and Dusty, and his short stories.
Life
Davison was born in Hawthorn, Victoria, and christened as Frederick Douglas Davison. His father was Frederick Davison, a printer, publisher, editor, journalist and writer of fiction; and his mother was Amelia, née Watterson. He was their eldest child. He went to Caulfield State School, but left when he was 12, and worked on his father's land at Kinglake in the mountain range north of Melbourne, before moving to the United States of America with his family in 1909. Here Davison was apprenticed to the printing trade, and first started writing.
Between 1909 and the beginning of World War I, he travelled widely in North America and the West Indies. However, with the beginning of the war, he went to England and enlisted, serving in France with the British cavalry. He met his wife Agnes (who was known as Kay) Ede in England while he was doing officer training at Aldershot and they married in 1915. They had a son and a daughter. Davison and his family came to Australia in 1919 after the war ended, and took up a Soldier Settlement selection near Injune, Queensland. However, the farm failed, and, in 1923, he and his family moved to Sydney where he worked in real estate and as an advertising manager for his father's magazines, the Australian and Australia.
He had a romantic relationship with fellow writer, Marjorie Barnard, through the late 1930s. Barnard used an inversion of his name "Knarf" for the hero of her collaborative novel Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow.
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