Nathaniel Walter Swan
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Nathaniel Walter Swan (or N. Walter Swan; 1834 – 31 July 1884) was an Irish-born Australian journalist and short-story writer.
Biography
He was born in Monaghan, Ireland, and was said to be educated at the University of Glasgow. In the 1850s he travelled to Victoria in Australia, to take part in the gold rush in the colony; he had some success with a claim in Sandhurst. On his way to Melbourne after abandoning gold-digging, he met the writer Henry Kingsley, spending a few days with him shortly before Kingsley's return to England.{{cite wikisource |first=Philip |last=Mennell |authorlink=Philip Mennell |chapter=Swan, Nathaniel Walter |title=The Dictionary of Australasian Biography |year=1892}} He was also friends with Marcus Clarke and Henry Kendall.{{cite web |url = https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6044925.Nathaniel_Walter_Swan | title = Nathaniel Walter Swan | accessdate = 29 March 2020 | publisher = Goodreads}}
Settling in Ararat, Swan became editor of the local paper, the Ararat Advertiser. In 1869 he moved to Stawell where he edited the Pleasant Creek News. He sometimes attended the Yorick Club in Melbourne. He wrote stories, some of which appeared in serial form in publications including The Sydney Mail and the Melbourne Australasian.[https://books.google.com/books?id=fdunDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA97 Ken Gelder, Rachel Weaver. Colonial Australian Fiction: Character Types, Social Formations and the Colonial Economy. Sydney University Press, 2017. Page 97.]
He wrote three books, one of which Luke Miver's Harvest was first published in 1879 in The Sydney Mail{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article162809857 |title=Luke Mivers' Harvest. |newspaper=The Sydney Mail New South Wales Advertiser |volume=XXVII |issue=975 |location=New South Wales, Australia |date=8 March 1879 |page=366}}
{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article162808430 |title=Tales. |newspaper=The Sydney Mail New South Wales Advertiser |volume=XXVII |issue=976 |date=15 March 1879 |page=406}}
{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article162806920 |title=Tales. |newspaper=The Sydney Mail New South Wales Advertiser |volume=XXVII |issue=977 |date=22 March 1879 |page=446}}
{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article162807348 |title=Tales. |newspaper=The Sydney Mail New South Wales Advertiser |volume=XXVII |issue=978 |date=29 March 1879 |page=486}}
{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article162805782 |title=Tales. |newspaper=The Sydney Mail New South Wales Advertiser |volume=XXVII |issue=979 |date=5 April 1879 |page=526}}
{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article162806718 |title=Tales. |newspaper=The Sydney Mail New South Wales Advertiser |volume=XXVII |issue=980 |date=12 April 1879 |page=566}}
{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article162805111 |title=Tales. |newspaper=The Sydney Mail New South Wales Advertiser |volume=XXVII |issue=981 |date=19 April 1879 |page=606}}
{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article162807746 |title=Tales. |newspaper=The Sydney Mail New South Wales Advertiser |volume=XXVII |issue=982 |date=26 April 1879 |page=646}}
{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article162809446 |title=Tales. |newspaper=The Sydney Mail New South Wales Advertiser |volume=XXVII |issue=983 |date=3 May 1879 |page=686}}
{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article162806410 |title=Fiction. |newspaper=The Sydney Mail New South Wales Advertiser |volume=XXVII |issue=984 |date=10 May 1879 |page=727}}
{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article162809311 |title=Fiction. |newspaper=The Sydney Mail New South Wales Advertiser |volume=XXVII |issue=985 |date=17 May 1879 |page=767}}
{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article162808707 |title=Fiction. |newspaper=The Sydney Mail New South Wales Advertiser |volume=XXVII |issue=986 |date=24 May 1879 |page=806}}
{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article162805369 |title=Fiction. |newspaper=The Sydney Mail New South Wales Advertiser |volume=XXVII |issue=987 |date=31 May 1879 |page=847}}
{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article162805568 |title=Fiction. |newspaper=The Sydney Mail New South Wales Advertiser |volume=XXVII |issue=988 |date=7 June 1879 |page=886}}
{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article162808287 |title=Fiction. |newspaper=The Sydney Mail New South Wales Advertiser |volume=XXVII |issue=989 |date=14 June 1879 |page=927}}
{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article162806576 |title=Fiction. |newspaper=The Sydney Mail New South Wales Advertiser |volume=XXVII |issue=990 |date=21 June 1879 |page=967}} as the winning entry in a literary competition which won Swan a prize of £100, in addition two collections of his stories were published: Tales of Australian Life (London, 1875) and A Couple of Cups Ago, and other stories (Melbourne, 1885).
Swan's father was described as a linen merchant and his early education in Monaghan was under the tutorship of the Presbyterian minister Reverend John Bleckley who had earlier been teacher to Charles Gavan Duffy. Swan had a son, Walter Blakely Swan, and it is thought that he honoured his teacher in his son's middle name. One of his obituarist's claimed that he had studied at the University of Glasgow but that University has no records of a student called N.W. Swan between 1850 and 1854, he may have attended Belfast's Royal Academical Institution but its records for the period have been lost. His wife was Mary Ellen O'Brien who was born in 1845 in County Tipperary, they married in Ararat's Roman Catholic Church.{{cite book | url = http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/ozlit/pdf/p00083.pdf | title = Luke Miver's Harvest | editor = Harry Heseltine | author = Nathaniel Walter Swan | year = 2000 | chapter = General Introduction | publisher = University of Sydney Press}}
References
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Category:People from Monaghan (town)
Category:People from the Colony of Victoria
Category:19th-century Australian journalists
Category:19th-century Australian male writers
Category:19th-century Australian short story writers
Category:Irish emigrants to colonial Australia