Carlton Dawe

Willian Carlton Lanyon Dawe, generally known as Carlton Dawe (30 July 1865 – 30 May 1935), was an Australian author, possibly best known for writing the novel "The Shadow of Evil", which was made into a film.

Dawe was born in Adelaide and came from an old Cornish family. Dawe came to Melbourne with his parents around 1880, and in 1885 published in London "Sydonia and other Poems". In 1886 "Love and the World and other Poems" was published in Melbourne. Although these poems were possibly a little better than average, they did not suggest any particular promise. In the same year he published in Melbourne his first attempt at fiction, "Zantha", and in 1889 another volume of poetry, "Sketches in Verse", was published in London. Dawe travelled round the world more than once and lived for a time in Asia, before settling permanently in England from 1892.

Dawe wrote a few plays; "The Black Spider" was produced in London in 1927, and he also had two plays filmed. He published more than seventy books during his life (listed in E. Morris Miller's "Australian Literature") covering romance, mystery and crime. These included:

* "The Golden Lake" (1891)
* "Mount Desolation" (1892)
* "The History of Godfrey King" (1893)
* "The Emu's Head" (1893)
* "The Pilrims" (1894)
* "The Confessions of a Currency Girl" (1894)
* "The Shadow of Evil" (1921)

"The Golden Lake" has been described as a Lemurian novel and is an adventure story based on the search for a cave of gold in Australia.

Dawe died in London in 1935.

References

*
* "The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature", second edition, 1994, Oxford University Press.
* [http://www.austlit.edu.au/run?ex=ShowAgent&agentId=AMN Dawe, Carlton] at AusLit.
* [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0205902/ Carlton Dawe] at imdb