Lesbia Harford

Lesbia Venner Keogh was born at Brighton, Victoria, Australia on 9th April 1891. 

From 1893 to 1900, the family lived at ‘Wangrabel’, Armadale. Her father left home for Western Australia when his real estate business failed and she and her three siblings were raised by their mother, who took genteel jobs, begged handouts from relations and took in boarders. Lesbia was educated at the Victoria schools; Sacré Cœur School and Mary's Mount school and finally the University of Melbourne, where she graduated LL. B. in 1916. She was one of the university's few women students and an early opponent of Australia's part in the First World War.

Lesbia advocated free love in human relations. She herself formed lifelong parallel attachments to both men and women, most notably to Katie Lush, philosophy tutor at Ormond College.

A social activist, she worked in textile and clothing factories to see for herself the conditions under which women worked. She became state vice-president of the Federated Clothing and Allied Trades Union. She was a friend of Norman Jeffrey and lover of Guido Baracchi, founding members of the Communist Party of Australia although she never joined.

In 1918 she moved to Sydney to campaign for the release of the Sydney Twelve, members of the Industrial Workers of the World (the Wobblies) arrested and charged with treason, arson, sedition and forgery. 

Two years later she married Patrick John (Pat) Harford, sometime soldier, a clicker in his uncle's Fitzroy boot factory and a fellow Wobbly. Together they shared interests in painting and aesthetics. He was also feckless and an alcoholic.

Lesbia had begun writing verse in 1910, and in May 1921 Birth, a small poetry magazine in Melbourne, gave the whole of one issue over to her poems.

In 1923 she wrote and published ‘The Law Relating to Hire Purchase in Australia and New Zealand’, as a way to earn money. Three years later she completed her articles with a Melbourne law firm.

Her health was always delicate and accounts vary as to the probable cause, they range from a severe attack of rheumatic fever as a child; tuberculosis; born with a heart problem that prevented adequate blood oxygenation. She often had to walk slowly and her lips were sometimes quite blue.

In 1927, three of her poems were included in Serle's ‘An Australasian Anthology’. Critical praise was immediate and glowing.

Her novel, ‘The Invaluable Mystery’, long thought to be lost was eventually published in 1987.

Lesbia Harford died of lung and heart failure in St Vincent's Hospital on 5th July 1927. She was 36.

Portable Poetry

The Poetry of Lesbia Harford: 'The revolution splendidly begun''

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