A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF EDWIN JAMES BRADY - Mallacoota ...

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While is would be obviously improper to claim Brady as a major poet, he represents
the picture of an extremely versatile and moderately proficient minor poet, one of the
many hills among which Neilson and Paterson, Lawson and Brennan stood out as
peaks. While John Masefield could list his omission from his anthology and mention
him as the man “whose Ways of Many Waters contain the best poems yet written
about the merchant sailor and the man-of-war’s man”, 1 his niche in Australian
Literature must be secure, but one tends to agree with Douglas Stewart that his bush
poems are better. Whatever the judgment, however, the man’s vitality, versatility and
vision must be recognised and applauded and his creative achievement in verse
acknowledged with moderate warmth.
1 Foreword to A Sailor’s Garland (London, 1906)