William Gosse Hay

William Gosse Hay

William Gosse Hay (1875-1945), author and essayist, was born on 17 November 1875 at Linden, Hazelwood Park, Adelaide, son of Alexander Hay and his wife Agnes Grant, née Gosse, cousin of (Sir) Edmund Gosse, literary critic and essayist, and sister of William Christie Gosse. Hay was educated privately in Adelaide and from 1889 at Melbourne Church of England Grammar School before in 1895 entering Trinity College, Cambridge (B.A., 1898). At Cambridge he became interested in Australian history and wrote a novel about convict transportation to New South Wales. His father's death in 1898 released him from an obligation to study law and allowed him to devote himself to writing. Early poems and short stories were unsuccessful but in 1901 his Cambridge novel, Stifled Laughter: a melodrama (time 1834), was published through the agency of London literary friends and with the financial support of his mother, herself a minor biographer and novelist.

From 1925 Hay lived in seclusion near Victor Harbor. Although he held liberal views in religion and politics, describing himself as an Anglican of the Low Church and a 'conservative democrat', his less flexible adherence to the social attitudes of his youth led to exaggerated accounts of eccentricity. Those who knew him, including his publisher Sir Stanley Unwin, allowed that he was obsessed with his objectives as a writer and intensely sensitive to critical and personal affront; but also found him aware of his foibles and not without humour. He died on 21 March 1945 after illness attributed to over-exertion in fighting a bush fire. He was buried at Victor Harbor and was survived by his wife and three sons.

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