- Born
- 18 June 1855
Port Macquarie, New South Wales, Australia - Died
- 18 February 1913
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Summary
Becke was born at Port Macquarie, New South Wales; when his family later moved to Sydney, he attended Fort Street School. At the age of sixteen, he stowed away to Samoa; not long afterwards he sailed with the notorious pirate Captain W.H. 'Bully' Hayes - an important figure in Becke's later fiction. After Hayes' ship was sunk during a cyclone, Becke took a number of jobs in Australia and across the Pacific. He returned to Port Macquarie, married and settled down, writing stories for the Bulletin - he was introduced to J.F. Archibald, the Bulletin's editor, by Ernest Favenc. In 1893 T. Fisher Unwin wrote to Becke from London, offering to publish a collection of his stories: By Reef and Palm was published in 1894, and T. Fisher Unwin went on to publish most of his major works. Deserting his wife in 1896, Becke left for England, living in London and Eastbourne for a while, followed by time spent in Jamaica and the United States, France and the South Seas. Known as the 'Rudyard Kipling of Australia', Becke's literary reputation rests on his many collections of adventure stories, including Old Convict Days (1899) and Under Tropic Skies (1904).