Hugh Raymond McCrae was an Australian writer.

McCrae was born in Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...

, the son of the Australian author George Gordon McCrae

George Gordon McCrae

-Early life:McCrae was born in Leith, Scotland; his father was Andrew Murison McCrae, a writer; his mother was Georgiana McCrae, a painter. George attended a preparatory school in London, and later received lessons from his mother...

. He was originally articled to an architect, but later took upon writing and acting, settling eventually in Sydney

Sydney

Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...

 and Camden. His works are notable for a sense of lightness and delicacy, and he had produced, in addition to a volume of memoirs, a considerable body of verse, and a light operetta, an edition of his grandmother's journal, and a volume of prose pieces.

He wrote a fantasy play The Ship of Heaven which was produced by the Independent Theatre

Independent Theatre

The Independent Theatre was a dramatic society founded in 1930 by Doris Fitton , and was also the name given to the building it occupied from 1938. It was named for London's Independent Theatre Society founded by J. T...

 in 1933, for which Alfred Hill

Alfred Hill

Alfred Francis Hill CMG OBE was an Australian/New Zealand composer, conductor and teacher.-Biography:Alfred Hill was born in Melbourne in 1869. His year of birth is shown in many sources as 1870, but this has now been disproven. He spent most of his early life in New Zealand...

 composed and conducted the music.

McCrae was well known to a number of distinguished figures in Australian artistic and literary circles. He is remembered for his friendships with Norman Lindsay

Norman Lindsay

Norman Alfred William Lindsay was an Australian artist, sculptor, writer, editorial cartoonist, scale modeler, and boxer. He was born in Creswick, Victoria....

 and Kenneth Slessor

Kenneth Slessor

Kenneth Adolf Slessor OBE was an Australian poet and journalist. He was one of Australia's leading poets, notable particularly for the absorption of modernist influences into Australian poetry. The Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry is named after him.-Life:Slessor was born Kenneth Adolphe...

, but he was also friendly with such figures as Christopher Brennan

Christopher Brennan

Christopher John Brennan was an Australian poet and scholar.-Biography:Brennan was born in Sydney, to Christopher Brennan , a brewer, and his wife Mary Ann , née Carroll, both Irish immigrants....

 and Shaw Neilson

Shaw Neilson

John Shaw Neilson , was an Australian poet. Slightlybuilt, for most of his life, John Shaw Neilson worked as a labourer, fruit-picking, clearing scrub, navvying and working in quarries, and, after 1928, working as a messenger with the Country Roads Board in Melbourne...

.

External links

• Hugh McCrae contains a number of his poems.