John Shaw Neilson (1872–1942) received very little schooling, yet became one of the foremost poets of his generation. Published seventy years after Neilson’s death, Collected Verse of John Shaw Neilson is a testament to Australia’s literary heritage. Born at Penola, South Australia, Neilson spent most of his working life as a labourer. He won a national poetry prize in 1893 and contributed to various publications as a young man. His first book of verse, Heart of Spring, was published in 1919; followed in 1923 by Ballad and Lyrical Poems; in 1927 by New Poems, and in 1934 by Collected Poems. His last book, Beauty Imposes, published in 1938, led Robert FitzGerald to remark that ‘no other Australian poet has Neilson’s skill with words and rhythms’. One of the first post-Federation Australian poets alongside Christopher Brennan and Mary Gilmore, John Shaw Neilson's legacy of a lifetime's work is perhaps more compelling today than ever before.