HENEY, Thomas William (1862-1928)

journalist and poet

son of T. W. Heney, journalist, was born at Sydney on 5 November 1862, and was educated at Cooma. Joining the staff of the Sydney Morning Herald as an assistant reader in 1878, he became a reporter on the Daily Telegraph six years later. He was editor of a paper at Wilcannia in 1886 but returned to Sydney in 1889 and worked on the Echo until it ceased publication in 1893. He then rejoined the Herald as a reviewer and writer of occasional leaders, was appointed associate editor in 1899, and editor in October 1903. He held this position until 1918 and was subsequently editor of the Brisbane Telegraph from 1920 to 1923, and the Sydney Daily Telegraph from 1923 to 1925. He retired on account of ill health in 1925, and died at Springwood in the Blue Mountains on 19 August 1928. He married in 1896 Amy, daughter of Henry Gullett, who survived him with a son and two daughters.

Heney was a quiet and modest man and a first-rate journalist, with a sense of the responsibility of his office as an editor. He published two volumes of poetry, Fortunate Days in 1886 and In Middle Harbour in 1890; but though he is represented in several anthologies his cultivated verse seldom reaches beyond the edge of poetry. His novel, The Girl at Birrell's, is a simple story of pastoral life told with some ability. Another novel, A Station Courtship, was also written by him. It may have been serialized, but no copy in book form could be traced, and it is not in the English or British Museum catalogue.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 20 August 1928; E. Morris Miller, Australian Literature; A Century of Journalism.