One of the best known Australian poets and fiction writers of the
colonial period, Henry Lawson spent nearly two years living in Leeton
from 1916-17.
In 1915 Lawson was invited to Leeton with the offer of two guineas a
week and a house in return for articles and poems publicising the
Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area (MIA). During his stay he also revised
early work for publication in Selected Poems (1918).
Lawson wrote of Leeton in 1916:
"The growing impression of Leeton is as the most cosmopolitan place I have ever been in, and perhaps the most naturally intellectual and democratic. The townspeople all seem extremely kind and cheerful..."
Among the 30 poems and 10 prose sketches that Lawson wrote during his 20-month sojourn in Leeton was “A Letter from Leeton” that was published in a book distributed to Australian soldiers during World War One. This was later credited by a government report as having had an "inestimable value" in attracting settlers to the MIA after the War.