Fair Girls and Gray Horses: With Other Verses

Fair Girls and Grey Horses : With Other Verses (1898) is the first collection of poems by Scottish-Australian poet Will H. Ogilvie. It was published in hardback by The Bulletin in Sydney in 1898.

The anthology includes 90 poems by the author.

Critical reception
A writer in The Sydney Morning Herald noted, of the original publication: "A beautiful volume, as far as typography goes, is Mr Will H. Ogilvie's 'Fair Girls and Gray Horses,' a collection of Australian poetry with the imprint of the 'Bulletin' Company. The real westward—that means anywhere from Menindie to the Gulf of Carpentaria and west of the Darling and its tributaries—has never been so celebrated. Mr Ogilvie may, indeed, be called the laureate of Bourke and 'back of beyond.'"

The reviewer in The Daily Telegraph was impressed with the collection: "There is real stuff here — not pink and white prettiness. The good red blood flows in every line, making passing faults of style more than pardonable, and throwing a glow over occasional lapses into mere rhyme. Not that such blemishes are flagrant or frequent. Feeling to a large extent makes its own forms and marks its own boundaries; and genuine poetic instinct rarely strikes a thoroughly jarring note. This instinct Mr. Ogilvie possesses in a very high degree. He combines the spirited ring of Paterson with the more delicate intuition of Lawson and Daley."

The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature states: "The poems, a mixture of ballads and lyrics, celebrated all 'Fair Girls' and 'all Gray hourses', for Ogilvie believed that 'Golden and Gray are the loves to hold'...it is in lyrics such as 'A Telltale Tryst' and 'The Bush, My Lover', where the loveliness of fair girls blends with the shimmering Australian moonlight, that Ogilvie's singular conrtribution to the verse of the period lies."

Publication history
After the original publication of the book in 1898, it was reprinted as follows:


 * The Bulletin, 1899 [Note: this edition has an additional 25 poems included.]
 * The Bulletin, 1901 [Note: reprint of the 1899 edition.]
 * Angus and Robertson, 1906
 * Simpkin Marshall, London, 1907
 * Angus and Robertson, 1913
 * Angus and Robertson, 1930, 1933, 1936, 1958
 * Pollard, 1974