Career
His best known book, I Can Jump Puddles (1955) is the first of a three-part autobiography. The other two books are This is the Grass (1962) and In Mine Own Heart (1963). When Marshall was six years old he contracted polio leaving him with a physical disability that grew worse as he grew older.
From an early age, he resolved to be a writer, and in I Can Jump Puddles he demonstrated an almost total recall of his childhood in Noorat.
Australian poet and contemporary, Hal Porter wrote in 1965 that Marshall is:.. the warmest and most centralized human being. Marshall wrote numerous short stories, mainly set in the bush.
He also wrote newspaper columns and magazine articles He traveled widely in Australia and overseas.
He also collected and published Indigenous Australian stories and legends.
Marshall died in 1984. His remains are interred at Nillumbik (Diamond Creek) Cemetery, Victoria, Australia. In 1985 the Shire of Eltham, where Marshall had lived for many years, established the annual Alan Marshall Short Story Competition for emergent writers.
In 1937, he completed his first novel, How Beautiful Are Thy Feet, which remained unpublished until 1949.