Percy Reginald Stephensen was born on 20 November 1901 in
Maryborough, Queensland. The family lived on a small farm outside
Biggenden, where his father was a wheelwright, farrier and coffin-maker; he later took over the town's general store. His father was the secretary of the local branch of the
Workers' Political Organisation and his mother was the Biggenden correspondent for the
Maryborough Chronicle. Stephensen's paternal grandparents were Danish immigrants who had arrived in Queensland in the 1870s, converting from Lutheranism to Anglicanism and anglicising their surname from the original "Steffensen". Their children rapidly assimilated into the local community and did not learn Danish. Stephensen's mother and maternal grandparents were immigrants from the
Swiss French colony at
Chabag, Russia (now Ukraine); his mother was bilingual in French and English. Stephensen's maternal grandfather
Henry Tardent was an agricultural scientist who managed an
experimental farm and later became a journalist and writer. Stephensen's youngest brother, Cyril Edward (Ted), served with the RAAF during World War II and was shot down over France and killed in May 1944. Stephensen learned to shoot and ride at a young age, as was typical at the time. He began his education at Biggenden Primary School and in 1914 placed within the top 100 students in the state secondary school examinations. This entitled him to a two-year government-funded scholarship, and in 1915 he began boarding at
Maryborough Boys' Grammar School. The school's headmaster Noble Wallace was a strict disciplinarian and employed corporal punishment. Stephensen was nicknamed "Chicken" at school, due to his surname containing the word "hen". In his first year he had his wrist broken in a hazing ritual. He became a platoon leader in the school cadets and was also a talented sportsman, captaining the school's cricket and football teams and winning prizes for athletics. In 1916 he won a two-year extension to his scholarship by passing the junior public examination. Stephensen was chosen as a
prefect in 1918, his fourth and final year at the school. For a brief period he was taught by
V. Gordon Childe, whose socialist and pacifist beliefs prompted community opposition and led to his early resignation. Towards the end of the year, Stephensen led a student boycott of the school's speech day, at which the annual prizes were to be handed out by the state treasurer
Ted Theodore. The boycott was in protest at the sacking of Wallace by the board of trustees. In 1919, aged 17, Stephensen moved to Brisbane and enrolled in the
University of Queensland. He was a fee-paying student as he had failed to win one of the few scholarships then available. He boarded at St John's College, where he soon received the nickname "Inky" for his habit of singing the chorus from "
Mademoiselle from Armentières". Stephensen befriended
Jack Lindsay, son of
Norman Lindsay, who in turn introduced him to Theodore Whitherby. He also became involved with the Workers' Educational Association (WEA) and developed a friendship with
Fred Paterson, who would later become the only Communist Party MP elected to an Australian parliament. In June 1919 Stephensen's first published article in the
University Magazine called for the "fostering of a national literature" and greater study of Australian poets, themes he would return to later in his career. Stephensen joined the
Communist Party of Australia in 1921. He gained a second-class honours degree in
Modern Greats at
Queen's College,
Oxford where he studied as a
Rhodes Scholar and was a member of the university branch of the Communist Party with
A. J. P. Taylor,
Graham Greene and
Tom Driberg. ==Literary work==