Born at Henley Beach, Adelaide, Harris grew up in Mount Gambier, in South Australia's South East. He won a scholarship to attend secondary school at St Peter's College, Adelaide, as a boarding student. He won the Tennyson medal for the best English student in South Australia. After school Harris worked for the Shell Company and at The News newspaper as both a copy boy and cadet journalist before entering university to study arts and economics.

Harris wrote poetry and his work was published by The Jindyworobaks. Initially writing in lyrical style, Harris later developed a surrealist voice. In 1941 Harris founded the literary magazine Angry penguins. Two years later he moved to Melbourne and published Angry penguins there, with John Reed. Harris became part of the circle of artists and writers who congregated at Reed's home outside of Melbourne, Heide. The group included Sidney Nolan, John Perceval, Arthur Boyd and Albert Tucker. The magazine was embroiled in Australia's most famous literary hoax, the Ern Malley affair. Harris dedicated the autumn 1944 issue of Angry penguins to the work of the modernist poet Ern Malley. Malley had supposedly died at an early age and his work was submitted to the magazine by his sister, Ethel. Several months later it was revealed that Ern and Ethel did not exist and the poems had been concocted by two traditional poets, McAuley and Harold Stewart, for the purpose of lampooning the modernist style which they detested. The content of the poems scandalised some and, even after the hoax had been revealed, Harris was prosecuted for publishing 'indecent' material. Harris, however, felt that the hoax backfired on Stewart and McAuley as the publicity it created if fact helped Australian modernists gain wider acceptance of their work.

By 1950 Harris was back in Adelaide and he founded, with Mary Martin, the Mary Martin Bookshop. They pioneered buying and selling books at discounted prices and mail order sales, facilitated by a booklist compiled by Harris in which he included jokes and spoof books. Harris and Martin opened other stores interstate and the company still trades in South Australia and Victoria today. Harris and Martin produced a publication, Mary's own paper, about arts and culture in South Australia. They imported foodstuffs and folk art from overseas and sold these alongside their books.

Harris was associated with the establishment of Australian letters in 1957, the Australian book review in 1961 and the Australian publishing house, Sun Books. He is credited with helping Penguin Books become established in Australia and assisted in their commissioning Donald Horne to write the Lucky country, a seminal work on Australian society. Harris later had his own small publishing company, Maximus Books.

Harris also had a notable career as a journalist. He wrote the column 'Browsing' in The Australian from 1964 to 1991 and had a long-running column in Adelaide's Sunday mail, which was anecdotally the newspaper's best read feature.

Harris was an admirer of the work and legacy of Mother Mary MacKillop, the South Australian founder of the Order of the Josephites and he was a staunch supporter of her beatification. Although not a Catholic, Harris' ashes were buried at the premises of the nunnery and Mary MacKillop College at Kensington.

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1940: Poetry collection The Gift of blood published by The Jindyworobaks

1941: Founded the literary magazine Angry penguins

1950: Established Mary Martin Bookshop, with Mary Martin

1957-68: Co-founded and co-edited Australian letters

1961: Co-founded Australian book review

12 June 1989: Made Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for services to literature

Did you know?: Ern Malley Hoax

Baker, Tony. 'Huge impact of the Max factor', The Advertiser, 27 July 1994, p. 15

Goers, Peter. 'Mr Adelaide', Sunday mail, 16 January 1994, p. 4

Harris, Max. The angry penguin : selected poems of Max Harris, Canberra : National Library of Australia, 1996

Harris, Max. The best of Max Harris : 21 years of browsing, Sydney : Unwin Paperbacks, 1986

Malley, Ern. The poems of Ern Malley : comprising the complete poems, Sydney : Allen & Unwin, 1988

Miles, John. 'Max and Mary - story of success', The Advertiser, 21 March 1975, p. 4

Riddell, Don. 'Poppy-lopping champion of the little bloke: Max Harris 1921-1995', The Advertiser, 14 January 1995, p. 6

Ern Malley: the official site