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Roger Osborne Roger Osborne i(A97834 works by)
Born: Established: 1967 Boonah, Boonah area, Boonah - Kalbar area, South East Queensland, Queensland, ;
Gender: Male
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Works By

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1 [Review] Emperors in Lilliput: Clem Christesen of Meanjin and Stephen Murray-Smith of Overland Roger Osborne , 2023 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Historical Studies , vol. 54 no. 2 2023; (p. 378-380)

— Review of Emperors in Lilliput : Clem Christesen of Meanjin and Stephen Murray-Smith of Overland Jim Davidson , 2022 single work biography

'Periodicals of all formats provide insight into the times in which they were produced. This is especially so for long-lived periodicals with similarly long-lived editors whose influence reaches well beyond their editorial desk and into the culture they are compelled to transform. The periodicals shelves of our libraries provide a quiet space in which the long runs of Meanjin and Overland can be found in their physical form, sometimes facing each other across the aisle, or sometimes closer together in smaller libraries like mine. But this silence belies the dynamic and sometimes uncomfortable processes that preceded each issue. Through close personal connections to these processes and supported by a wealth of archival evidence, Jim Davidson’s Emperors in Lilliput brings these two magazines and their founding editors to life in vivid detail.' (Introduction)

1 Selling Australian Stories to the World : The Dynamics of Twentieth Century Publishing Roger Osborne , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel 2023;
1 “The Covers Gave Me More Trouble Than Anything Else” : Illustrating R. G. Campbell’s Australian Journal, 1926–1955 Roger Osborne , 2023 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , vol. 47 no. 1 2023; (p. 10-26)

'During R. G. Campbell’s 30-year tenure as editor of the Australian Journal (1926–1955), he drew on the work of many freelance writers and artists. This article identifies some of the major contributors of cover art and illustrations published during Campbell’s editorship of the Australian Journal to provide an expanded view of the cultural networks that converged in the pages of the magazine. Drawing on Campbell’s advice published in The Australian Writers and Artists' Market, along with his reflections in unpublished autobiographical notes, the article reveals the magazine’s intersections with the commercial and fine art world, particularly the networks of commercial artists who honed their skills in Melbourne’s art schools and artists’ studios during the early to middle decades of the 20th century. Combined with previous research on writers of the popular short story, this article demonstrates the significant position that R. G. Campbell and his Australian Journal claimed in mid-20th-century Australian print culture, and it encourages further research into the large network of freelance writers and artists that radiated from the magazine’s Swanston Street offices.'(Publication abstract)

1 2 y separately published work icon The Life of Such is Life : A Cultural History of an Australian Classic Roger Osborne , Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2022 23610532 2022 multi chapter work criticism

'Since its publication in 1903, Joseph Furphy’s Such is Life has become established as an Australian classic. But which version of the novel is the authoritative text, and what does its history reveal about Australian cultural life?

'From Furphy’s handwritten manuscript through numerous editions, a controversial abridgement for the British market (condemned by A.D. Hope as a “mutilation”), and periods of obscurity and rediscovery, the text has been reshaped and repackaged by many hands. Furphy’s first editors at the Bulletin diluted his socialist message and "corrected" his Australian slang to create a more marketable book. Later, literary players including Vance and Nettie Palmer, Miles Franklin, Kate Baker and Angus & Robertson all took an interest in how Furphy’s work should be published.

'In a fascinating piece of literary detective work, Osborne traces the book’s journey and shows how economic and cultural forces helped to shape the novel we read today.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

1 Jon Cleary and Sundowner Productions Pty Ltd : The Making of a Textual Craftsman Roger Osborne , 2021 single work criticism
— Appears in: Script and Print , vol. 45 no. 4 2021; (p. 141-155)
'Sixty years separates the publication of Jon Cleary's first novel, You Can't See Round Corners (1947), and his last, Four-Cornered Circle (2007). During those sixty years, Cleary published more than fifty novels, a novel a year at the peak of production, receiving early critical recognition in Australia with the ALS Gold Medal for Just Let Me Be (1950), and, later, in the USA, with the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Award for Peter's Pence (1974). A winner of multiple Ned Kelly Awards for crime writing, he was honoured in 2004 for his lifetime contribution to that genre. The number of copies of Cleary's novels doubles when English and American editions are considered, and increases further with counts of adaptations, translations,'  serialisations, and abridgements. Cleary himself moved as far as his books, travelling widely, while maintaining Australia as his home-base for increasingly extended periods of time as he grew older. His cultural and professional networks connected him with significant figures in trans-national publishing, particularly through his long connection with literary agents Paul R. Reynolds in New York and John Farquharson in London, and with publishers William Collins, Sinn, its Britain, and William Morrow and Company in the USA.' (Introduction)
 
1 Australian Authors in the House of William Morrow : Writing Good Commercial Fiction for the US Market Roger Osborne , David Carter , 2021 single work criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , vol. 35 no. 1 2021; (p. 145-162)

'This article investigates the publication of Australian authors of “good commercial fiction” in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. When the early careers of Morris West, Jon Cleary, and George Johnston are traced through their association with William Morrow and Company, the importance to these careers of publishers, editors, literary agents, and other stakeholders becomes apparent. Each author built a substantial career of largely successful fiction over successive titles with the ongoing support of Morrow as publisher, plus key links with editors and literary agents. For West and Cleary in particular, the United States became a primary place of publication and editorial advice across these decades. While the good commercial fiction of these authors is rarely acknowledged in Australian literary history, their position within the field of book history and print culture clearly shows how important these examples are to understanding the dynamics of transnational print culture and its significant effect on the ways in which Australian novels were commissioned, edited, published, and reviewed, particularly in the United States. Revealed in correspondence and other publishing records, the often complex negotiations required to transform an Australian novel into a US book exhibit the cultural and commercial contingencies experienced throughout an author’s career, demonstrating that good commercial fiction provides a rich field of inquiry to expand and complicate our ideas of Australian authorship.' (Publication abstract)

1 Expressing a New Civilisation : Authorship, Publishing and Reading in the 1890s Roger Osborne , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: The Routledge Companion to Australian Literature 2020;
1 (Re)Presenting the 'Socialist Core of Furphy’s Vision' : Rigby’s Romance as Typescript, Serial and Book Roger Osborne , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: Journal of Australian Studies , vol. 44 no. 1 2020; (p. 65-81)

'When Joseph Furphy responded to editorial pressure from the Bulletin Publishing Company to shorten Such is Life to expedite publication, he did so by removing two chapters from the 1898 typescript version and replacing them with much shorter ones. The two chapters he removed took on a life of their own when he revised and expanded them to become The Buln-Buln and the Brolga and Rigby's Romance. To date, little is known about the textual and publication history of these novels. To address this gap, this article examines the textual history of Rigby’s Romance, detailing its publication as a serial in Broken Hill’s Barrier Truth, its abridgement published in 1921, and the publication of the unabridged version in 1946. The article argues that, in order to best understand the legacy of Joseph Furphy and his work, any reading of Rigby's Romance and, by association, Such is Life, must engage with the ways in which the versions of the work are entangled in the lives of editors, publishers, critics and general readers.'

1 'This Edition Howls to Heaven to Be Withdrawn' : The Palmer Abridgement of Joseph Furphy's Such Is Life. Roger Osborne , 2020 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , April vol. 35 no. 1 2020;

'When the abridged English edition of Joseph Furphy’s Such is Life appeared on the shelves of Australian booksellers in the middle of 1937, many of Australia’s most prominent cultural nationalists directed their outrage at the editor, Vance Palmer. First published in 1903 by the Bulletin Newspaper Company, Such is Life was out-of-print and largely neglected when the London publisher Jonathan Cape arranged for the abridgement. David Walker has shown that the abridgment was actually the work of literary critic Nettie Palmer, Vance Palmer’s wife, ably assisted by their daughter, Aileen, and Walker also outlines the most vociferous examples of cultural outrage, but what the Palmers actually did to the novel has not been examined in any detail. This paper builds on Walker’s research to look more closely at the circumstances of the abridgement, and what the Palmers actually did within a much longer history of composition, revision, and publication that culminated in Angus and Robertson’s unabridged edition published in 1944. Rather than rejecting the abridgement as an outrageous example of cultural destruction, I argue that it is, instead, an important event within the life of the work we know as Such is Life; a resuscitation, if you like, and, therefore, worthy of closer examination in both aesthetic and cultural terms. (Publication abstract)

 

1 A Fleeting Infatuation with All Things Australian : American Editions of Australian Novels, 1979–1989 Roger Osborne , 2019 single work criticism
— Appears in: Antipodes , June vol. 33 no. 1 2019; (p. 49-59)
'In the closing months of 1988, the literary agent Rosemary Creswell wrote of a "mini-boom in Australian books in North America," directing attention to the work of the New York publicist Selma Shapiro, who, three years earlier, had been commissioned by the Literature Board of the Australia Council to promote Australian writing in the United States of America. Shapiro's work had made her the "hub of Australian literary activity in North America," a "crowded, competitive . . . market [where] there is a need for specialist public relations companies promoting books and authors" (Creswell 8). Assessing this period three decades later, Louise Poland and Ivor Indyk acknowledged the buzz that Shapiro's work had generated but pointed to the shaky foundations of this late-1980s enthusiasm, which "was also crossed by tensions and contradictions which led to confusion, disappointment, lost opportunities, and sometimes the outright rejection of important authors and their books" (309). Poland and Indyk identified three difficulties: the promising but limited role played by Penguin Books offering Australian titles through its US affiliate, Viking Penguin; the interventions of literary agents; and the difference in values between the two cultures. Peter Carey recognized the difficulty of Shapiro's job under such conditions, suggesting that the promotion of Australian literature in New York was like "pushing shit uphill" (Carey).' (Introduction)
1 Tropical Gothic : Literary and Creative Works Anita Lundberg , Roger Osborne , Katarzyna Ancuta , Agnieszka Stasiewicz-Bieńkowska , 2019 single work essay
— Appears in: Etropic , vol. 18 no. 2 2019; (p. 3-15)

'The eTropic special issue on the theme Tropical Gothic was first conceived in 2017. From the beginning there was a sense of how the theme had a certain resonance. By 2018, the term had appeared as a hashtag in social media for new music album entitled Tropical Gothic.

'These resonances are important as they reveal the build up of an idea at a particular time. This paper follows a rhizomatic path as it traces Tropical Gothic through the creative works of a music album, its cover art, and further to other influences including film and literature.

'These literary and creative works likewise resonate with the papers brought together in this second issue on the theme Tropical Gothic.' (Publication abstract) 

1 1 y separately published work icon Etropic Tropical Gothic : Literary and Creative Works vol. 18 no. 2 Anita Lundberg (editor), Roger Osborne (editor), Katarzyna Ancuta (editor), Agnieszka Stasiewicz-Bieńkowska (editor), 2019 17999808 2019 periodical issue

'This is the second published collection of the two-part special issue on the theme Tropical Gothic. While the first issue provided a space for reflection upon the unique social, historical, political, cultural and environmental conditions of the tropics; this second issue demonstrates how creative writers and artists have a particular role to play in such reflections, through producing the cultural artefacts for the contemplation of others, or by contributing to such debates as creative practitioners and critics. The papers concentrate on Tropical Gothic literary and creative works from South and Southeast Asia and Tropical Australia.' (Publication introduction)

1 Epilogue : Completing the Triangle? David Carter , Roger Osborne , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Books and Authors in the American Marketplace : 1840s-1940s 2018; (p. 341-344)

'Across the century or so covered by this book, Australian novels were a consistent presence in the American marketplace even while their numbers in any particular year or publishing season were never large. Most of the novelists who would become defining, canonical figures in the articulation of an Australian literary tradition over the course of the twentieth century were published in the United States, their standing as serious authors and in certain cases as major contributors to English fiction acknowledged by American publishers, reviewers and critics (not least in their roles as book club judges). Many Australian authors also participated in and profited from the burgeoning markets on both sides of the Atlantic for light fiction or genre fiction, sometimes with careers as good-selling novelists over several decades, their books reviewed widely and favourably in the weekly book pages. Less predictably, our research has revealed a dense undergrowth of writers with more modest reputations or less obvious claims on Australian literature who were published and found different kinds of success in America. A large and diverse range of authors, as we have shown, had a small number of titles published by mainstream houses, reviewed at least briefly in the major book papers, and sometimes noticed in the bookstores - a sequence of modest successes or perhaps more commonly one big success followed by a series of "disappointments". If they made no lasting impression in the American marketplace and contributed little, if anything, to American readers' sense of Australian literature, they might nonetheless have made a small return on the publisher's investment and some additional earnings for the author. In short, these works inhabited the mainstream commercial world of books, so often characterised by the short life span of individual titles and reputations, and the small number of genuinely bestselling books. Nonetheless, it is with these ordinary mid-range titles no less than the major literary works or popular bestsellers that we see literary transnationalism in operation - a function of publishers' interests and investments as much as a specifically textual or authorial capacity, manifested in new editions as much as in new texts.'   (Introduction)

1 Bestsellers, Modest Sellers and Commercial Failures : The Postwar Years David Carter , Roger Osborne , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Books and Authors in the American Marketplace : 1840s-1940s 2018; (p. 313-340)

'Previous chapters have demonstrated the presence of Australian novels in American print culture from the small-scale, low -key importation of British sheets for rebinding and local distribution, to the large-scale manufacture of copyrighted American editions, extended by book club circulation or reprints, sometimes with sales of hundreds of thousands of copies. Over time, Australian authors contributed to a wide variety of markets: nineteenth-century romance and pioneering narratives; a genre system that sought tales of detection, sensation, and romantic love; and more serious fare in the form of historical sagas that were taken as a sign of the emergence of a distinct and distinguished national literature. With writers such as Henry Handel Richardson, Eleanor Dark, Christina Stead and Patrick White, certain Australian novels could occasionally find a more prominent and recognisable place in the conversations of New York's book culture.' (Introduction)

1 "Australian Moderns" : Christina Stead and Patrick White in New York David Carter , Roger Osborne , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Books and Authors in the American Marketplace : 1840s-1940s 2018; (p. 271-312)

'Widely regarded as the two most important Australian writers of the twentieth century, certainly of its middle decades, the literary careers of Christina Stead and Patrick White were fundamentally shaped by the authors' American experience and more particularly by their contacts with New York publishing. Both were networked into the New York book world in ways that are rare among our examples although they recall W.W. Norton's support for Henry Handel Richardson; and, like Richardson, both for a time became part of contemporary American book talk on the state of the modern novel. Major figures in the New York book world including Clifton Fadiman, Max Schuster and Stanley Burnshaw were closely engaged in Stead's career, while Ben W. Huebsch of the Viking Press and then his successor Marshall Best were White's primary contacts in the publishing world, and much more than that in Huebsch's case. Some key reviews in the American papers, such as those by James Stern in the New York Times, were critical for White's sense that the "right readers" could be found for his challenging novels. For both authors, America was more than just a supplementary market. Stead, on the ground in New York and absorbed in its cultural politics and intellectual networks, came close to being read as an "American writer". White, by contrast, maintained his New York connections largely from a distance. Triangulated between English, American and Australian literary cultures, their writing had multiple homes but also a sense of homelessness, of not belonging easily to any single place or time. If this gave their fiction an unusual power, it also made it difficult for them to be assimilated into an evolving American or international modern tradition. In Pascale Casanova's words, "to be decreed 'modern' is one of the most difficult forms of recognition for writers outside the centre".'  (Introduction)

1 "Australia Is Very American" : Australian Historical Fiction in America 1920s-1940s David Carter , Roger Osborne , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Books and Authors in the American Marketplace : 1840s-1940s 2018; (p. 231-270)

The previous chapter revealed how, in the early 1930s, Norton's publication of Henry Handel Richardson s Ultima Thule and the Fortunes of Richard Mahony trilogy brought Australia and its literature "deep into the consciousness of reading America' The impact of Richardson's novels was strengthened by the appearance of Katharine Susannah Prichard's Coonardoo in 1930 from the same publisher. Richardson's and Prichard's novels were in fact part of a longer sequence of ambitious Australian works published in the United States from the late 1920s to the mid 1940s. In contrast to the decline in the number of Australian novels published in America across the first three decades of the twentieth century, at the very end of the 1920s we begin to see a cluster of substantial novels appearing together - and being brought together by reviewers. Fiction publishing in general in the United States grew rapidly from a low point in 1919 to a peak in 1929; the number of titles dipped slightly through the Depression years but high levels continued until the early forties. Against this background, the pattern of publication and increased receptivity for Australian novels was sustained until the mid-forties, but with little continuity into the postwar years when many writers had, in effect, to begin again in establishing the viability of Australian work in the American marketplace. There is, then, a relatively discrete historical trajectory across the two decades from the late twenties, emerging from almost nothing and collapsing in the later forties as both cultural and industrial circumstances change.' (Introduction)

1 Becoming Articulate : Henry Handel Richardson and Katharine Susannah Prichard David Carter , Roger Osborne , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Books and Authors in the American Marketplace : 1840s-1940s 2018; (p. 195-230)

'From the late 1920s to the early 1940s, American reviewers were often compelled to remark on the increasing presence of Australian books and authors in the American marketplace. The publication in short succession of Henry Handel Richardson's The Fortunes of Richard Mahony trilogy (1929-30) and Katharine Susannah Prichard's Working Bullocks (1927) and Coonardoo (1930) appeared to announce Australia's literary coming of age: "Australia at last seems to have become articulate, when in so short a space of time it can produce such books as Henry Handel Richardson's Ultima Thule, Miss Prichard's own Working Bullocks and this fine story of white codes and primitive codes mixed and never fusing [Coonardoo]"; "Australia is taking her place as an important contributor to English letters ... It is no longer possible to ignore that country's claim to a definite attention") By comparison to the authors discussed in the previous chapter, Richardson and Prichard together could draw attention, not just to individual hooks by Australian authors, but to works of literature about Australia and hence to the idea of Australian literature itself. As one US reviewer put it, Ultima Thule had "brought the Australian country into the deep consciousness of reading America" and Coonardoo promised to do the same. Another concluded that "those who maintain that no literature comes out of Australia are beginning to revise their opinions as each new book is announced by Henry Handel Richardson, Katherine Susannah Pritchard [sic] and Dorothy Cottrel [sic]".' (Introduction)

1 Mystery and Romance : The Market for Light Fiction Between the Wars David Carter , Roger Osborne , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Books and Authors in the American Marketplace : 1840s-1940s 2018; (p. 161-194)

'On both sides of the Atlantic, the years between the two world wars witnessed the consolidation of the crime fiction genre, especially "golden age" murder mysteries and detection puzzles, and also the rise of women's romance fiction as a distinct market segment, in Britain in the late 1920s and in the United States across the following decade. Although both forms had much older precedents, together they helped constitute the booming field of " light fiction" in the interwar years. Understood as distinct from the cheapest forms of pulp, light fiction was identified as a discrete field within the mainstream of commercial fiction publishing. This new awareness can be seen in the fact that uses of the term alight fiction" in the New York Times increased from twenty-six in the 1910s to fifty-six in the 1920s and in the 1930s, after which they tapered off again. Further, in January 1934, the Times began a special reviews section, "Fiction in Lighter Vein", where romance tides were reviewed by regulars such as Beatrice Sherman; and in the same period the Saturday Review of Literature launched "Over the Counter: the Saturday Review's Guide to Romance and Adventure", a weekly chart containing one-line reviews of romances, westerns and other popular genres. It matched the paper's similar guide to detective fiction, "The Criminal Record".'  (Introduction)

1 Renegotiating the American Connection : Australian Fiction 1900-1930s David Carter , Roger Osborne , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Books and Authors in the American Marketplace : 1840s-1940s 2018; (p. 111-160)

'The first three decades of the twentieth century present no clear pattern for the publication of Australian novels in the United States outside the serial relationships with publishers that certain genre writers were able to achieve. Otherwise, in all but a few cases, we see one-off or occasional publishing, with few signs of sustained investment in individual authors and even less in Australian books per se. Towards the end of the period, however, the situation changes quite suddenly with the enormous critical and sales success of Henry Handel Richardson's Ultima Palk in 1929, followed the year after by Katharine Susannah Prichard's Coonardoo, and these two authors will be the subject of Chapter 6. The present chapter surveys the presence in the American marketplace of Australian writers working in the broad field of commercial fiction but outside the popular genres of crime, mystery and women's romance. It examines the obstacles and opportunities for Australian authors and stories in America in these decades after the passing of international copyright legislation in the United States and as the structures of the modem, twentieth-century US publishing industry were set in place.'  (Introduction)

1 Crime, Sensation and the Modern Genre System : Australian Authors in the Popular Fiction Marketplace, 1890s-1920s David Carter , Roger Osborne , 2018 single work criticism
— Appears in: Australian Books and Authors in the American Marketplace : 1840s-1940s 2018; (p. 83-110)

'The American careers of Ada Cambridge, Rolf Boldrewood and Rosa Praed all extended into the first decade of the twentieth century, with new titles appearing alongside reprints of earlier works. Other authors whose careers in the US market began before the turn of the century but extended well beyond it include Fergus Hume, Guy Boothby and Carlton Dawe. Although forty years separate the birthdates of the oldest and youngest of these six authors, they were largely contemporaries in terms of their American publishing careers, with the majority of all their US titles appearing between 1890 and 1910. Yet to shift focus from the first to the second group is to find oneself in a changed literary space, marked by the emergence of the modern genre system on both sides of the Atlantic and hence in the Australian literary marketplace as well. As writers and readers, colonial Australians were subjects not only of the British Empire but also of a transnational Anglophone market for popular entertainment, not least for popular fiction. They participated in an expanding mass market, and not merely a contained and containing colonial system.' (Introduction)

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