AustLit

'A recurrent concern in late nineteenth - and early twentieth-century accounts of Australians in London is how "well" writers were doing. The common conception of the trip "Home" to Britain as a quest for cultural and professional success or recognition is reflected in the title of Angela Woollacott's feminist history, To Try Her Fortune in London, and it motivated many Australian writers, even a nationalist republican such as Henry Lawson, to regard London as the centre of literary culture, the best place in which to exercise their talents and ambitions. The emergence in these decades of a generation of "native-born" white Australian travellers who were related to but self-consciously different from the parent stock both in the colonies and in Britain created an anxious interest which fuelled ongoing discussions in newspapers and periodicals, prompted the creation of Anglo-Australian networks, clubs and publications in London, and supported many a columnist or special correspondent reporting back to Australia on the doings of their contemporaries in the great metropolis.' (Author's introduction, p. 107)