AustLit

'Who is Guy Boothby that Miles Franklin should be advised to 'write like' him, and Rudyard Kipling admire him? Guy Boothby is one of the many best selling Australian authors who is largely forgotten or ignored by literary scholars. Boothby's fiction sold in the millions, he received praise and accolades from their peers but who have largely been overlooked in scholarly accounts of the Australian literature. They suffered from the terminal literary disease, popularity. For reasons unknown popularity is positively correlated with 'trash' and therefore summarily dismissed. This chapter documents one hundred years of Australian popular fiction in an effort to inspire further research and to incite more scholars to consider the merits of genre authors whose material languishes as their sales grow.' (Author's introduction 1)