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Issue Details: First known date: 2018... 2018 Crime, Sensation and the Modern Genre System : Australian Authors in the Popular Fiction Marketplace, 1890s-1920s
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'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)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Australian Books and Authors in the American Marketplace : 1840s-1940s David Carter , Roger Osborne , Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2018 14035789 2018 multi chapter work criticism biography

    'Australian Books and Authors in the American Marketplace 1840s—1940s explores how Australian writers and their works were present in the United States before the mid twentieth century to a much greater degree than previously acknowledged. Drawing on fresh archival research and combining the approaches of literary criticism, print culture studies and book history, David Carter and Roger Osborne demonstrate that Australian writing was transnational long before the contemporary period. In mapping Australian literature’s connections to British and US markets, their research challenges established understandings of national, imperial and world literatures.

    Carter and Osborne examine how Australian authors, editors and publishers engaged productively with their American counterparts, and how American readers and reviewers responded to Australian works. They consider the role played by British publishers and agents in taking Australian writing to America, and how the international circulation of new literary genres created new opportunities for novelists to move between markets.

    Some of these writers, such as Christina Stead and Patrick White, remain household names; others who once enjoyed international fame, such as Dale Collins and Alice Grant Rosman, have been largely forgotten. The story of their books in America reveals how culture, commerce and copyright law interacted to create both opportunities and obstacles for Australian writers.' (Source: Publisher's blurb)

    Sydney : Sydney University Press , 2018
    pg. 83-110
Last amended 19 Nov 2018 11:56:46
83-110 Crime, Sensation and the Modern Genre System : Australian Authors in the Popular Fiction Marketplace, 1890s-1920ssmall AustLit logo
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