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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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BiographyHistory

Roger Osborne grew up on a small dairy farm at Bunjurgen, Queensland, and completed primary and high school at Boonah.

He completed a PhD at the Australian Defence Force Academy in 2000, producing the first scholarly edition of Joseph Conrad's Under Western Eyes. He taught English and American literature at the Academy before moving to Brisbane where he took up a postdoctoral fellowship in the Australian Studies Centre, University of Queensland, conducting research on Australian magazine culture. He has been associated with AustLit for many years and continues to contribute to the database as a researcher and compiler.

Roger's research focuses on book history and print culture. Most recently, he has worked on the ARC-funded project America Publishes Australia: Australian Books and American Publishers, 1890-2005. His edition of Under Western Eyes was published by Cambridge University Press in 2013, and he has worked on an edition of Conrad's modernist classic, Nostromo. The first of five components of his open-ended Joseph Furphy Digital Archive was published on AustLit in 2015.

Most Referenced Works

Personal Awards

2016 recipient Fryer Library Fellowship
2011 recipient State Library of New South Wales Fellowships Nancy Keesing Fellowship for his project: A Material and Textual Story of Joseph Furphy's "Such is Life": towards an electronic edition of an Australian classic

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon The Life of Such is Life : A Cultural History of an Australian Classic 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.

2023 joint winner ASAL Awards Walter McRae Russell Award
y separately published work icon Australian Books and Authors in the American Marketplace : 1840s-1940s 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)

2019 shortlisted ASAL Awards Walter McRae Russell Award
Last amended 7 Aug 2019 16:34:48
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