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'This book is an exploration of popular late nineteenth-century texts that show Australia - along with Africa, India and the Pacific Islands - to be a preferred site of imperial adventure. Focusing on the period from the advent of the new imperialism in the 1870s to the outbreak of World War I, Robert Dixon looks at a selection of British and Australian writers. Their books, he argues, offer insights into the construction of empire, masculinity, race, and Australian nationhood and identity. Writing the Colonial Adventure shows that the genre of adventure/romance was highly popular throughout this period. The book examines the variety of themes within their narrative form that captured many aspects of imperial ideology. In considering the broader ramifications of these works, Professor Dixon develops an original approach to popular fiction, both for its own sake and as a mode of cultural history.' (Introduction)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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The Transvestite Adventure : Reading the Colonial Grotesque
2020
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 20 no. 2 2020;'This reading of transvestic performance in Australian fiction is in dialogue with Robert Dixon’s 1995 monograph Writing the Colonial Adventure: Race, Gender and Nation in Anglo-Australian Popular Fiction, 1875-1914. It is informed by the frameworks Dixon developed in his analysis of the relationship between literature and culture, specifically the ways in which he relates the occult effects of the literary imaginary and the political unconscious to historical context and their implication in the formation of Australia’s particular colonialism. More specifically still, the argument regarding colonial transvestism engages directly with Dixon’s deployment of Peter Stallybrass and Allon White’s formulation of the ‘grotesque’ and its application to the Australian colonial context. The essay revisits Dixon’s reading of the Australian grotesque as a critical optic for reading Australian colonial narratives of female to male cross-dressing to argue that the transvestite figures in colonial narratives enact performances of what Stallybrass and White schematise as the two orders of the grotesque, which are enacted in the identity formation of the collective.' (Publication abstract)
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Imperial Affairs : The British Empire and the Romantic Novel, 1890–1939
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: New Directions in Popular Fiction : Genre, Distribution, Reproduction 2016; (p. 87-110)The British romantic novel became a distinct and bestselling genre during the mid-nineteenth century, when Charlotte M. Yonge’s The Heir of Redclyffe (1853) inspired other authors to write thrilling love stories published in triple-decker volumes that were sold at W.H. Smith railway bookstalls or circulated through 'Charles Mudie’s Select Library (Anderson 1974, p. 25). Women writers during this time, such as Yonge, Rhoda Broughton and Mary Elizabeth Braddon, popularised stories that featured the trials and tribulations of British heroes and heroines who fall in love, overcome various obstacles to their relationship, marry or are tragically parted by death (Anderson 1974). Most of their novels are set in Britain or, for more exotic fare, the Continent. However, from the 1890s onwards, they were joined by women writers from Britain’s colonies and dominions. This period was the zenith of British imperial power and, unsurprisingly, women writers used the colonies as exotic backdrops for their love stories. Romantic novels from the 1890s to the Second World War spread imperial fantasies of women who travelled to the colonies, hunted, worked as governesses, nurses and secretaries, managed households, ran viable plantations, fended off attacks by ‘the natives’, fell in love, married and made a place for themselves in the empire. Dreams of love and empire building bloomed in what I am calling women’s imperial romantic novels: love stories set in India, the white settler colonies and dominions, and Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.' (Publication summary)
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Cooper, Cather, Prichard, 'Pioneer' : The Chronotope of Settler Colonialism
2016
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australian Literary Studies , 1 June vol. 31 no. 3 2016; 'This essay considers three novels which each bear the word ‘pioneer’ in their titles: James Fenimore Cooper’s The Pioneers (1823), Willa Cather’s O Pioneers! (1913) and Katharine Susannah Prichard’s The Pioneers (1915). The three novels, although moving widely across time and space, are taken as representative of the creative literature of settler colonialism. A model of reading settler colonial literature is advanced that draws on four distinct features found across the three novels. These are: a tendency to spatialise the historical time of settler colonialism within the geography of the novel; the condensation of settler legal anxiety into a legal drama in the text; the application of a generational structure to Indigenise the settler; and the recurrence in the text of a ‘primal scene’ by which the settler society remembers its foundational violence in repressed form.' (Publication summary) -
Towards a Genealogy of Minor Colonial Australian Character Types
2015
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Interventions : International Journal of Postcolonial Studies , January vol. 17 no. 2 2015; (p. 211-228) -
Foreword : Sold by the Millions
2012
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Sold by the Millions : Australia's Bestsellers 2012; (p. viii-xvi)
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Warm Comfort Zone
1996
single work
review
— Appears in: Overland , Spring no. 144 1996; (p. 83-86)
— Review of Prophet from the Desert : Critical Essays on Patrick White 1995 anthology criticism biography ; Australian Melodramas : Thomas Keneally's Fiction 1995 single work criticism ; Writing the Colonial Adventure : Race, Gender and Nation in Anglo-Australian Popular Fiction, 1875-1914 1995 single work criticism ; Judith Wright 1995 single work criticism -
Colony to Nation
1995
single work
review
— Appears in: Margin , July-August no. 36 1995; (p. 32)
— Review of Writing the Colonial Adventure : Race, Gender and Nation in Anglo-Australian Popular Fiction, 1875-1914 1995 single work criticism -
Studies in the National Culture
1995
single work
review
— Appears in: Coppertales : A Journal of Rural Arts , no. 2 1995; (p. 116-119)
— Review of Writing the Colonial Adventure : Race, Gender and Nation in Anglo-Australian Popular Fiction, 1875-1914 1995 single work criticism -
The Anglo-Australian Ripping Yarn
1995
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , August no. 173 1995; (p. 27-28)
— Review of Writing the Colonial Adventure : Race, Gender and Nation in Anglo-Australian Popular Fiction, 1875-1914 1995 single work criticism -
Literary Criticism
1996
single work
review
— Appears in: The Times Literary Supplement , 15 March no. 4850 1996; (p. 33)
— Review of Writing the Colonial Adventure : Race, Gender and Nation in Anglo-Australian Popular Fiction, 1875-1914 1995 single work criticism'No longer nostalgically regarded as repositories of a lost innocence, tales of boys playing violent games at the frontiers of Empire have been shown to betray fears of the Other in both domestic and foreign forms.' (Introduction)
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Lemuria and Australian Dreams of an Inland Sea
2006
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Lemuria , Winter vol. 1 no. 1 2006; (p. 32-47) Cathcart reads a range of 'Lemurian novels,' examining their 'uncomplicated optimism about the future of White Australia, their trust that the key to that future lay beneath the earth, in the Great Australian Basin, and their attempts to grapple with the deadly impact of colonisation on the Aborigines who resisted' (44). -
Negotiating the Colonial Australian Popular Fiction Archive
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , Special Issue vol. 11 no. 1 2011; (p. 1-12) 'There is an identifiable 'archive' of colonial Australian popular fiction consisting of romance, adventure fiction, Gothic fiction, crime fiction, Lemurian fantasy and a significant number of related subgenres (bushranger fiction, convict romance, Pacific or 'South Sea' adventure, tropical romance, 'lost explorer' stories, and so on). Looking at this archive soon reveals both its sheer size and range, and the fact that so little of it is remembered today. Rachael Weaver, Ailie Smith and I have begun to build a digital archive of colonial Australian popular fiction with the primary aim of making this material available to an interested reading public, as well as to scholars specialising in colonial Australian (and transnational) literary studies. At the time of writing we are really only about 20% complete with around 500 authors represented on the site, although many with only a fraction of their work uploaded and with only the bare bones of a scholarly apparatus around them: a few short biographical notes, a bibliography, and the texts themselves: first editions in most cases.' (Author's introduction, p. 1)
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Crikey it’s Bromance : A History of Australian Pulp Westerns
2012
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Sold by the Millions : Australia's Bestsellers 2012; (p. 141-161) ‘The Australian version of the Western novel is the subject matter of Toni Johnson-Woods’ chapter. Western as a genre was present in Australia since colonial times – a ‘romance of property’ (Dixon 22). She takes up Len Meares, the man behind Marshall Grover as her case study. Perhaps the most intriguing part of her chapter is the study of book covers, as she argues that ‘books are more than printed codex; they are cultural products with covers, advertising, pricing and distribution.’ For Johnson-Woods, “the covers are semiotically charged marketing tools; the artwork, design and titles emit generic and cultural messages.” Australian Western authors, some of the most prolific authors, have been writing not only for an Australian readership but also for an international one. In conclusion Johnson-Woods laments that “I doubt if you’ll shake their hands or sign their books at writers’ festivals. It is not that they are not likeable people. They are tainted with a fatal literary disease, they’re carriers of the popular fiction virus. And even more condemning, they do not even write ‘respectable’ popular fiction like detective fiction – they write politically incorrect masculinist westerns. Regardless of how literary critics assess their contribution to Australian fiction, they provide hours of entertainment for their many readers.”’ (Editor’s foreword xiii) -
Foreword : Sold by the Millions
2012
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Sold by the Millions : Australia's Bestsellers 2012; (p. viii-xvi) -
An Apocalyptic Map : New Worlds and the Colonization of Australia
2011
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Apocalypse in Australian Fiction and Film : A Critical Study 2011; (p. 23-53) 'This chapter examines the map that preceded, and eventually superseded, the territory of Australia, in order to demonstrate that early maps of the south land established an apocalyptic tradition that still resonates in contemporary fictions. If one reinterprets Jean Baudrillard's comments in the context of colonization and Australia, it is possible to see how European imagination delineated an apocalyptic map of the country before explorers and settlers even arrived, a map that located Australia as a tabula rasa, a blank slate where heaven and hell might equally be feasible. This chapter surveys the dialectic emerging from these confliction visions.' (24)
- Robbery Under Arms : A Story of Life and Adventure in the Bush and in the Goldfields of Australia 1882 single work novel
- The Miner's Right : A Tale of the Australian Goldfields 1880 single work novel
- 'War to the Knife', or, Tangata Maori 1899 single work novel
- Outlaw and Lawmaker 1893 single work novel
- Fugitive Anne : A Romance of the Unexplored Bush 1903 single work novel
- The Brother of the Shadow : A Mystery of To-Day 1886 single work novel
- The Soul of Countess Adrian : A Romance 1888 single work novel
- The Secret of the Australian Desert 1890 single work children's fiction
- The Last Lemurian : A Westralian Romance 1896 single work novel
- The Lost Explorers : A Story of the Trackless Desert 1907 single work children's fiction
- The Big Five 1907-1908 single work novel
- The Pearl Divers of Roncador Reef and Other Stories 1908 selected work short story
- The Ebbing of the Tide : South Sea Stories 1895 selected work short story
- By Reef and Palm 1894 selected work short story
- The Australian Crisis 1908 single work novel
- The Mystery of a Hansom Cab 1886 single work novel
- A Bid for Fortune ; Or, Dr Nikola's Vendetta 1895 single work novel
- Doctor Nikola 1896 single work novel
- The Silver Queen : A Tale of the Northern Territory 1908 single work novel
- An Australian Bush Track 1896 single work novel
- The Lone Hand 1907 periodical (213 issues)
- Australian literary history
- Australian novels & novelists
- Defining an Australian literature
- Popular fiction
- Australian identity
- Gender - Literary portrayal
- Racial identity - Literary portrayal
- Xenophobia
- Pacific Islander literature & writers
- Adventure fiction
- Australian culture
- Colonialism & imperialism
- Novel serialisation
- Postcolonial criticism
- Scottish literature & writers
- English literature & writers
- Asian people
- Military invasion & occupation
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cAustralia,c
- Pacific Region,
- Asia,
- 1870s
- 1880s
- 1890s
- 1900s
- 1910s