AustLit

Pope introduces the focus for the next five issues of Papers, which examine the literature Australian children read in the nineteenth and early twentieth century from the position that children's stories are powerful tools of socialisation and novels in general are 'direct expressions of cultural consciousness' (3). The texts discussed are all located in Australia and described as frontier texts which draw on the three most common perceptions of Australia in relation to British Imperialism: Australia as the New World; Australia as alien and threatening; and early conservation texts which challenge 'the masculine narratives of action and success' (4)