AustLit

'This chapter seeks to discuss British (especially English) literature, ideas and literary conventions in a way that underlines their pre-emptive importance for colonial Australian writing, while acknowledging the possibility of their reconstitution or reformation in local and colonial conditions, and also within international, imperial, or global contexts that bear upon the British-colonial connection.' (8)

This chapter traces 'the importation of books, the growth of libraries and literary societies, the beginnings of local publishing and the influence of educational institutions, including mechanics' institutes and universities.'

This chapter looks at practices of literacy in Indigenous cultures after the arrival of the Europeans. It includes the sections: Literacy and the Stolen Generation; What did Aboriginal people read and write?; Colonial fantasies of Aboriginal voices in poetry and prose; Bennelong, Biraban, and Benjamin: early Indigenous authors of alphabetic writing; Early Aboriginal authorship and traditional Indigenous law; Hidden cultures of literacy; and Words for writing.

This chapter examines the popular and the learned/literary streams of colonial poetry and its representatives. Harpur, Kendall and Gordon are given separate sections, and there are sections on colonial subject matter and poetic forms, and on translation and satire.

An overview of subjects and currents in 19th-century Australian fiction and travel writing, including a short section on 'writing Aboriginality'.

This chapter discusses romanticism in colonial Australian thinking and writing.

Discusses writing between the world wars and the perception of Australia emerging from it. Includes the subsections: Naturalising the saga;Facts and fictions; National self-respect; Banning and disparaging; Little magazines and anthologies; Conclusion: disgruntled patriotism, acrid optimism.

This chapter gives attention to individual short story writers and collections or their work from the 1890s to about 1950 and 'their literary, geographic and historical contexts'. Special attention is given to newspaper and periodical publications as well as books, and responses to them by readers and critics, including the issue of quality judgements and commercial considerations. Subsections include: Predecessors, 1850s to 1880s; The 1890s legend revisited; National and international influences: The Bulletin and Louis Becke; Australian pasts revisited: Ernest Favenc, Price Warung; Lawson and legend; Expatriate writers, editors; Humour and nostalgia: Steele Rudd's selectors; Immigrants and travellers; Indigenous pioneer: David Unaipon; Realists and romantics: Katharine Susannah Prichard and Vance Palmer; Women at crossroads: Richardson, Stead, Barnard; Men at work: Herbert, Casey, Davison, Marshall; Looking backwards and forwards: Peter Cowan.

An overview of Australian plays and theatres from the mid-nineteenth to the mid twentieth century. Includes the subsections: The discovery of a voice; The coming of the cinema; New theatres, little theatres.

An overview of Australian poets and poetry between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth century, with focus on the impact of Australian modernity.

Discusses the changes in Australian fiction from the late-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, including international influences and the role of overseas publishers and global trends.

This chapter discusses the role of London as 'the forge and measuring-rod of success' for Australian writers during the last decades of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century.

Discusses themes, trends and developments in Australian children's literature between 1841 and 2006.

Traces the development in perceptions of Asiasn countries and peoples by Australian writers from colonial to recent times.

Includes colonial autobiographical writing, writing on childhood, education, and place, the rise of minority forms of autobiography '... centred on shifting ideas of identity (national and personal) and ongoing crises... ' (332) including testimonial and trauma writing, and autobiography in the public sphere.

'...the intersection of history and fiction, of works of record and works of the imagination, has been going on for a long time in the Australian creative culture.' (346)