AustLit

'This chapter argues that setting is a privileged aspect of the popular fantasy genre, and it analyses setting in terms of both how texts are created and how they are circulated and enjoyed. ‘Plot driven’ and ‘character driven’ are commonplace descriptions of modern fiction, and often mark a distinction between genres of differing value. While these phrases are most usually deployed in non-academic writing such as reviews and other opinion-based works, they have appeared in recent research around reading and empathy. According to Frank Lachmann, readers of so-called literary works scored higher in empathy tests than readers of popular fiction; he suggests that this is because empathy is more readily aroused by ‘character-driven’ fiction where ‘the emotional repertoire of the reader is enlarged’ than by ‘plot-driven’ fiction (2015, p. 144). I note that Lachmann makes no attempt to elaborate on what these phrases might specifically mean, nor is there any consideration of the ‘emotional repertoire’ of, say, romance fiction, which fits his definition of character driven and yet remains the most reviled of the popular genres. While, to my mind, good fiction needs to attend to both plot and character equally well, neither of these necessary aspects of storytelling comes readily to mind as a ‘driver’ when thinking about fantasy fiction. In fact, the big engine of the genre appears to be the exposition and elaboration of the setting, from which characterisation and plots specific to the setting are then generated. Fantasy novels are, in many ways, setting driven, a feature that marks them out as unique among popular genres. Other genres where setting is an acknowledged pleasure are historical fiction (for example the work of Philippa Gregory or Diana Gabaldon) and the exotic travel memoir (for example texts set in aspirational destinations such as Provence and Tuscany); but these at least rely on settings that are real. Fantasy fiction, on the other hand, invites readers to immerse themselves in and admire an incredibly detailed world that is an invention of the author’s imagination.' (Introduction)

'It is possible that the transnational nature of popular fiction networks is best appreciated from the perspective of one of their more remote nodes, rather than from the largest and most powerful centres from which we habitually take our bearings. If we begin from Sydney and Melbourne, instead of New York or London, we find a set of relations that extend beyond the usual transatlantic and imperial frames that dominate understandings in the field. This chapter will trace the structure and dynamics of popular fiction’s transnational traffic by following Australian books and authors on their travels into the American marketplace, first as part of the rapid expansion of the international Anglophone market for romance fiction in the last quarter of the nineteenth century and then, as this market begins to collapse in the early twentieth century, through the stabilisation of the modern popular genre system. The Australian perspective reveals both the mobility of books, genres and authors, and the barriers to that mobility determined by the unequal relations of power governing ‘world literary space’ (Casanova 2004), at least in the Anglophone book world. We discover transnationalism not as a form of literary transcendence but as a contingent, rather messy set of economic, industrial and legal constraints working both with and against contiguities of taste and ideology.' (Introduction)

'It was in the late autumn of 1888 that I came to Dartmoor at Aunt Minerva's request...'