AustLit

'The "Tasman world," which was the interconnected maritime-based world incorporating the British settlements on either side of the Tasman Sea, was a microcosm of the British colonial world as a whole. The British colonial world included possessions in the Pacific, Asia and Africa which forced travelers to engage with a variety of cultures due to the nature of travel–even the speedier steamship journeys of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century involved multiple stops in exotic countries. As a field, settler-colonial studies has been accused of not engaging deeply enough with the narratives created by the "settlers" themselves, despite the spread of such narratives being a huge part of the success of colonial projects. As the British ex-colonies tried to develop into autonomous nations, classification based on national allegiance became increasingly important, and Arthur H. Adams complaint was all the evidence needed to decide whether he belonged to New Zealand or Australia.' (Introduction)

'The poet Dora Wilcox lived and worked in a world of colonial and Australasian literary networks that created and encouraged her multiple national affiliations. As a New Zealander who moved to Australia, however, the influence of mid-century cultural nationalism did not allow her to retain a place in literary history because of her movement between New Zealand, Australia and Britain, her transnational identity and her gender. This paper examines contemporary evaluations of Wilcox to reconstruct the workings of the Tasman literary world within which she operated. The false dichotomies between writers who stayed and writers who left, and women’s and men’s writing, have led to an inaccurate picture of the opportunities available to writers outside the literary academy. Very few of the recent reassessments of early twentieth century literature have shown interest in writers’ transnational concerns, which explains why Wilcox still languishes in obscurity.' (Publication abstract)