AustLit

'Drawing on fieldwork in the Victorian Mallee region of Australia, this article explores the ways in which reading groups can elicit rich information about the relationship between literature, reading, and place. The study found that book group participants “recognized” the Mallee in the texts under discussion and engaged in their own forms of place knowledge and “history‑telling” in response, making corrections to, and even rejecting, literary representations of their area. We argue that the resources for enhancing literary infrastructure exist, both in the broad history and diversity of Mallee writing, and in the social infrastructure of the Mallee. Readers’ knowledge, captured through book‑related discussion in community spaces, offers the potential for enhancing existing literary resources in rural and remote regions.'

Source: Abstract.

'The Black Summer bushfires may have ended, but the cultural cost has yet to be counted.' 

'In this article, we use Nielsen BookScan data, in particular, the Top 2000 Australian-only titles from 2005-2018, spanning the five years before the collapse of the REDGroup in Australia and the five years afterwards, to examine the sustainability of the midlist in Australia. Midlist titles are often said to be an indispensable part of the publisher’s list, yet the role of the midlist author seems to be increasingly difficult to inhabit from both a creative and a financial point of view. Through the analysis of sales data which shows a rise in the volume of bestsellers, we argue that the ‘thinning out’ of the midlist is leading to lessening returns for Australian authors in this bracket. The steady decline in the profitability of midlist titles indicates that many authorial careers may be becoming increasingly untenable. The following discussion considers the implications for the health of the publishing ecosystem and canvasses alternative strategies for helping Australian authors and publishers to survive.' (Publication abstract)

'Locating Australian Literary Memory’ explores sites which are explicitly connected with Australian authors through material forms of commemoration such as writers’ houses, graves, statues and trails. The focus is on a selected group of notable ‘heritage’ authors who have been celebrated through tangible memorials including Adam Lindsay Gordon, Henry Lawson, A. B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson, Joseph Furphy, Henry Handel Richardson, Nan Chauncy, Katharine Susannah Pritchard, Eleanor Dark and P. L Travers. Although inherited traditions have shaped local forms of literary memorialisation, some colourful, idiosyncratic rituals have evolved in the Australian context.

'Through the interweaving of Brigid Magner’s impressions of specific sites with biographical, literary and scholarly material, this book speculates on the intensities and attractions that underpin the preservation of literary places and the practices enacted within them. Key themes such as haunting, pilgrimage and nostalgia are drawn out from her discussion of these places in order to understand the fascination with literary places and the tensions and ambiguities associated with their perpetuation.

'Compared with attractions in Europe and the United States, Australian literary commemorations are relatively modest, with very few ‘grand’ houses, reflecting the impoverishment of local authors as well as a tendency to celebrate their humble origins, a literary paradigm which has been described as the 'success of failure'. The book argues that literary places – and the artefacts residing in them – often tell us more about the memorialisers, and their rituals, than the authors themselves.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'This special issue showcases the diverse ways in which Australian literature and place-making are brought together in contemporary literary scholarship. The seven essays, as well as the creative work by artist and scholar Ross Gibson, illuminate place as intimately constituted by narrative practice, and reflexively, show how geographies and environments inform literary forms, modes and, to use Jennifer Hamilton’s productive term, ‘tones.’ Poetics and placemaking are closely bound. This is of particular consequence in our national context, where ongoing cultures of colonisation, and the political potential of decolonising practices, are both enabled by the kinds of stories we tell both about and through our occupation of place. Storytelling is never neutral, nor is it dematerial. It is always, profoundly, active and has effects on the composition of the world; it is also collaborative, and not always with other human actors. Thinking about a potentially decolonised place requires an interrogation of what enables the enduring capacity of space to exclude and dispossess. It means understanding how words ‘do’ work. The essays included here understand this work in a range of ways and through distinct frames.' (1)

'The poet Adam Lindsay Gordon enjoyed a certain cult status from his death by suicide, in 1870, until the mid 20th century.1 Until Henry Lawson’s death, in 1922, the extensive number of monuments and memorials to Gordon was without precedent in Australian literary history.2 A dashing figure and an accomplished horseman, Gordon provided a bridge between Romantic poetry and local bush poetry, demonstrating the right combination of grand lineage, sophistication and derring-do to be celebrated as an Australian icon. He was considered a ‘second Byron’ and the unofficial poet laureate of Australia by his devotees' (Introduction)

'As a New Zealander, I have always been puzzled by the immense hold that journalist, poet and short-story writer Henry Lawson (1867–1922) has on the Australian imagination. Some of his writing is undeniably powerful, and his politics (anti-rural militant socialism alongside xenophobic nationalism) intriguing, yet his reification seems disproportionate. The more I read about his life, the more unappealing his character becomes. ‘The evidence for the claim that he was a great writer is easily accessible and incontrovertible,’ Brian Matthews observes. ‘That he was a great human being is another matter.’' (Introduction)