AustLit

'Given their similar beginnings as colonies, including penal colonies, of Great Britain it was inevitable that the United States would early be seen as providing a possible model for the future development of Australia. While most were concerned with political developments, those interested in the possibility of an Australian literature also looked to the American model. By the 1840s, thanks to the popularity of works like Washington Irving's The Sketch Book (1820) and the novels of James Fenimore Cooper, American literature was becoming internationally known. So much so, that canny British publishers took advantage of the lack of international copyright protection to bring out cheap editions of novels by Cooper and other Americans. While literary historians have long been aware of American piracies of works by Dickens and other British authors, little attention has been paid to British piracies of American fiction. These, marketed as the 'Novel Newspaper', were produced very cheaply and, because of their cheapness, circulated very widely throughout the Australian colonies during the 1840s. This paper will focus on the significance of the Novel Newspaper titles in the transmission of American fiction, paying particular attention to the influence of writers such as Fenimore Cooper on early Australian fiction.' (Author's abstract)