Book contents
- The Cambridge History of Australian Poetry
- The Cambridge History of Australian Poetry
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Language, Text and Colony
- 2 British Speculations on Terra Australis and Romantic-Period Poetry
- 3 Poetry in the Penal Colony
- 4 Becoming Distinct
- 5 The Many-Voiced Charles Harpur
- 6 Anonymity and the Popular
- 7 Settler Labour Poetics and the National Imaginary at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
- 8 Children’s Poetry from 1840 to 1950
- 9 Australian Poetries of War and Conflict
- 10 ‘Poetry Is Its Own Advertisement’
- 11 The New Woman and Poetry (1885–1935)
- 12 Women Poets, Mobility and Being ‘In Between’
- 13 Fin-de-Siècle Symbolism and After
- 14 Kenneth Slessor’s Visualism
- 15 Surrealism and Australian Poetry
- 16 Gum Tears Which Are Also Real
- 17 The Mid Century Canon
- 18 Judith Wright
- 19 Oodgeroo Noonuccal
- 20 Aboriginal Song as Australian Poetry
- 21 Re-Imagining Place (1940–1990)
- 22 Australian Poetry and the Rise of a Suburban Quotidian (1950–2000)
- 23 The Three Ontologies of Regional Poetry
- 24 The Poetry of Antarctica
- 25 Poetry and the State (1945 to the Present)
- 26 Australian Expatriate Poets
- 27 Les Murray
- 28 Religion and Poetry in Australia
- 29 Francis Webb
- 30 Australian Poetry and Post-War Immigration from Europe
- 31 The Long 1970s and Print Culture
- 32 Australian Poets of the 1980s
- 33 Activism and the Eruption of Aboriginal Writing
- 34 Reading the Archive of Australian Feminist Poetry since 1970
- 35 Queer Poetry in Australia
- 36 Between Identity and Form
- 37 Poetry of the South West Asian and North African Diasporas
- 38 Transcultural Relations with Latin America
- 39 Performance Poetries
- 40 Long Form Poetry from the 1980s to the Present
- 41 From Conceptual to Concrete (1960–2020)
- 42 The Digital Era
- 43 The Earth Has Been Done
- 44 Contemporary Anthologies and the Question of Canonicity
- 45 New Dynamics in Twenty-First-Century Anthologies
- Index
- References
2 - British Speculations on Terra Australis and Romantic-Period Poetry
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 November 2025
Book contents
- The Cambridge History of Australian Poetry
- The Cambridge History of Australian Poetry
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Language, Text and Colony
- 2 British Speculations on Terra Australis and Romantic-Period Poetry
- 3 Poetry in the Penal Colony
- 4 Becoming Distinct
- 5 The Many-Voiced Charles Harpur
- 6 Anonymity and the Popular
- 7 Settler Labour Poetics and the National Imaginary at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
- 8 Children’s Poetry from 1840 to 1950
- 9 Australian Poetries of War and Conflict
- 10 ‘Poetry Is Its Own Advertisement’
- 11 The New Woman and Poetry (1885–1935)
- 12 Women Poets, Mobility and Being ‘In Between’
- 13 Fin-de-Siècle Symbolism and After
- 14 Kenneth Slessor’s Visualism
- 15 Surrealism and Australian Poetry
- 16 Gum Tears Which Are Also Real
- 17 The Mid Century Canon
- 18 Judith Wright
- 19 Oodgeroo Noonuccal
- 20 Aboriginal Song as Australian Poetry
- 21 Re-Imagining Place (1940–1990)
- 22 Australian Poetry and the Rise of a Suburban Quotidian (1950–2000)
- 23 The Three Ontologies of Regional Poetry
- 24 The Poetry of Antarctica
- 25 Poetry and the State (1945 to the Present)
- 26 Australian Expatriate Poets
- 27 Les Murray
- 28 Religion and Poetry in Australia
- 29 Francis Webb
- 30 Australian Poetry and Post-War Immigration from Europe
- 31 The Long 1970s and Print Culture
- 32 Australian Poets of the 1980s
- 33 Activism and the Eruption of Aboriginal Writing
- 34 Reading the Archive of Australian Feminist Poetry since 1970
- 35 Queer Poetry in Australia
- 36 Between Identity and Form
- 37 Poetry of the South West Asian and North African Diasporas
- 38 Transcultural Relations with Latin America
- 39 Performance Poetries
- 40 Long Form Poetry from the 1980s to the Present
- 41 From Conceptual to Concrete (1960–2020)
- 42 The Digital Era
- 43 The Earth Has Been Done
- 44 Contemporary Anthologies and the Question of Canonicity
- 45 New Dynamics in Twenty-First-Century Anthologies
- Index
- References
Summary
This chapter examines the early colonial imaginary of Australia. It demonstrates how there was no unified perception of the land but rather movement between utopic and dystopic visions, often according to audience. The chapter discusses poetic speculation on the expansion of empire into what was viewed as the ‘New World’ and the publicising of the colony as a space of pastoral idyll for prospective emigrants. It also considers the negative depictions of Australia as a penal colony, particularly through broadside ballads that were popular among the working class. Lastly, the chapter analyses the representation of female convicts and the adaptation of the eclogue form by Robert Southey.
Information
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Australian Poetry , pp. 47 - 62Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025
References
Select Bibliography
Dixon, Robert. The Course of Empire: Neoclassical Culture in New South Wales, 1788–1860, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Elliott, Dorice Williams, Transported to Botany Bay: Class, National Identity, and the Literary Figure of the Australian Convict, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2019.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garvey, Nathan, ‘“Where Sydney Cove Her Lucid Bosom Swells”: The Songs of an Imagined Nation, 1786–1789’, Literature Compass 4.3, 2007, pp. 604–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hempel, Daniel, Australia as the Antipodal Utopia: European Imaginations from Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century, London: Anthem Press, 2020.Google Scholar
Leask, Nigel, ‘Thomas Muir and The Telegraph: Radical Cosmopolitanism in 1790s Scotland’, History Workshop Journal 63, 2007, pp. 48–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rix, Robert W. ‘The Poetics of Penal Transportation: Robert Southey’s Botany-Bay Eclogues’, Eighteenth-Century Studies 53.3, 2020, pp. 429–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stewart, Ken, ‘Britain’s Australia’, in Pierce, Peter (ed.), The Cambridge History of Australian Literature, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Sturma, Michael, ‘Eye of the Beholder: The Stereotype of Women Convicts, 1788–1852’, Labour History 34, 1978, pp. 3–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vickery, Ann, ‘Feminine Transports and Transformations: Textual Performances of Women Convicts and Emigrants to Australia from 1788 to 1850’, Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature 7.3, 2007, pp. 71–83.Google Scholar
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