Australian fiction and the world republic of letters, 1890–1950

doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521881654.013

11 - Australian fiction and the world republic of letters, 1890–1950

from FROM THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY TO 1950

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2011

Robert Dixon

Edited by

Peter Pierce

Show author details

Peter Pierce: Affiliation:
James Cook University, North Queensland

Book contents

Get access

Summary

Lacking much that cosmopolitan sophisticates draw upon, the Australian has nevertheless had to compete with the world.

Miles Franklin, Laughter Not for a Cage, p. 214.

In London in June 1935, two Australian writers met on a train bound for Paris. Christina Stead, then 32, had only just moved back to London from Paris, where she and her partner William Blake had lived since 1929. Nettie Palmer, then 52, was struck by the younger woman’s worldliness: in her diary, she described Stead as ‘assured, perfectly dressed, tailored and supple’, and found no trace of an Australian accent in her ‘nodding sing-song voice’. For her part, Stead described Palmer as a ‘good-natured, school-teacherish woman, totally without flair or imagination’.

Stead and Palmer were travelling together as Australian representatives to the International Congress of Writers for the Defence of Culture, a mass meeting of intellectuals against fascism held in Paris in June 1935. They spent a good deal of time together during the five days of the congress but did not warm to each other. They were two very different types of Australian writer. Though fluent in French and German and widely read in European and American literatures, Nettie and her husband Vance were energetically promoting the idea of a distinctively national Australian literary culture. Her landmark book, Modern Australian Literature, had appeared in 1924.

Information

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge History of Australian Literature , pp. 223 - 254

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521881654.013 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Arnold, John and Lyons, Martyn (eds), A History of the Book in Australia, 1891–1945: A National Culture in a Colonised Market, University of Queensland Press, 2001.Google Scholar

Michael, Ackland, Henry Handel Richardson: A Life, Cambridge University Press, 2004.Google Scholar

Barnes, John, Henry Lawson’s Short Stories, Shillington House, 1985.Google Scholar

Bennett, Bruce, and Strauss, Jennifer (eds), The Oxford History of Australian Literature, Oxford University Press, 1998.Google Scholar

Bird, Delys, Dixon, Robert, and Lee, Christopher (eds), Authority and Influence: Australian Literary Criticism, 1950–2000, University of Queensland Press, 2001.Google Scholar

Brooks, Barbara, with Clark, Judith, Eleanor Dark: A Writer’s Life, Pan Macmillan, 1998.Google Scholar

Buckridge, Patrick, ‘“Greatness” and Australian Literature in the 1930s and 1940s’, Australian Literary Studies, 17.1 (1995).Google Scholar

Butterss, Philip, ‘Introduction’ to Dennis, C. J., The Moods of Ginger Mick, Australian Classics Library, Sydney University Press, 2008.Google Scholar

Carter, David, ‘The Mystery of the Missing Middlebrow, or, The C(o)urse of Good Taste’, in Ryan, Judith and Wallace-Crabbe, Chris (eds), Imagining Australia: Literature and Culture in the New New World, Harvard University Press, 2004.Google Scholar

Dixon, Robert, ‘Australian Literature and the New Empiricism’, Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature: The Colonial Present (2008).Google Scholar

During, Simon, Patrick White, Oxford University Press, 1996.Google Scholar

Eley, Beverley, Ion Idriess, ETT, 1995.Google Scholar

Esson, Louis, ‘Nationality in Art’, Bulletin, 1 February 1923.Google Scholar

Hope, A. D., Native Companions: Essays and Comments on Australian Literature, 1936–1966, Angus & Robertson, 1974.Google Scholar

Hope, A. D., ‘Standards in Australian Literature’, Current Affairs Bulletin (November 1956).Google Scholar

Huggan, Graham, Australian Literature: Postcolonialism, Racism and Transnationalism, Oxford University Press, 2007.Google Scholar

James, Clive, interview, Sydney Morning Herald, Review, 28–29 October 2006.

Jordan, Deborah, Nettie Palmer: Search for an Aesthetic, History Department, University of Melbourne, 1999.Google Scholar

Kiernan, Brian (ed.), Portable Australian Authors: Henry Lawson, University of Queensland Press, 1976.Google Scholar

Kirkpatrick, Peter, The Sea Coast of Bohemia: Literary Life in Sydney’s Roaring Twenties, University of Queensland Press, 1992; rev. edn API Network, 2007.Google Scholar

Lindsay, Jack, The Roaring Twenties, Bodley Head, 1962.Google Scholar

Marr, David, Patrick White: A Life, Jonathan Cape, 1991.Google Scholar

Mills, Carol M., The New South Wales Bookstall Company as a Publisher, Mulini Press, 1991.Google Scholar

Modjeska, Drusilla, Exiles at Home: Australian Women Writers, 1925–1945, Angus & Robertson, 1981.Google Scholar

Munro, Craig, Inky Stephensen: Wild Man of Letters, University of Queensland Press, 1992.Google Scholar

Nile, Richard, The Making of the Australian Literary Imagination, University of Queensland Press, 1992.Google Scholar

Palmer, Nettie, Modern Australian Literature, 1900–1923, Lothian, 1924.Google Scholar

Palmer, Vance, ‘The Need for Nationalism’, The Worker, 9 August 1917.Google Scholar

Palmer, Vance, ‘Povincialism in Literature’, Bulletin, 7 January 1926.Google Scholar

Palmer, Nettie, ‘Our Own Books: Do We Evoke Them?’, BrisbaneCourier, 11 August1928.Google Scholar

Palmer, Nettie, ‘Will Dyson: Creative Militant’, Brisbane Courier, 4 January 1930.Google Scholar

Prendergast, Christopher(ed.), Debating World Literature, Verso, 2004.Google Scholar

Probyn, Clive and Steele, Bruce (eds), ‘Introduction’, Maurice Guest, The Academy Editions of Australian Literature, University of Queensland Press, 1998.Google Scholar

Probyn, Clive and Steele, Bruce (eds), ‘Introduction’, The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, Part I: Australia Felix, Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2007.Google Scholar

Rowley, Hazel, Christina Stead: A Biography, Heinemann, 1993.Google Scholar

Smith, Vivian (ed.), Nettie Palmer: Her Private Journal Fourteen Years, Poems, Reviews and Literary Essays, University of Queensland Press, 1988.Google Scholar

Stephens, A.G., Bulletin, 5 January 1895.

Stephensen, P. R., The Foundations of Culture in Australia: An Essay Towards National Self Respect, W J. Miles, 1936.Google Scholar

Throssell, Ric, Wild Weeds and Wind Flowers: The Life and Letters of Katharine Susannah Prichard, Angus & Robertson, 1975.Google Scholar

Walker, David, Dream and Disillusion: A Search for Australian Cultural Identity, Australian National University Press, 1976.Google Scholar

Webby, Elizabeth (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature, Cambridge University Press, 2000.CrossRef Google Scholar

Webby, Elizabeth, ‘Introduction’, Miles Franklin: My Brilliant Career and My Career Goes Bung, Harper Perennial, 2004.Google Scholar

Webby, Elizabeth and Sykes, Gillian (eds), Walter and Mary: The Letters of Walter and Mary Richardson, Miegunyah Press, 2000.Google Scholar

White, Patrick, ‘The Prodigal Son’, in Patrick White Speaks, Primavera Press, 1989.Google Scholar

Accessibility standard: Unknown

Why this information is here

This section outlines the accessibility features of this content - including support for screen readers, full keyboard navigation and high-contrast display options. This may not be relevant for you.

Accessibility Information

Accessibility compliance for the PDF of this chapter is currently unknown and may be updated in the future.