'The True State of My Case: The Memoirs of Mrs Anne Bailey, 1771

This article explores The Memoirs of Mrs Anne Bailey, a short memoir published by a lone mother in London in 1771. It addresses questions of methodology, in terms of legal history and textual analysis, to examine how Anne Bailey's Memoirs shed light on the operation of everyday justice in the mid-eighteenth century metropolis, as well as what they reveal about relationships between legal and textual subjectivities during the era. The article argues that drawing on life-writing sources enriches our understanding of the lived experience of lowlevel justice, as well as conceptions of individual personhood in the eighteenth century

\u27The True State of My Case: The Memoirs of Mrs Anne Bailey, 1771

This article explores The Memoirs of Mrs Anne Bailey, a short memoir published by a lone mother in London in 1771. It addresses questions of methodology, in terms of legal history and textual analysis, to examine how Anne Bailey\u27s Memoirs shed light on the operation of everyday justice in the mid-eighteenth century metropolis, as well as what they reveal about relationships between legal and textual subjectivities during the era. The article argues that drawing on life-writing sources enriches our understanding of the lived experience of lowlevel justice, as well as conceptions of individual personhood in the eighteenth century

Copyright Law, Readers and Authors in Colonial Australia

This article explores the impact of imperial and domestic copyright law on Australian readers, authors and literary culture throughout the nineteenth century.  It investigates the effects of the Copyright Act 1842 on colonial readers, in terms of the cost and availability of books and the circulation of ideas, and uncovers Australian responses to the Foreign Reprints Act 1847.  It further explores the creation of domestic colonial copyright legislation and its links to an increase in the number of novels published as books in the 1870s and 1880s.  Drawing on recent empirical research exploring relationships between book publishing and the growth of a national literature, it argues that copyright law and policy are important considerations in fostering such histories of Australian literary culture

Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf and Tensions of Empire during the Modernist Period

Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf shared a personal and professional relationship which both recognised as being central to the development of their writing. Their relationship was strongly influenced not only by the many life experiences which they shared, and the similarity of their artistic projects, but also by their different positions in terms of empire. This essay examines the Mansfield/Woolf relationship within the context of the broader imperial relationship during the modernist period, and offers new approaches to considering both writers within modernist literary history

What men ought to be : masculinities in Jane Austen\u27s novels

“ ‘What men ought to be’: Masculinities in Jane Austen’s Novels” examines Jane Austen’s literary constructions of men and masculinity as feminine and feminist contributions to the public debate on ideal English masculinity throughout the Romantic period. It explores the problematic position of women writers in critiquing masculinity in the highly politicised context of the Romantic period and develops a theoretical approach to interpreting their constructions of desirable and undesirable masculinities as being representative of their social, cultural and feminist concerns. Throughout her novels, Jane Austen’s representations of the desirable male – of ‘what men ought to be’ – are informed by her fundamental concerns regarding the realisation of female selfhood and the fulfilment of women’s desires, and the political survival and moral wellbeing of the English nation. This thesis argues that Austen’s novels seek to reform socially-approved codes of gentry masculinity by endorsing a model of male identity that is not dependent on the submission or passivity of women in courtship or domestic relationships, promoted by conventional patriarchal ideologies. Austen’s novel’s dramatise the process by which men can choose to forge a masculine identity that allows women a greater socially and publicly participatory role, both enabling the fulfilment of female desire and ensuring the security and wellbeing of the English nation

Performance, Credibility and #MeToo Testimony in Rush v Nationwide News Pty Ltd

Rush v Nationwide News, a defamation case between Geoffrey Rush and the publishers of the Daily Telegraph, has been credited with exerting a ‘chilling effect’ on the #MeToo moment in Australia. The case presents an opportunity to explore both the influence of the #MeToo moment on testimony and how such testimony is received, interpreted and evaluated through legal institutions and the processes of justice. Through a close textual reading of court transcripts, media reporting and the judgment of Justice Michael Wigney, this article traces connections between the #MeToo moment, the testimony of the alleged victim-survivor, Eryn Jean Norvill and its circulation and reception within and beyond the courtroom. Taking a law and performance theoretical framework, I argue that both chief protagonists engaged in a performative approach to narrative self-construction in the adversarial courtroom–Rush as a theatrical genius, and Norvill as a #MeToo advocate–that profoundly influenced Justice Wigney\u27s assessment of their credibility as witnesses, providing a platform for the judicial destruction of Norvill\u27s credibility and denying her the truth of her own experience as a victim-witness of workplace sexual harassment. Indeed, the highly performative nature of this case and its connection to the assessment of witness credibility exposes the influence of a range of sexual harassment myths within Justice Wigney\u27s judgment. In this way, Rush v Nationwide News starkly exposes the ongoing epistemic priority of masculine normativity within adversarial justice, veiled within the cloak of neutrality, objectivity and reason that frames the assessment of witness credibility