Travel Writers and Traveling Writers in Australasia: Responses to Travel Literatures and the Problem of Authenticity

This article compares responses to travel writing and imaginative fiction about the settler colonies, in particular Australia and New Zealand, between 1870 and 1945—a time when distinctions between travel, mobility, and emigration were hard to pin down. Very little scholarship has shown an interest in what the subject society’s inhabitants thought of its portrayal, and what this can tell us about colonial and national identities. Australasian responses to works about Australasia, in the form of published reviews, were influenced by the knowledge and particular concerns of the reviewer and their own negotiations with identity. What mattered to readers and critics was the authenticity of the portrayal of the place, but this was not only related to whether the work claimed to be fiction or non-fiction. The perceived level of familiarity that the writer had with the area was the most important factor in determining whether the reception of a work was positive or negative

The West Island: Five Twentieth-Century New Zealanders in Australia

Stephanie Johnson’s The West Island is a collective biography of four writers and one artist and their experiences of living trans-Tasman lives. Like Johnson herself, Ronald Wakelin, Douglas Stewart, Jean Devanny, Eric Baume and Dulcie Deamer were born and raised in New Zealand and then spent a considerable portion of their lives in Australia

Accident or Desire? Linked Archives and the Trans-Tasman Literary Scene

The early twentieth-century Tasman world (Australia and New Zealand) was a site of literary collaboration and cross-pollination, which has been under-appreciated. As well as there being little scholarship on the subject, histories of publishing and the book trade have largely been written within national frameworks, and even the documentary evidence conspires against understandings of transnational literary networks. This paper discusses the use of digital ‘Linked Archives’ technology to capture, visualise and analyse trans-Tasman literary correspondence networks in the mid-twentieth century. It explains how this approach will help to understand the operations and influences of the Tasman writing world, as well as exploring the significance of the work of Australasian writers, editors and publishers outside of their national spheres. This research is an example of data-rich digital techniques being applied to literary and publishing archives on a cross-institutional and transnational basis to advance knowledge of the operations of the international book trade

Review of From a Distant Shore by Bruce Bennett and Anne Pender

Review of From a Distant Shore by Bruce Bennett and Anne Pende

Falling between the cracks: Dora Wilcox and the neglected Tasman literary world

The poet Dora Wilcox lived and worked in a world of colonial and Australasian literary networks that created and encouraged her multiple national affiliations. As a New Zealander who moved to Australia, however, the influence of mid-century cultural nationalism did not allow her to retain a place in literary history because of her movement between New Zealand, Australia and Britain, her transnational identity and her gender. This paper examines contemporary evaluations of Wilcox to reconstruct the workings of the Tasman literary world within which she operated. The false dichotomies between writers who stayed and writers who left, and women’s and men’s writing, have led to an inaccurate picture of the opportunities available to writers outside the literary academy. Very few of the recent reassessments of early twentieth century literature have shown interest in writers’ transnational concerns, which explains why Wilcox still languishes in obscurity

Falling between the cracks : Dora Wilcox and the neglected Tasman writing world

The poet Dora Wilcox (1873–1953) lived and worked in a world of colonial and Australasian literary networks that created and encouraged her multiple affiliations. As a New Zealander who moved to Australia, however, the influence of mid-century cultural nationalism did not allow her to retain a place in literary history because of her movement between New Zealand, Australia and Britain, her poetic genre and her gender. This paper examines contemporary evaluations of Wilcox to reconstruct the workings of the Tasman writing world within which she operated. The false divisions between writers who stayed and writers who left, and women’s and men’s writing, have led to an inaccurate picture of the opportunities available to writers outside the literary academy. Wilcox’s legacy was affected by the decline of trans-Tasman literary networks that shut out writers not wholly engrossed with the task of contributing to ‘national literature.’ The extra obstacles that women writers already faced were increased due to the masculinist takeover of national literary establishments in New Zealand and Australia. Wilcox still languishes in obscurity despite a number of recent reassessments of early twentieth century Australasian literature on its own terms

Linked digital archives and the historical publishing world : an Australasian perspective

The ARCHIVER project (Angus & Robertson Collection for Humanities and Education Research), based at Western Sydney University, is developing a model for curating digitally accessible versions of print‐based manuscript collections that has the potential to transform humanities research. Using structured, linked metadata concepts, “Linked Archives” allows archival collections to be connected in new ways and facilitates complex meta‐analyses of associated data between and across these collections to achieve results that would be impossible using traditional methods alone. Our current dataset consists of the records of key Australasian publishing companies from the 20th century. This paper will demonstrate the potential of this approach, when applied to this dataset, for examining the underlying infrastructure and networks of the book trade, and thus the creation of literary culture in Australasia and beyond

The Expatriate Myth: New Zealand Writers and the Colonial World

Many New Zealand writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century travelled extensively or lived overseas for a time, and they often led very interesting lives. The received wisdom is that they were forced to leave these colonial backblocks in search of literary inspiration and publishing opportunities. In The Expatriate Myth, Helen Bones presents a challenge to this conventional understanding, based on detailed historical and empirical research. Was it actually necessary for them to leave to find success? How prevalent was expatriatism among New Zealand writers? Did their experiences fit the usual tropes about expatriatism and exile? Were they fleeing an oppressive society lacking in literary opportunity? In the field of literary studies, scholars are often consumed with questions about 'national' literature and 'what it means to be a New Zealander'. And yet many of New Zealand's writers living overseas operated in a transnational way, taking advantage of colonial networks in a way that belies any notion of a single national allegiance. Most who left New Zealand, even if they were away for a time, continued to write about and interact with their homeland, and in many cases came back

New Zealand and the Tasman writing world, 1890–1945

A common theme among the settler colonies of the British world is concern about promising intellectuals and writers leaving for larger cities and cultural metropolises elsewhere. Early twentieth-century New Zealand is no exception, and is seen as a place of ‘exile’ for writers who were forced to leave and become expatriates in places like London or Sydney in order to fulfil their literary ambitions. On closer investigation, however, it is revealed that this problem has been greatly exaggerated. The existence of a ‘colonial writing world’ meant that New Zealand writers were not exiled in small or geographically isolated communities. They participated in a system of cultural diffusion, literary networks and personal interactions that gave writers access to the cultural capital of the British world through lines of communication established by colonial expansion. The most immediate parts of the colonial writing world were the eastern cities of Australia, the literary communities of which were closely linked with New Zealand. The opportunities that this ‘Tasman writing world’ provided (in combination with wider colonial networks) meant that physical location in New Zealand was not a hindrance to literary success

A journey to Australia : travel, media, and the politics of representation

In November 2013 an international symposium was held at the National Maritime Museum in Sydney, Australia called “Travel and the Media” (cohosted by the National Film and Sound Archive and the Centre for Media History at Macquarie University and organized by Sofia Eriksson and Bridget Griffen-Foley). The Museum’s collections formed a fitting backdrop as a destination of travel and a site of tourist experiences, as well as a gathering of items related to the physical objects that enable people to embark on journeys to different parts of the globe. A number of the papers presented referred to a time when Australia was dependent on a maritime world, with sea-based expeditions forming the majority of travel experiences of the southern continent until the mid-twentieth century