Savouring of the Australian Soil?: On the Sources and Affiliations of Colonial Newspaper Fiction Author(s): Graham Law Source: Victorian Periodicals Review, Vol. 37, No. 4 (Winter, 2004), pp. 75-97 Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20084030 Accessed: 05-04-2021 09:52 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms The Johns Hopkins University Press, Research Society for Victorian Periodicals are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Victorian Periodicals Review This content downloaded from 133.9.1.20 on Mon, 05 Apr 2021 09:52:34 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms Savouring of the Australian Soil?: On the Sources and Affiliations of Colonial Newspaper Fiction GRAHAM LAW The passage below comes from the Illustrated Sydney News of 20 March 1890 and is found in the section devoted to "Queensland: Notes from Our Special Correspondent". The note follows a lengthy lamentation on the loss of the steamship Quetta on its voyage from Brisbane to London and precedes a discussion of the need for imported labor in the sugar plantations in the tropical north of the colony. An absurd story of journalistic error comes to us from North Queensland. An important and well-known weekly had purchased the copyright of a story by Miss Dora Russell, through the medium of its agent in England, which was duly announced in large capitals and infinite display. A few weeks later it published a bust portrait of the authoress, and the gratified readers thought that although the course was somewhat unusual, it was but proof of the go-ahead nature of the journal. Closer examination of the intelligent features of the authoress led them to conclude that they would probably enjoy a story from her pen. It was therefore with considerable surprise that in the next issue they read an explanation from the management. It appears that the block came to hand without advice, and with a spirit of divination strong upon them, they at once concluded that it must repre sent the one woman who occupied their thought, Miss Dora Russell. The follow ing mail they received a letter from their agent, which read as follows: - "I sent out lately in a parcel a block of the Princess Victoria of Teck," etc., and they had actu ally published her Royal Highness in the disguise of one who was yet to burst upon the world through the medium of their print. On one level, what follows will serve simply as an extended explication of this brief and apparently trivial text. But, in thus creating a "thick" descriptive context, I hope to do more than shed light on its specific obscurities. The larger intention is to engage with the provenance of the This content downloaded from 133.9.1.20 on Mon, 05 Apr 2021 09:52:34 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms y6 Victorian Periodicals Review 37:4 Winter 2004 MT tri wm?msK?rsmB '?tu - OB?GIHAIi STOBY, SjwdfcUy writie? ft* tfca ^^^^^^^^^^?^?P^?a^igE; ?tOWMVUfiX HBR&ZJV Miss ?ora ???seil, Wilt be> puKlhhe? ?n & re? ytHs, ssoETLY rro 'B3S commjb^o?ix HOW IS THE TIME 0BDF.U TI1E "IIEIULD- AND SECURE Tf?E OP?SIXG CHAITKRSi NEW SERIAL STORY, Tiy a Popular Author, SHORT I., V TO BE (X)JMMENCI?}D. i X 19 VM IN tor.ixcK M188 BOBA BUSSELL, \ui1kt ?>? the Xe'w Stary shortly i publ?sberi it? this jours*?!. "TOWXSYILLK HERALD/' Illustrated Sydney News, 20 March 1890 varied fiction material appearing in Australian newspapers towards the end of the nineteenth century, the different print contexts in which it appeared, and the complex forms of identity affiliation which it reflected and encouraged.1 By way of conclusion, I will take issue with Franco Moretti's charting of the relations between center and periphery in the rapidly developing international market for fiction. A. The Newspapers The Illustrated Sydney News took as its model the world's first newspa per to sell itself on the quantity and quality of its pictorial content, the Illustrated London News, founded in 1842 and still around today.2 The resounding success of this modernizing enterprise ensured that there were soon many European imitators, notably the Illustration in Paris and the Illustrirte Zeitung in Leipzig, both starting up the following year. Rivals in the New World were not far behind. Foremost here was Harper's Weekly founded in New York in 1857 and running successfully until the First World War, while the Canadian Illustrated News led a more precar This content downloaded from 133.9.1.20 on Mon, 05 Apr 2021 09:52:34 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms GRAHAM LAW 77 ious existence in Montreal from 1869 to 1883. Yet the first English clone of the Illustrated London News to appear outside the mother country was probably in the distant young Australian colony of New South Wales. The first weekly issue of the Illustrated Sydney News appeared as early as 1853, onr7 twelve years after the end of convict transportation, and nearly eight before Great Expectations began its serial run in Household Words} The separation of Victoria was a recent memory (1851), effective self government was still around the corner (1855), and the creation of Queensland remained several years in the future (1859). Despite extensive assisted immigration schemes from 1841 and the beginnings of the gold rush in 1851, when the Illustrated Sydney News first appeared the Euro pean population of the entire continent stood at only around half a million and internal systems of communication remained largely unde veloped. The founding of the paper was thus a remarkably ambitious enterprise, and the opening address dwelt on "what our friends at Home will think of our daring spirit in venturing to mimic the acts and capabili ties of our very distinguished parent" back in London (3 October 1853, 2). The format (16 large pages in triple columns), intended audience (the family circle), and political line (liberal and royalist) were much the same as those of the Illustrated London News itself, but the price was double while the quality of the letterpress and engravings was noticeably inferior. Almost inevitably, the life of the paper in this guise was rather brief. Less than two years later, the paper had to deliver a valedictory address that assigned the failure chiefly to complaints that "we cannot bear compari son with our more illustrious contemporary in the mother country" (30 June 1855, 1). But this was not to be quite the end of the story. Perhaps stimulated by the appearance of the Illustrated Melbourne News from 1863,4 the Syd ney paper was resurrected as a pictorial monthly the following year and continued to appear in this form until the later 1880s, when there was a shift to fortnightly publication, with the price halved to sixpence and the size of each issue expanded from 24 to 32 pages, However, this move must have been a sign of weakness rather than of strength, as the Illus trated Sydney News finally expired in 1894. From the outset the chosen title had expressed not so much a recognition of a limited local circula tion, but rather - by analogy with the London model - a claim for Sydney as the capital of an emerging Australian national community. In this, of course, it signally failed, though the more prosaic commercial reason for the demise of the paper must be seen as the strength of the competition. This was not only from the recently created Australasian edition of the Illustrated London News itself, but also from the growing range of colo nial weekly journals of wide distribution. As reflected in the Australian Newspaper Directory, the second half of This content downloaded from 133.9.1.20 on Mon, 05 Apr 2021 09:52:34 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 78 Victorian Periodicals Review 37:4 Winter 2004 the nineteenth century witnessed a boom in the production of colonial newspapers that paralleled developments in the mother country, though obviously on a smaller scale. This rapid development of the local news paper industry was a source of considerable pride to early colonial com mentators. A lecturer on "Australian Literature" in 1864 was happy to "commence with the newspapers. Although New South Wales is consid erably behind in other literary matters, the progress she has made in this department of literature since the first dawn of colonial letters in 1803,iS remarkable" (Walker, 5). By the mid-century, there were established dai lies in all the major population centers along the Eastern seaboard: the Sydney Morning Herald (1842-), the Argus (1848-) and the Age (1854?) both in Melbourne, and finally the Brisbane Courier from 1861.5 Soon each of these was to found a companion weekly journal - respectively, the Mail (i860-), the Australasian (1865-), the Leader (1856-), and the Queenslander (1866-) - which combined the functions of a summary of recent news and a literary miscellany. Slightly later other weekly com petitors were started up in the biggest cities, notably the (Melbourne) Australian Journal (1865-) and the (Sydney) Australian Town and Coun try Journal (1870-).