Reading

Collections of essays and books of multi-authored chapters have fallen out of favour recently in our research assessment-driven age. When I asked a colleague at…

The author’s approach is ‘to use quantitative reading data to analyse the circulation of Victorian written culture in a range of Australian colonial contexts, and…

CHRISTOPHER Brennan's propagandist A Chant ofDoom (1918) has very little value as poetry, and what critics have said about it is adequately damning. Judith Wright's…

A visitor to a typical major public library in Australia prior to the Second World War would have found it difficult to locate more than…

Brenda Walker's Reading by Moonlight: How Books Saved a Life opens with a seemingly straightforward childhood remembrance of a family friend who lived surrounded by…

Focusing on a process of reading ‘conscripted’ by Victorian sensation fiction, the article begins ‘by outlining the European tradition of the Antipodes before discussing the…

Discusses Mary Fortune's contributions to the Australian Journal, 'a trailblazer for the production of colonial literature'. Focusing on Fortune's essays 'The Tressless Bride' (6…

‘Much of the evidence used in researching the history of individuals’ reading preferences and practices is elusive and transient. Most individuals do not leave material…

‘This essay describes the place of reading in the life of Irene Longman (1877-1962), the first woman elected to the Queensland parliament. It shows how…

Discusses communities of readers and the reception of Dickens in 19th century Australia and New Zealand. 'The very large colonial Dickens network, of references to…

"In this essay I want to explore the status of the sale catalogue as 'ephemeral literature' with two broad aims: firstly, as a means of…

"Drawing on Jon Klancher's seminal study of the ways in which periodicals shaped British reading audiences in the Romantic era, this essay considers the role…

"I draw on evidence from French and Italian soldiers in the First World War to argue that ordinary soldiers in the trenches constituted a reading…

"The first section of the essay situates Xiaohai yuebao in the context of late nineteenth-century missionary publishing and delineates the relationship between the periodical and…

This essay is primarily concerned with two Australian societies of the 1820s: the Philosophical Society of Australasia, 1821-22, and the Useful Book Society, around 1828…

This essay uses the records of local library borrowers' choices in the early twentieth century to approach a body of fiction that has been given…

The purpose of this essay is to describe and interpret a cluster of three readerly 'entertainments' conducted in two Perth newspapers, the Western Mail and…

"While assimilating the writing on phonographic books produced in the immediate wake of Edison's essays into the history of 'audiobooks' is an important project, one…

Kate Grenville's novel The Secret River was met with considerable acclaim on its publication in 2005. It has also been the subject of intense scrutiny…

This essay is an experiment in a reader-focused historicism. It reconsiders the cultural-political circumstances under which Marcus Clarke rewrote George Eliot's ‘The Lifted Veil’, reframing…