From British domination to multinational conglomeration? A revised history of Australian novel publishing, 1950 to 2007

Abstract

I chose to focus on Australian novels because of the significant and illuminating hinge this fictional form provides between debates about cultural nationalism on the one hand, and publishing on the other. The historic relationship of the novel and nationalism was explicitly fostered in Australia by critics like the Palmers who, in the 1920s and 1930s, emphasised the importance of the novel to national identity. This established relationship between the novel and Australian nationalism accounts for, and in recent times has been compounded by, the strong associations drawn between the fate of this fictional form, and the fate of the Australian publishing industry. At present, this association is most commonly expressed in the idea that both industry and book are dying. I aim to resist and complicate this narrative of decline, while exploring some of the complex ways in which both the novel and the industry are Janus-faced: turned to the national and the transnational, the cultural and the commercial.