Outside Traditional Book Publishing Centres:

The Production of a Regional Literature in Western Australia

Per Hansa HenningsgaardBA, Vassar College (USA)

Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of Doctor of Philosophy

The University of Western AustraliaSchool of Social and Cultural Studies

Discipline Group of English and Cultural Studies

2008

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Abstract

This thesis provides a study of book publishing as it contributes to the production of a

regional literature, using Western Australian publishing and literature as illustrative

examples of this dynamic. ‘Regional literature’ is defined in this thesis as writing

possessing cultural value that is specific to a region, although the writing may also have

national and international value. An awareness of geographically and culturally diverse

regions within the framework of the nation is shown to be derived from representations

of these regions and their associated regional characteristics in the movies, television

and books. In Australia, literature has been the primary site for expressions of regional

difference. Therefore, this thesis analyses the impact of regionalism on the processes of

book production and publication in Western Australia’s three major publishing houses—

a trade publishing house (Fremantle Press), an Indigenous publishing house (Magabala

Books), and an academic publishing house (University of Western Australia Press).

Book history, print culture studies and publishing studies, along with literary

studies and cultural studies, roughly approximate a disciplinary map of the types of

research that constitute this thesis. By examining regional literature in the context of its

‘field of cultural production’, this thesis maintains that regionalism and regional

literature can avail themselves of a fresh perspective that shows them to be anything but

marginal or exclusive. Regionalism has been a topic of peripheral interest, at least as

far as scholarly research and academia are concerned, because those who are most likely

to be affected by and thus interested in the topic, are also those who are most

disempowered as a result of its attendant dynamics. However, as this thesis clearly

demonstrates, access (or a lack thereof) to the field of cultural production (which in the

case of print culture includes writers, literary agents, editors, publishers, government

arts organisations, the media, schools, book clubs, and book retailers, just to name a

few) plays a significant role in establishing and shaping an identity for marginalised

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constituencies. The implications for this research are far-ranging, since both Western

Australia and Australia can be understood as peripheries dominated in their different

spheres (the ‘national’ and the ‘international’, respectively) by literary cultures residing

elsewhere. Furthermore, there are parallels between this dynamic and the dynamic

responsible for producing postcolonial literatures.

The three publishing houses detailed in this thesis are disadvantaged by many of

the factors associated with their distance from the traditional centres of book publishing,

while at the same time producing a regional literature that serves as a platform from

which the state broadcasts its distinctive contributions to the cultural landscape and to a

wider understanding of concepts such as space, place and belonging. These publishing

houses changed the way in which Australians and others have come to know and think

about ‘Australia’, re-routing public consciousness and the national imagination. Since

the early 1990s, however, innovations in their publishing activities seem to indicate a

declining interest in the regional formulation, either instigating or responding to a

decline in critical and popular interest in issues related to regionalism and regional

literature in Australia. Considering the central role Western Australian book publishing

has played in the cultivation of a regional literature in Australia, the current practices of

the state’s three major publishing houses raise questions about the future of Australian

literary regionalism. This analysis of three Western Australian publishing houses

contributes to a larger exploration of the possibility of regional publishing houses

fostering an increased sense of regional identity through their production of a regional

literature, alliances with local authors and appeal to a local readership.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 7

Introduction

I. Overview 9II. Thinking about regional literature 10III. Thinking about publishing and book history 12IV. Establishing relevance 14V. Chapter outline 19

Chapter 1: Regionalism: Various definitions and the historical context

I. The evolution of a critical debate about regionalism 23II. Early articulations of regionalism 32

A. Defining ‘the region’ 33B. Justifying ‘the region’ 40

III. Challenging early regionalism 44A. Regionalism and parochialism/provincialism 45B. Nationalism and the region 48C. The region in the world 53D. The role of universities 58

IV. The importance of the reader to a new understanding of regionalism 61

Chapter 2: Regional anthologies: A piece of the historical context of

regionalism

I. An introduction to regional anthologies 69II. States and territories other than Western Australia 71

A. Northern Territory 72B. Tasmania 75C. South Australia 78D. Queensland 84E. New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT 90

III. Western Australia 93

Chapter 3: Regional literature: A new working definition

I. Preliminary definitions 115A. ‘Literature’ 115B. ‘The region’ 119C. My timeline 124

II. Cultural studies 127A. Literary theory 131B. Field of cultural production 139

i. Government as an instrument in the field of culturalproduction 143ii. Publishing as an instrument in the field of culturalproduction 149iii. Paratext as an instrument in the field of cultural production 153

C. Minority literature and its importance in a new definition ofregional literature 160

III. Defining ‘regional literature’ and ‘regional publishing’ 168IV. The importance of literary regionalism and a sense of regional identity 173

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Chapter 4: Book publishing in Western Australia: Fremantle Press,

Magabala Books and University of Western Australia Press

I. Introduction to book publishing in Western Australia 177II. Fremantle Press 181III. Magabala Books 276IV. University of Western Australia Press 297V. Other Western Australian publishing houses 308

Conclusion

I. Critical regionalism 319II. Australia as a region 324III. Postcolonial literature 329IV. The contemporary relevance of regionalism and regional literature 335

Bibliography 345

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following people for assisting me in my research:

From the Discipline Group of English and Cultural Studies at The University of

Western Australia: Professor Dennis Haskell, to whom an especially large debt of

gratitude is owed for his unparalleled performance in the capacity of my supervisor;

Associate Professor Brenda Walker; Associate Professor Judith Johnston; and Dr Kieran

Dolin.

The Australian-American Fulbright Commission for endowing me with a

Fulbright Grant, which brought me to Australia and funded my first year of research at

The University of Western Australia. In particular, Mark Darby, Lyndell Wilson and

Heather Rietdyk.

Professor Alan Robson, Vice-Chancellor of The University of Western Australia,

for agreeing to fund an Ad Hoc Scholarship, thereby allowing me to continue my

postgraduate research career.

The staff at the Reid Library of The University of Western Australia, and in

particular the Scholars’ Centre staff.

Staff of Fremantle Press: Ray Coffey and Clive Newman.

Former staff and individuals published by Fremantle Press: Ian Templeman,

John Mateer, Veronica Brady, and John Kinsella.

Staff of Magabala Books: Suzie Haslehurst and Rachael Christensen.

Former staff and individuals published by Magabala Books: Wendy Albert,

Merrilee Lands, Peter Bibby, Pat Torres, Glenyse Ward, Patricia Lowe, and Nikky

Finch.

Staff of University of Western Australia Press: Terri-ann White.

Former staff and individuals published by University of Western Australia Press:

Jenny Gregory, Emma Matson and Geoffrey Bolton.

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The journals and magazines that have published sections of this thesis:

Antipodes, Limina, Tamkang Review, Australian Author, and Preparing for the Graduate

of 2015 (proceedings of the 17th Annual Teaching and Learning Forum).

Ivor Indyk, Giramondo Publishing; Noel Rowe, Southerly; David Brooks,

Southerly; Elizabeth Webby; Dugald McLellan; Robert Gray; Ivan Head; Richard

Rossiter; Greg Jackson, Western Australian Museum Publications; Stephen Matthews,

Ginninderra Press; Paul Hetherington, National Library of Australia; Mark O’Connor;

Alan Gould; Ian Syson, Vulgar Press; Zoe Dattner, Sleepers Publishing; Louise Swinn,

Sleepers Publishing; Andrew Kelly, Black Dog Books; Susan Hawthorne, Spinifex

Press; Kevin Pearson, Black Pepper; Elisa Berg, Melbourne University Publishing; Joel

Becker, Victorian Writers’ Centre; Chris Feik, Black Inc.; Alae Taule’alo; Nick Walker,

Australian Scholarly Publishing; Louise Poland, Publishing Research List (Pu-R-L);

Nicholas Birns; Paul Kane; Peter Gregory, Vanguard Press; Marion Nixon; David

Carter; Jill Jones, Department of Culture and the Arts; Fremantle City Library; State

Records Office of Western Australia; and State Library of Western Australia.

My family and friends, with special acknowledgement to my partner, Aimee

Quaife, for all her support and love.

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Introduction

I. Overview

At more than 2.5 million square kilometres, Western Australia is the second

largest subnational entity in the world (as well as the largest Australian state, occupying

approximately one-third of the mainland), and yet most non-Australians are unfamiliar

with the term and the geographical area it represents. They know Sydney and maybe

Melbourne, on Australia’s eastern seaboard. Nonetheless, it is common for Australians

to speak knowledgeably about different regions in, for example, the United States—

most commonly the East and West Coasts, as well as the South.

The relevant point here is not that Australians are better at geography than

Americans and others, but rather that the awareness of geographically and culturally

diverse regions within the framework of a nation is derived from representations of

these regions and their associated regional characteristics in the movies, television and

books. It is no accident that many non-Australians are unfamiliar with Western

Australia, as the region is infrequently represented in the cultural record, much less in

those aspects of the cultural record that are transmitted overseas. This imbalance in

‘cultural currency’ arises because regions are at least in part defined by their ability to

participate in what Pierre Bourdieu has deemed the ‘field of cultural production’. In the

case of print culture, this field includes writers, literary agents, editors, publishers,

government arts organisations, the media, schools, book clubs, and book retailers, just

to name a few.

This thesis examines the role of book publishing outside the traditional centres

of such activity, where the lack of access to the gate-keepers of cultural production, such

as literary agents, editors and publishers, inhibits the production of a meaningful

cultural identity. It takes Western Australia as a case study, analysing the effects of

geography on the processes of book production and publication in its three major

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publishing houses—Fremantle Press, Magabala Books and University of Western

Australia Press—and on its writers. This analysis contributes to a larger exploration of

the possibility of publishing houses fostering an increased sense of regional identity

through their production of a regional literature, alliances with local authors and appeal

to a local readership. Furthermore, it will assist in identifying the place of regional

literature in a rapidly evolving publishing industry.

II. Thinking about regional literature

Most of the very limited amount of critical writing and thinking that has been

done on the subject of regional literature in Australia was done in the 1980s. This

includes many journal articles, though what is more striking is the large number of

state-based (or regional) literature anthologies published in Australia in the 1980s,

where there had been few in previous decades. However, not a single scholarly

monograph has been devoted to the subject. Furthermore, none of these explorations of

the subject of regional literature seriously considers the role of regional publishing in

the development of a regional literature or culture.

Instead, where Australian scholars have taken notice of regionalism, their

interest has typically been restricted to determining the centrality of either ‘the region’

or ‘the nation’ as concepts in Australian culture. Consequently, ‘in Australia the

development of regional differences in the cultural sphere has been dwarfed and

stultified by a powerful continental vision of nationhood which has been the mainspring

of our sense of identification’.1 The reason for this particular discourse being ‘dwarfed

and stultified’, whereas many other challenging discourses enjoyed a much healthier

scholarly reception around this time, is the popular misconception that regionalism

1Gillian Whitlock, ‘Queensland: The State of the Art on “the Last Frontier”’, Westerly 29, no. 2 (July

1984): 88.

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means the advocacy and advancement of the interests, functions, andcompetence of parts of a nation-state as against those same aspects of thewhole state. ... It may be harmful if it weakens a sovereign state when thebest interests of all can be better served by the larger entity.2

In other words, a regional discourse is seen as challenging ‘the mainspring of

[Australians’] sense of identification’—the (singular) national discourse. It is perceived

as an affront to the long-standing ideal of nationalism and also to the works of

Australian writers who have embraced this ideal, not to mention the academics who

have devoted their careers to addressing these writers’ treatment of national themes.

However, in places such as North America where critical thinking about

regionalism and regional literature has a much longer history, there is not nearly the

same sense of the region and the nation battling for perceived influence. Canada, in

particular, fosters a vibrant regional culture:

in Canada a sense of the integrity of regions has led to a more pluralistconception of the nation. In Australia our sense of difference has beendetermined by the national construct, in Canada on the other hand the tailwags the dog as it were and the sense of nation flows from the region.3

In contrast, discussion of regionalism in the United States has been concentrated in a

single region, the South, though this has stemmed neither its volume nor its influence.

In the latter half of the 19th century, for example, following the conclusion of the Civil

War, regional literature was first aired in the United States in a form roughly

approximating a genre. ‘Local colour stories’, as they were called, typically featured

dialogue written in dialect and detailed descriptions of local customs. The form proved

extremely popular, and local colour stories regularly appeared in leading magazines

until the end of the century. Regionalism resurged in the 1920s and again in the 1980s,

during which periods scholars first began to debate whether regional literature was just

nostalgic ‘local colour’, or if it instead offered resistance to and critique of dominant

2Richard Preston, ‘Regionalism and National Identity: Canada’, in Regionalism and National Identity, ed.

Reginald Berry and James Acheson (Christchurch: Association for Canadian Studies in Australia and

New Zealand, 1985), 3.3Whitlock, ‘Queensland’, 88.

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cultural groups. Yet, even in the United States, scholarly debate about the role of

regional publishing in the production of this literature is almost non-existent.

III. Thinking about publishing and book history

In fact, serious critical analysis of the role of the publishing house in the

production of literature in general has only a recent history. Book history, which had its

beginnings in France with the French annales school of historians, ‘delves into the

context in which printed materials ... are produced and received’, including the role of

the publishing house.4 These early scholars emphasised ‘broad social movements

drawing on detailed statistical evidence’, an approach that would become influential in

the field.5 From these geographically circumscribed beginnings, ‘the discipline spread

to England and Germany in the 1960s and 1970s and began to make its appearance in

[the United States], as a formally recognized field of study, in the late 1970s’.6

Until the mid-1980s, however, there remained two distinct book history

methodologies: the French school which examined ‘the impact of the book on society’

and culture, and the Anglo-American school which was ‘primarily bibliographical, and

concerned with the book as a physical object’.7 This thesis is less concerned with the

latter approach—the ‘technical analysis of individual books or editions characteristic of

bibliography’—since it can be understood as simply one component of the French

school’s more far-reaching investigation of the cultural value of printed materials.8 It is

worth noting, however, that Australia’s premier scholarly organisation devoted to the

4Karen J. Winkler, ‘In Electronic Age, Scholars are Drawn to Study of Print’, Chronicle of Higher

Education, 14 July 1993, A7.5David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery, eds., The Book History Reader (Oxon: Routledge, 2006), 1.6James L. W. West III, ‘Book History at Penn State’, in The Pennsylvania Center for the Book (2006,

accessed 10 Aug. 2007); available from http://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/histofbook/article.html.7Martin Antonetti, ‘Exploring the Archaeology of the Book in the Liberal Arts Curriculum’, in Teaching

Bibliography, Textual Criticism, and Book History, ed. Ann R. Hawkins (London: Pickering & Chatto,

2006), 20.8Finkelstein and McCleery, 1.

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study of book history, the Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand

(BSANZ), has a mandate in the area of physical bibliography. This mandate hinders its

engagement with more recent interest in book history, which is increasingly concerned

with matters foreign to physical bibliography but comfortably accommodated within the

critical framework of this thesis and the French school of book history, such as

authorship and the role of the reader.

Other noteworthy organisations and publications in this field in Australia include

the Centre for the Book at Monash University (which publishes BSANZ’s refereed

journal, Script & Print) and the national History of the Book project. Volume I of this

project, covering the period up to 1890, has yet to be published, but Volume II, A

History of the Book in Australia, 1891–1945: A National Culture in a Colonised

Market, edited by Martyn Lyons and John Arnold, was published by University of

Queensland Press in 2001. Volume III, Paper Empires: A History of the Book in

Australia, 1946–2005, edited by Craig Munro and Robyn Sheahan-Bright, was

subsequently published in 2006. The only other major scholarly publication in the area

of Australian book history is the 2007 release of Making Books: Contemporary

Australian Publishing, edited by David Carter and Anne Galligan, and once again

published by University of Queensland Press. Notably, the aforementioned titles have

all been published in the last decade.

The increasing influence in Australia in recent years of a book history approach

to literary and cultural studies has aided in the production of this thesis. Yet, the

application of this approach to the subject of the production of a regional literature by

publishing houses located outside the traditional centres of Australian book publishing

—while a logical step forward from large-scale, survey projects like History of the

Book and Making Books—runs the risk of marginalising itself to the point of

irrelevance. After all, this is a relatively new critical approach (with a French bent,

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rather than the Anglo-American more popular in the English-speaking world) applied to

a culture with an apparently limited history of interest in regionalism—where, in fact,

the term ‘regional’ is most often used generically to refer to everything outside the

capital cities, rather than to identify a specific geographical area that can be

distinguished in some way from neighbouring regions.

Even in the United States, with its aforementioned more vibrant and long-

standing interest in regionalism, book history is rarely employed as a critical approach

to this subject matter. Discussion about the intersection of book publishing and regional

literature, for example, has never gotten much beyond the superficial acknowledgement

that the South ‘had assumed a new sort of leadership in literature’ in the 1920s and ‘30s,

and that ‘this was made possible by an extraordinary liberal cooperation of publishers

and educational leaders and philanthropists in the Northeast’.9 There is little scholarly

writing that makes any better use of book history as a critical approach with the

potential to reveal the factors contributing to the rise of the ‘Southern Renaissance’ and

some of the most significant writers of the 20th century, including William Faulkner,

Flannery O’Connor, Robert Penn Warren, and Eudora Welty.

IV. Establishing relevance

In order to halt this process of marginalisation and establish the relevance of the

subject matter of this thesis as well as its scholarly approach, it is necessary to resist

conceptualising regionalism in the same narrow terms that defined early American

regionalism as ‘local colour’. In other words, in this thesis I do not utilise an exclusive

definition of regional literature as writing about a specific place. I am also unconcerned

with a version of regionalism that posits an ideological divide between the ‘regional’

and the ‘cosmopolitan’, thereby conceptually aligning it with the ‘provincial’. Finally, I

9Howard W. Odum, ‘The Way of the South’, in In Search of the Regional Balance of America, ed.Howard W. Odum and Katharine Jocher (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1945), 18.

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reject an understanding of regionalism as the ‘advocacy and advancement of ... parts of

a nation-state as against those same aspects of the whole state’. Instead, I recognise

‘there can be no concept of the region, except as it is a component, constituent part of

the total nation. ... The very definition of the region always connotes that it is a

contributing part to, of, for, and by the total nation.’10 I have rejected these various

frameworks, because they are too narrowly conceived and exclusive for my purposes

and would potentially contribute to the marginalisation of the subject matter of this

thesis.

By examining regional literature in the context of its field of cultural production,

I draw upon a fresh perspective meant to demonstrate that regionalism and regional

literature are anything but marginal or exclusive. In fact, it is my contention that a

‘regional group’ is ‘like any other group’:

like any other group, a regional group has a myth of itself that furnishesnot only a basis for identification, but a rationale for at least some aspectsof its culture. Understanding that myth may be the key to understandingnot only how members feel toward their group but how they think andfeel about a great deal else.11

Clearly, the region is seen here as a potential source of identity. Conceptualising the

region in this manner is, in part, the result of a recognition that ‘questions of identity—

couched in national, regional, local or personal terms—recur frequently in Humanities

research and teaching. Ethnic and gender-based identity issues are also prominent.’12

In Australia, as was briefly noted near the beginning of this Introduction, this

sense of identity has for a long time been bound up with the concept of the nation:

Nation-based studies began—let’s say very roughly—in the 1960s; thepeak of their growth was probably the decade from 1977 to 1987, which

10Howard W. Odum, ‘From Community Studies to Regionalism’, in In Search of the Regional Balance ofAmerica, ed. Howard W. Odum and Katharine Jocher (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,

1945), 13.11John Shelton Reed, One South: An Ethnic Approach to Regional Culture (Baton Rouge: Louisiana StateUniversity Press, 1982), 27.12Bruce Bennett, ‘Identity and Heritage’, in Reflective Essays, vol. 3 in Knowing Ourselves and Others:

The Humanities in Australia into the 21st Century, ed. Reference Group for the Australian Academy ofthe Humanities (Canberra: Australian Research Council, 1998), 75.

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saw the establishment of the Association for the Study of AustralianLiterature (ASAL) in 1977, the Australian Studies Association (ASA) in1983–4, and the Committee to Review Australian Studies in TertiaryEducation (CRASTE) in 1984–7.13

Nonetheless, scholars have observed that the Australian bicentenary in 1988, which

should have in many ways represented the peak of this nationalist sentiment, ‘failed to

produce the sense of a unified nation because the very idea of “the nation” is no longer

secure in the Australian popular consciousness’.14 In fact, there is speculation that

‘1980s nationalism may actually have given rise—in spite of itself—to a commitment

among Australians to “redefine” themselves’.15 Therefore, viewing the region as a

‘basis for identification’ and ‘key to understanding ... how members [of the region] ...

think and feel’ is also (again, in part) a response to calls that ‘Australian literary studies

—and Australian studies in general—should now move beyond the national paradigm

that was a necessary part of the original disciplinary formation’.16 In other words,

conceptualising the region in this manner constitutes an acknowledgement of the

perceived prevalence of the national paradigm in Australian culture, as well as the need

for a revisiting and redefining of this paradigm.

The recent and ‘ongoing globalization of all realms of human affairs, including

material and nonmaterial culture as well as the economy’, makes the present historical

moment particularly well-suited to this process of redefinition.17 After all, it has been

noted that ‘place-bound identities become more rather than less important in a world of

diminishing spatial barriers to exchange, movement, and communication’.18 This

13Robert Dixon, ‘Internationalising Australian Studies: Non-fiction 2004–2005’, Westerly 50 (2005): 128.14Graeme Turner, Making it National: Nationalism and Australian Popular Culture (St. Leonards: Allen& Unwin, 1994), 7.15Ibid., 8.16Dixon, ‘Internationalising Australian Studies’, 128.17Wilbur Zelinsky, ‘The World and Its Identity Crisis’, in Textures of Place: Exploring HumanistGeographies, ed. Paul C. Adams, Steven Hoelscher, and Karen E. Till (Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 2001), 138.18David Harvey, ‘From Space to Place and Back Again: Reflections on the Condition of Postmodernity’,

in Mapping the Futures: Local Cultures, Global Change, ed. Jon Bird et al. (London: Routledge, 1993),4.

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statement would seem, however, to directly contradict another observation about ‘place-

bound identities’, which is that ‘regional identity is based on limitations of technology,

on limited options or choices to effect changes to the environment, or on one’s ability to

move freely from one place to another’.19 The implication of this statement is, of

course, that globalisation, which ostensibly represents the removal of some of these

limitations, will have a negative impact on ‘regional identity’. Indeed, this thesis

examines regional literature in the context of its field of cultural production precisely

because it hopes to demonstrate the influence of these sorts of realities (for example,

‘limitations of technology’) on the formation of a regional culture. Accordingly, it must

be admitted that the removal of such barriers would likely result in the diminishment of

a sense of regional identity. This does not mean, however, that the earlier statement

—‘place-bound identities become more rather than less important in a world of

diminishing spatial barriers to exchange’—is necessarily untrue. After all, the processes

associated with globalisation do not affect all places equally. Instead, they mimic and

thus reinforce the dynamics that have always defined regions and regional identities.

In spite of the advent of electronic communication and affordable air travel, for

example, which give Western Australians access to the world in ways not previously

available to them, there remain in place processes of cultural imperialism that have

historically helped define regional identities. For example, globalisation has resulted in

the American bookstore chain Borders setting up shop in Western Australia’s capital

city, and the simultaneous worldwide release of the Harry Potter books, but there has

not been a comparable reciprocal exchange of culture. Of course, some Western

Australian writers have, as a result of processes associated with globalisation,

successfully sold the overseas rights to publish their books, but this is not a comparable

19Michael Hough, Out of Place: Restoring Identity to the Regional Landscape (New Haven: YaleUniversity Press, 1990), 58.

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reciprocal exchange of culture, and any discrepancy is likely to contribute to a sense of

regional identity.

Only recently have Australian commentators begun to systematically observe the

effects of an ‘Australian publishing industry and market [which] is dominated by a

handful of large corporations, themselves generally parts of massive, multi-national

media conglomerates’.20 These effects are typically held to include a reluctance to

publish ‘mid-list literary titles’ and an increasing desire to publish ‘celebrity and

blockbuster authors’.21 Furthermore, ‘decisions about what to publish are strongly

driven by “retroactive data”, by understandings of what has sold before’, and this

‘information on what has sold before, that these large corporations (alone) can afford to

obtain from Nielsen BookScan, is homogenous data, recording sales levels but no

regional or other sales variations’.22 Consequently, a further effect of the Australian

publishing industry’s dominance by multinational publishing houses is that ‘this further

reinforces an already existing trend towards an homogeneity of published products’.23

The concern that globalisation does not represent a levelling of the geographical playing

field, but rather a process that is likely to result in the consolidation of power around

dominant cultures, has already led to an ‘efflorescence of regional sentiment in the

United States and some European countries’, whereby ‘many cities have indulged in

some interesting, if rather desperate, ploys to proclaim their, and thus their inhabitants’,

particularity’.24

This thesis clearly endorses the sentiment that

modern societies will have to find some way to reverse the trend towardlarger and larger agglomerations and to recreate units compatible with the

20Nathan Hollier, ‘Between Denial and Despair: Understanding the Decline of Literary Publishing inAustralia’, Southern Review 40, no. 1 (2007): 66.21Ibid.22Ibid.23Ibid., 67.24Zelinsky, 141.

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limits of man’s comprehension—in other words, small enough that theycan develop a social identity and spirit of place.25

While geographically quite large, Western Australia is demographically small enough—

with a population of just over two million—to satisfy this requirement. After all,

meaningful diversity exists in Australia in the minds of its citizens and in their feelings

of identification with the specific state or region in which they reside, were born, or

lived for a significant period of time. Also, in their identification with fellow residents

of that state or region—a particularly important factor when it comes to the support of

regional literature and regional arts, writers and artists.

The study of literature also lends itself well to this agenda of identifying units

‘small enough that they can develop a social identity and spirit of place’, since ‘books

can afford to go against the current, to raise new ideas, to challenge the status quo’.26

Furthermore, literature occupies a preeminent cultural position:

Books are still a central—though by no means the only—medium for thedissemination of myriads of ideas—be they mediocre or sublime—thatshape the public mind. A study of the book industry ... [is] of crucialsignificance for any assessment of the contemporary world of ideas.27

For these reasons—but perhaps mostly for the ‘ease of entry [that] has characterised the

publishing industry in contrast to film, which tends to be more capital intensive’—in

Australia, literature has been the primary site for expressions of regional difference.28

V. Chapter outline

Chapter 1 discusses the various definitions of ‘the region’, ‘regional literature’

and ‘regionalism’ that have been advanced in Australian literary criticism. It also

outlines the evolution of a scholarly debate on these themes, something that did not

25Rene Dubos, A God Within (New York: Scribners, 1972), 286.26André Schiffrin, The Business of Books: How International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing andChanged the Way We Read (London: Verso, 2000), 171.27Lewis A. Coser, Charles Kadushin, and Walter W. Powell, Books: The Culture and Commerce ofPublishing (New York: Basic Books, 1982), 4–5.28Richard Nile, The Making of the Australian Literary Imagination (St. Lucia: University of QueenslandPress, 2002), 135.

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really come into being until the late 1970s, before enjoying a period of critical

popularity in the 1980s in the lead-up to the Australian bicentenary, and then quickly

vanishing from the literary critical spotlight in the 1990s. Throughout the evolution of

this scholarly debate about regionalism, however, the region was challenged as a

formation appropriate to the Australian situation; thus, it is only appropriate that this

chapter outlines some of the more significant challenges to which regionalism and

regional literature were subjected. Finally, Chapter 1 considers the importance of the

reader to recent thought on the subject of regions in Australia, and the potential for this

shift—away from the physical region and towards the reader as perhaps the central

feature in an understanding of the region—to revitalise both scholarly and popular

interest in the subject.

Regional literature anthologies are the subject of Chapter 2, where they are used

as further evidence of the terms and timeline of the scholarly debate about regionalism

outlined in Chapter 1. It is noted, for example, that beginning in the 1970s, regional

anthologies first began actively promoting ideas associated with regionalism and

regional literature and participating in a larger critical debate on the subject. The

chapter initially considers regional anthologies concerned with Australian states and

territories other than Western Australia, before advancing to a much more

comprehensive consideration of Western Australian anthologies.

Having surveyed in the first two chapters of the thesis the history of scholarly

and popular interest in literary regionalism in Australia, the aim of Chapter 3 is to offer

up new definitions of terms such as ‘the region’, ‘regional literature’ and ‘regional

publishing’. These definitions are meant to supersede all that have come before them,

since they are made with full knowledge of the criticisms to which earlier definitions

were subjected. Also, even during the heyday of the scholarly debate about literary

regionalism in Australia, there was almost no agreement about what was meant by any

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of these terms. Writers and critics often operated with implicit and internally

inconsistent definitions of, for example, ‘regional literature’; thus, they could hardly be

expected to formulate externally consistent definitions of such terms. Chapter 3 also

explains why, in a discussion of the production of a regional literature in Western

Australia, the historical scope of this thesis is limited to the period from 1970 to the

present.

Chapter 4 surveys Western Australia’s three major publishing houses—

Fremantle Press, Magabala Books and University of Western Australia Press—and the

contributions each has made to the production of a regional literature in Western

Australia. Fremantle Press has been particularly successful in re-routing public

consciousness and the ‘national imagination’ in the direction of Western Australia; this

seems to set it apart in a number of senses from the other two publishing houses, both of

which have had different (and arguably lesser) kinds of impact, though Magabala Books

is a special case as the country’s first Indigenous publishing house. Nonetheless, it is

the diversity represented by these three publishing houses—a trade publishing house

(Fremantle Press), an Indigenous publishing house (Magabala Books), and an academic

publishing house (University of Western Australia Press)—that is the most intriguing

feature of the Western Australian book publishing scene. Within this diversity, the sites

at which these three publishing houses experience commonalities form a compelling

case for the shared experiences of regional publishing houses in other parts of the world.

These sites, derived from their shared experience of operating outside the traditional

centres of book publishing, can be fleshed out and fashioned into a publishing plan for

the future, one that through the very diversity it represents is sure to develop and extend

minds and cultures.

While surveying the aforementioned publishing houses, Chapter 4 utilises the

findings from the first three chapters of the thesis to identify instances of a contribution

21

to a regional culture. In other words, not every title published by these three publishing

houses is given equal attention, but rather this weighting is informed by the history of

critical and popular interest in regionalism and regional literature in Australia. Chapter

4 also employs the definitions of terms such as ‘regional literature’ and ‘regional

publishing’ outlined in Chapter 3, in order to establish a consistent conceptual

framework, as well as to demonstrate the successful practical application of these

definitions and confirm the investigations giving rise to them.

In addition to discussing the findings of Chapters 1 to 4, the Conclusion

investigates the association of ‘power’ with ‘the region’, as in the expression ‘power of

place and region’.29 Furthermore, it explores the relationship that exists between this

power and the cultural centres against which regions are so often defined. The thesis

then finishes by identifying the implications for this research in Western Australia and

other contexts, and reasons for prioritising regionalism and regional literature in future

scholarly and popular conversations about literature, culture and identity.

29Glen A. Love, ‘Nature and Human Nature: Interdisciplinary Convergences on Cather’s Blue Mesa’, in

Willa Cather’s Ecological Imagination, vol. 5 in Cather Studies, ed. Susan J. Rosowski (Lincoln:University of Nebraska Press, 2003), 6.

22

Chapter 1

Regionalism: Various definitions and the historical context

I. The evolution of a critical debate about regionalism

The conversation about literary regionalism in Australia did not begin to take

shape until the late 1970s. This development was foreshadowed, however, by a long-

standing tradition of political regionalism. In fact, state-based political regionalism has

been around since the early days of European settlement in Australia, inspiring

historians to attribute distinctive characteristics to each state and its residents. For

example, Manning Clark writes in A Short History of Australia, of the colonial reaction

to the Australian Colonies Government Act, which was passed by the British parliament

in 1850:

The legislative council of New South Wales . . . [was] not interested in afederal assembly that could not be dominated by New South Wales; andSouth Australia, as a hint of future provincial loyalties, rejected theproposal as in a British sense unconstitutional.30

Though the New South Wales and South Australian Governments were united in their

dislike of the Australian Colonies Government Act and in their desire for self-

government, the logic employed by the two governments to reach this conclusion is

entirely different. New South Wales is depicted as arrogant and self-centred, while

South Australia is said to have ‘provincial loyalties’. The same characteristics are

thought to define these two states today.

An example from Western Australia confirms the existence of political

regionalism in early Australian history, as well as demonstrating the significance of

shared history in shaping the identity of a region:

Early on, immigrants to the Swan River Colony looked not east to thebetter established and more populous colonies of New South Wales andTasmania, but north-west to the United Kingdom, which remained‘home’ longer here than elsewhere. New South Wales and Tasmania

30Manning Clark, A Short History of Australia, 4th ed. (Ringwood: Penguin, 1995), 119.

23

were originally founded to house a convict population, unlike WesternAustralia and South Australia which were founded for free settlement. Adistrust of the ‘east’, and especially of ‘the convict states’, was widelyvoiced when Federation was proposed.31

Once again, the state in question is still thought of today as defined by these early

manifestations of political regionalism. Clark notes that ‘intercolonial customs and

different railway gauges [are] part of the price paid for indulging in [the] folly’ of

political regionalism.32 However, there are many more striking examples of regional

difference in Australia, including the threat of secession that has been a very real part of

Western Australia’s political landscape since shortly after European settlement in 1829.

Australian literary regionalism of the 1970s was clearly foreshadowed by

political regionalism, but it was further inspired by articles such as Thea Astley’s ‘Being

a Queenslander: A Form of Literary and Geographical Conceit’, which was published in

the literary journal Southerly in 1976 and explores the impact of Astley’s Queensland

upbringing on her evolution as a writer.33 In fact, Australian literary regionalism could

be alleged to have been a topic of interest even earlier, as state-based literature

anthologies were published throughout the 20th century. (Perhaps surprisingly, however,

none were published in the 19th century.) The specific circumstances surrounding the

publication and purpose of these books will be discussed in Chapter 2, but for now it is

important to note that these early state-based literature anthologies did not comprise a

conversation about regionalism in Australia in the way their successors would do so

successfully beginning in the late 1970s. The latter conversation showcased an

increasingly sophisticated understanding of the historical and contemporary influences

at work in any conception or reception of regional literature, which the earlier

anthologies lacked, especially as they did not engage in any form of inter-textual debate.

31George Seddon, ‘Perceiving the Pilbara: Finding the Key to the Country’, Thesis Eleven 65 (May 2001):80.32Clark, 119.33Thea Astley, ‘Being a Queenslander: A Form of Literary and Geographical Conceit’, Southerly 36, no. 3

(1976): 252–264.

24

It was not until October 1978 that the elements necessary to spark a widespread

critical debate on the subject of Australian literary regionalism finally began to coalesce.

This landmark event occurred at a seminar organised by Fremantle Arts Centre Press,

founded only three years earlier in the port city of Fremantle, Western Australia, with a

regional mandate and only a handful of books to its credit. The three-day gathering was

organised to explore the theme of ‘Time, Place and People: Regionalism in

Contemporary Australian Literature’. Speeches delivered at this seminar by Australian

writers such as Frank Moorhouse, Thomas Shapcott, Elizabeth Jolley, Peter Cowan, and

T. A. G. Hungerford, were later reprinted in an edition of the literary journal Westerly,

thereby affording them greater circulation and ‘cultural currency’. The published

versions of these speeches are as close to foundational works as can be found on the

subject of literary regionalism in Australia; they provided the basis for future discussion,

as well as formally introducing the terms and ideas against which many critics reacted.

In 1978 when the seminar was held, however, the speakers had only each other’s

comments to which they could refer, as there was no precedent for this sort of debate—

not on this subject, and certainly not in this forum. Earlier writings that had engaged

with the idea of ‘the region’ were composed primarily of observations about the region

and its supposed ‘character’ and would not withstand critical examination. While the

speeches delivered at the 1978 seminar do not generally make reference to any larger

discussion of regionalism in Australia, they still exhibit an element of critical debate

absent from earlier writings, as any given speaker might respond to comments made by

an earlier speaker. For example, Elizabeth Jolley remarked:

Mr. Peter Ward spoke about the geographical immensity of Australiawith its ‘oppressively homogenous character’. This is clearly the pictureone would have from staying in luxury hotels on an expense account. ...Does Mr Ward think it is the same to live all the year within the sound of

25

a tired generator in a small town in the wheatbelt as it is to live inNedlands or Peppermint Grove?34

The speakers at this event appear to be marking the territory for future engagements.

Where there had previously been no critical debate, these individuals created one

amongst themselves, thus laying the necessary foundation for a larger, more widespread

conversation on the subject of Australian literary regionalism.

Considering its importance in the development of this conversation, it is perhaps

useful to provide a brief but coherent exposition of the various positions—the

arguments and counter-arguments—that were advanced at the seminar. Moorhouse

delivered the first paper, a long and thoughtful analysis of the subjects of ‘regionalism,

provincialism and Australian anxieties’. In this paper, he observes a movement in

Australian culture from nationalism to regionalism, the latter contingent on the idea of

Sydney as a metropolis or cultural centre; distinguishes the definitions of ‘parochial’

and ‘regional’; takes an accounting of three recently published anthologies of Western

Australian writing; and declares that the state’s desire to be different makes Western

Australia the most likely home in Australia for a culture of regionalism. However, his

conclusion is much less upbeat: Moorhouse speculates in a roundabout way that time

will reveal that the value of regionalism is limited to the political sphere, and that its

artistic and cultural futures are unpredictable, at best.

Shapcott spoke next, delivering a rather obtuse paper structured around two long

quotations from two different cultural critics. Like Moorhouse, he discusses

parochialism and nationalism, though he also introduces a series of ideas associated

with internationalism and globalisation in literary culture. Perhaps as a result of his

awareness of the latter set of influences—which he treats with a healthy dose of

scepticism—Shapcott’s assessment of regionalism is overwhelmingly positive.

34Elizabeth Jolley, ‘Landscape and Figures’, Westerly 23, no. 4 (Dec. 1978): 73.

26

The next speaker, Peter Ward, presented a remarkably different perspective on

the subject of ‘regionalism in contemporary Australian literature’. Ward’s basic

contention is that Australia is a predominantly metropolitan society, and within its urban

areas homogeneity rather than regional differentiation is the order of the day. By virtue

of a comparison of Australian and American regionalisms, he concludes that Australia

lacks the historical, linguistic and cultural diversity necessary to establish a coherent

sense of regional identity.

Jolley, more than anyone else, responded to the ideas expressed in the papers

delivered by other speakers at the seminar. In particular, Ward comes under intense

attack for his comments about Australia’s homogenous character. Jolley also raises a

series of provocative questions about what exactly constitutes ‘provincialism’, drawing

upon writers as diverse as Jane Austen and William Faulkner to demonstrate the

possibility of great writing emerging from apparently provincial conditions.

In addition to seconding many of the sentiments expressed by Moorhouse,

Shapcott and Jolley, Cowan’s presentation at the 1978 seminar focused his energies and

considerable writing talent on the role of the regional writer. He adds another layer to

earlier propositions by musing on what one can only assume is his own experience as a

Western Australian writer. In particular, he observes that the regional writer draws

creative strength and inspiration from the region in which he works, and that, as a result,

he may be ineffective creatively if he is removed from this region.

In his presentation at the seminar, Hungerford picked up on (and expressed more

clearly) a point made earlier by Moorhouse: ‘I suggest that at present Western Australia

stands in much the same relationship regionally to the Eastern States of Australia as

turn-of-the-century Australia had stood in relation to Great Britain, and later to

America.’35 Hungerford further asserts that Western Australia will outgrow its status as

35T. A. G. Hungerford, ‘Time, Place and People: Regionalism in Contemporary Australian Literature’,

Westerly 23, no. 4 (Dec. 1978): 75.

27

a region in much the same way that Australia did, which is to say by virtue of its

maturing economic status. Accordingly, he concludes that the effects of ‘regionalism in

contemporary Australian literature’ are visible in the economics of literary culture,

rather than in any artistic or stylistic quality associated with the writing. In other words,

Hungerford believes that regionalism in Australian writing is meaningful only in terms

of the lack of opportunity afforded regional writers, and not as a formative influence for

these writers.

Jim Davidson’s paper sounded an appropriate closing note for the seminar.

Davidson discusses the emergence of a regional consciousness in Australia following its

shrugging off of British colonial influence—thus connecting with comments made by

Moorhouse and Hungerford. He also addresses the distinguishing features of

regionalism and parochialism, and in so doing, establishes links with the presentations

of Moorhouse, Shapcott, Ward, and Jolley. Finally, he expresses his belief that regional

writing is about the particularity of a writer’s response to a given place, and that the

value of this response should ideally transcend that place, which he concludes makes

regionalism (in the final analysis) irrelevant.

This concludes the exposition of the various positions that were advanced at the

1978 seminar organised by Fremantle Arts Centre Press. Since this thesis is concerned

with regional literature and its production in Western Australia, it is important to note at

this early juncture that interest in regionalism and regional literature has always been

particularly strong in this western-most state. Of course, the aforementioned seminar

was held in Western Australia, conferring upon the state a degree of importance as the

launch site of critical debate on this subject. Western Australia’s particular association

with literary regionalism does not end here, however, as was noted by two speakers at

the seminar:

28

If we were to look for regionalism in Australia, Western Australia wouldbe the obvious case study. It is by far the most self-conscious, self-analytical and articulate region in Australia.36

To live in Western Australia is to be strongly aware of a physicallandscape—one behind the urban facade, and even though the populationis overwhelmingly urban. This sense of another environment comesthrough the sprawling suburbs, it comes in the smoke of the forestdepartment’s endless burning fires, the lack of water, the heat, thedistances.37

These statements suggest that, while the 1978 seminar might mark the unofficial

beginning of critical debate in Australia on the subject of literary regionalism, the idea

of a state-based ‘regional identity’ or ‘regional consciousness’ already existed.

The sense of Western Australia as a special case in the conversation about

literary regionalism continued long after the 1978 seminar, as the following excerpt

from a 1992 article by Beth Watzke, an American temporarily resident in Australia,

demonstrates:

It seems to me that this view of place and landscape as effecting in a verypalpable way the shaping of individual literary worlds, of places asdifferent and of that difference making its own difference in writing, is aview that is distinct to this region [Western Australia].38

John Rickard reaches much the same conclusion in his book Australia: A Cultural

History:

Outside of the two great capitals there has been a developing tendency todefine more of a regional identity, as a sense of place has supersededmore generalised perceptions of the Australian environment. Particularlyhas this been so of Western Australia, with its own brand of isolation.39

An even more persuasive indication of the strength of this tendency in Western Australia

can be found in the analysis of regional literature anthologies contained in Chapter 2 of

this thesis. The number of regional literature anthologies published in Western Australia

36Frank Moorhouse, ‘Regionalism, Provincialism and Australian Anxieties’, Westerly 23, no. 4 (Dec.

1978): 63.37Peter Cowan, ‘Time, Place and People: Regionalism in Contemporary Australian Literature’, Westerly

23, no. 4 (Dec. 1978): 74.38Beth Watzke, ‘Writing the West: Regionalism and Western Australia’, Westerly 37, no. 1 (1992): 28.

39John Rickard, Australia: A Cultural History (London: Longman, 1988), 262.

29

is disproportionate both to its population and also to the numbers published in other

Australian states and territories.

The conversation about literary regionalism gained momentum in the early

1980s when Bruce Bennett began actively promulgating regionalism as a critical

framework for understanding Australian literature. Bennett was the most prolific

advocate of

a study of regions from the ground up: commencing with particularplaces, the biographical connections of writers with these places andtheir literary references to, or recreations of these places, together with astudy of their intellectual and cultural milieux.40

The works most often cited in articles published in the 1980s on the subject of regional

literature are from the aforementioned 1978 seminar. Nonetheless, it seems this

occasion has escaped notice as the unofficial beginning of critical interest in literary

regionalism in Australia. Even the most basic summary of events given above—

charting the progression of interest in the subject of regionalism in Australia and

Australian literature from the late 1970s through to the present day—has been

assembled from primary sources, rather than with the assistance of another critical eye.

In fact, as late at 1986, scholars were still claiming a ‘recent’ interest in literary

regionalism: ‘In recent years regionalism has emerged as a significant way to approach

Australian writing.’41 Susan McKernan’s essay, ‘Crossing the Border: Regional Writing

in Australia’, is a review of five regional anthologies: Latitudes: New Writing from the

North (1986),42 Unsettled Areas: Recent Short Fiction (1986),43 Portrait: A West Coast

Collection (1986),44 Effects of Light: The Poetry of Tasmania (1985),45 and The Orange

40Bruce Bennett, ‘Concepts of “the West” in Canadian and Australian Literary Studies’, Westerly 29, no. 2

(1984): 81.41Susan McKernan, ‘Crossing the Border: Regional Writing in Australia’, Meanjin 45, no. 4 (1986): 548.

42Susan Johnson and Mary Roberts, eds., Latitudes: New Writing from the North (St. Lucia: University of

Queensland Press, 1986).43Andrew Taylor, ed., Unsettled Areas: Recent Short Fiction (Netley: Wakefield Press, 1986).44B. R. Coffey and Wendy Jenkins, eds., Portrait: A West Coast Collection (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts

Centre Press, 1986).45Vivian Smith and Margaret Scott, eds., Effects of Light: The Poetry of Tasmania (Sandy Bay:

30

Tree: South Australian Poetry to the Present Day (1986).46 McKernan identifies a

sudden burgeoning of regional anthologies in the years 1985 and 1986, but of course

this would not have occurred without the encouragement of scholars over a longer

period of time than she identifies. The only sources McKernan cites in relation to this

‘recent’ interest are Bennett’s ‘1984 lectures for the Foundation for [Australian] Literary

Studies at James Cook University’, which she says ‘present the case for regional study

of Australian writers’.47 (Bennett’s lectures were later reprinted as a book, Place,

Region and Community.48) Considering the conversation about Australian literary

regionalism sustained itself in its most concentrated form for barely a decade, the six

years McKernan overlooks between Bennett’s lectures and the 1978 seminar are

significant.

Bennett, whom McKernan recognised in 1986 as ‘one of the most active

promoters of the concept of regionalism in Australian literature’,49 gets closer to the

truth with his 1984 assessment of the timeline of interest in Australian literary

regionalism: ‘There are signs in the 1980s of a healthier responsiveness to place, region

and community in Australia and a curiosity to know more.’50 However, even Bennett

does not trace this interest directly back to the 1978 seminar organised by Fremantle

Arts Centre Press. In fact, he attributes burgeoning interest in the subject to an entirely

different (and not yet fully realised) event:

In Australia, a national project commenced in 1983 by the Associationfor the Study of Australian Literature is concerned with the compilationof a Literary Guide to Australia, which involves a close investigation ofplace references in authors’ work and their biographical connections to

Twelvetrees Publishing Company, 1985).46K. F. Pearson and Christine Churches, eds., The Orange Tree: South Australian Poetry to the Present

Day (Netley: Wakefield Press, 1986).47McKernan, 548.48Bruce Bennett, Place, Region and Community (Townsville: Foundation for Australian Literary Studies,

1985).49McKernan, 548.50Bruce Bennett, Place, Region and Community, 3.

31

Australian places, and this has stimulated a renewed attention to regionalliterary studies.51

The Oxford Literary Guide to Australia,52 to which Bennett refers, was eventually

published in 1987, three years after Bennett made his remarks (though at the time of

Bennett’s writing it was planned for 1986).53 In light of this information, Bennett’s

assertion about the importance of The Oxford Literary Guide to Australia in stimulating

interest in the subject of literary regionalism begins to sound improbable. It is rather

more likely that planning for the book began as a result of a previously established and

burgeoning interest in this subject.

By the early 1990s, however, the conversation about literary regionalism had

largely died out—perhaps because those who had campaigned so actively for its notice

felt that, in the few years it had enjoyed a spotlight of Australian literary criticism, it had

managed to accomplish its goals. Only the smallest of whimpers was heard on the

subject in the decade of grunge rock and grunge literature, and there has been veritable

silence in this regard with the dawning of the 21st century. Without even the dignity of a

death knell, the matter of regionalism in Australian literature disappeared from the

literary critical landscape.

II. Early articulations of regionalism

Charting the evolution of definitions of ‘regionalism’ and ‘regional literature’

over time is a much more difficult task than roughly sketching the history of critical

debate on this subject. Particularly in the 1980s, when a substantial amount was written

on the subject of Australian literary regionalism, detailing a specific path along which

definitions and understandings progressed is impossible. Oftentimes, scholars worked

51Bruce Bennett, ‘Concepts’, 76.52Peter Pierce et al., eds., The Oxford Literary Guide to Australia (Melbourne: Oxford University Press,

1987).53Bruce Bennett, ‘Concepts’, 82 note 4.

32

over the same few ideas again and again without advancing the debate, because they

were ignorant of other contributions to the field. Indeed, the use of the term ‘debate’ in

this instance could be considered misleading, since there is little evidence of an

understanding amongst participants that they were participating in such a forum.

Nonetheless, a significant conversation gradually evolved, even if foundational texts

were never nominated nor contours of the conversation formally acknowledged.

This section of the thesis charts the movement of this debate by identifying

several key themes, and then placing these themes in an order that replicates in a rough

way the order in which they were introduced. This section also explores the

justifications Australian scholars typically employ for their various ways of

conceptualising literary regionalism.

A. Defining ‘the region’

One of the earliest tasks faced by those pioneers of literary regionalism in

Australia in the 1970s and ‘80 was defining the concept of ‘the region’, as it is from this

root that regionalism is derived—both in linguistic and practical terms. The long

history of literary regionalism in North America meant that much of this work had

already been done for them; however, they were faced with the challenge of defining the

region in a specifically Australian context. Of course, defining the region necessitates

identifying regional borders so as to distinguish one region from neighbouring regions.

This is a particularly important task, since the most basic definition of literary

regionalism holds that it can be productive to examine literature through the lens of the

physical environment, geography, or the idea of ‘the region’; this is impossible if the

borders of that region have not been identified.

If those individuals who were interested in regionalism and regional literature in

Australia wanted to make any gains in the critical and popular imagination, they had to

33

respond to the various ways in which Australia’s physical environment had previously

been apprehended and also to posit a convincing new scheme. Therefore, at the

beginning, it is important to recognise the existence of certain dominant attitudes

towards the physical environment in Australia and Australian literature:

In Australian culture, one of the most prevalent and persistent sites of the‘other’—in both popular and ‘high’ culture—is the physicalenvironment, nature. Narrative accounts of the relationship between theself and the natural world constitute the most significant single issue inestablishing identity, from the arrival of the first Europeans to the presentday.54

Bennett seems to agree with this assessment, though he states his case in more moderate

terms: ‘Gaining one’s bearings, physically and emotionally, in Australia has been a

major preoccupation of many of our writers, artists and thinkers.’55 Indeed, it would be

a difficult task to find an Australian scholar who believes the physical environment is

not a significant ‘preoccupation’ of Australian writers and artists. Although, clearly, she

still may not agree that it is the most significant.

Of course, the physical environment has an entirely different significance within

the Aboriginal value system. However, as this perspective was not successfully

incorporated into the larger conversation about literary regionalism in Australia, it will

not be discussed at this time. Further discussion of this and related topics can, however,

be found in the section of this chapter titled ‘The region in the world’. Also, Chapter 4

contains a discussion of the publishing activities of Magabala Books, an Indigenous

publishing house located in the northwest of Western Australia.

As the physical environment is such a well-established subject in Australian

literary criticism, it is unnecessary to burden the reader with a large number of scholars

making such an assertion. However, this thesis has not yet addressed the previously

54Richard Rossiter, ‘Reading the Landscape: Prose Literature’, in Farewell Cinderella: Creating Arts and

Identity in Western Australia, ed. Geoffrey Bolton, Richard Rossiter, and Jan Ryan (Crawley: Universityof Western Australia Press, 2003), 130.55Bruce Bennett, ‘A West-side Story’, Conversations 5, no. 2 (Summer 2005): 40.

34

established borders within this physical environment to which individuals interested in

literary regionalism in Australia were compelled to respond. For example, the boundary

between the city and the bush was (and still is) a very popular way of imagining the

physical geography of Australia.

By the early 1980s, scholars with an interest in literary regionalism were already

reacting against this myth of being able to divide Australia into just two distinct parts—

the city and the bush. Susan McKernan captures the spirit of such reactions in her

summary of Bennett’s position on the subject:

Bennett argues that the old division between the city and the bush inliterature has misrepresented the true nature of Australian social life andliterature, the difference between one region and another being moreimportant than the difference between the big metropolis and the country.Bennett believes that the place where a writer lives—its landscape,vegetation, climate, idioms and community attitudes—deeply influencesthe writing.56

This excerpt illustrates the dominance of the dichotomy between the city and the bush

as a way of apprehending Australia’s physical environment and also the rising tide of

opposition to this dichotomy. Another excerpt, this one from Bennett himself, labels the

division between the city and the bush ‘one of the chief defining myths of Australia’:

The graph which I have sketched suggests a decline since the 1950s inthe engagement of our writers and artists with the bush and the outback,though there remain outstanding exceptions to this .... One of the chiefdefining myths of Australia, as powerful for us as the northernwilderness is for Canadians, seems to have been put aside, perhapstemporarily, as writers come to terms with more restricted territories.57

Clearly, this excerpt exemplifies a growing dissatisfaction with the limitations of this

myth and the search for an appropriate replacement.

Australia’s physical environment has also been understood in ways that disrupt

the notion of an absolute division between the city and the bush. Some of these

formulations existed well in advance of the conversation about Australian literary

56McKernan, 548.57Bruce Bennett, Place, Region and Community, 38.

35

regionalism charted in Part I of this chapter. However, unlike the dichotomy between

the city and the bush—which individuals interested in literary regionalism in Australia

felt compelled to respond to given its high profile, but they actually took very little

away from this encounter—many of these formulations contributed to a productive

dialogue that would influence the shape of Australian literary regionalism in the 1970s

and ‘80s. Chilla Bulbeck recognises a particularly significant example:

A central concern in the definition of ‘region’ is the size of the unit andits relationship to other units, both smaller and larger. At the largest levela group of nations may be conceived of as a region: the countries ofSouth-East Asia for example. Most commonly in Australia, region istreated as synonymous with state.58

Dividing Australia’s physical environment into regions that are recognised as

‘synonymous with state’ is an example of defining borders, thereby making it possible

to identify one region as distinct from its neighbouring regions. Australia’s long history

of political regionalism has been enabled by this particular formulation. It is also one

way in which Australia’s physical environment has been promoted as a critical

framework for the study of literature.

However, many critics have taken issue with the state-as-region formulation:

The convenient identification of regional literary studies with state orprovincial boundaries is challenged not only in the Canadian, but also inAmerican regional studies. Such questioning and redefining ofboundaries which must always be considered mutable, is a legitimateinvestigation of the theory and practice of literary regionalism, but it isoften clouded by political considerations.59

Notably, Bennett looks in this instance to North American literary regionalism for

guidance. He employs these studies as the basis for a new way of apprehending

Australia’s physical environment and to sketch a complex system of regional borders in

Australia. In fact, he goes on to propose three different senses of the region that exist

simultaneously, each of which can be illustrated with a quotation from his writing.

58Chilla Bulbeck, ‘Regionalism’, in Australian Studies: A Survey, ed. James Walter (Melbourne: Oxford

University Press, 1989), 70.59Bruce Bennett, ‘Concepts’, 78.

36

Through the agglomeration and juxtaposition of these different senses of the

region, Bennett proposes an alternative to the previously surveyed dominant attitudes

towards the physical environment in Australia and Australian literature. His first sense

of the region is smaller than the state:

What then are the major implications of these studies for continuingwork on the literature of Western Australia? First is the need to think interms of subregions within, and sometimes across, state borders.Examples of these in Western Australia are the South-West; the North-West, or Kimberleys; the Pilbara; the Central and Southern Wheatbelt;the Goldfields; and Perth and suburbs. The categories are from physicalgeography, regional administration and functional land-use but all areterms which have lodged themselves in the consciousness of WesternAustralians. It has been suggested that the Goldfields and the Wheatbelthave provided the most distinctive literatures, but all of them can claimat least a small body of writings which contain significant originalresponses to landscape or society; which together build a distinctivepicture of place, conditions and atmosphere.60

Bennett seems to propose an alternative to the state-as-region model, in which the

boundaries of regions are derived from ‘physical geography, regional administration and

functional land-use’. Just as soon as this idea has been established, however, Bennett

adds a layer to this sense of the region by re-introducing the role of the state as a

significant factor in Australians’ perception of the physical environment:

After taking into account regions such as these, there remains thequestion of whether a larger regional identity of the West exists inAustralia. So many Western Australian writers have asserted that a stateidentity does exist, or has existed, that we must take notice of thisconsciousness. Self-definition is often accepted as the criterion ofmembership of a group, or community, and in this case must be taken aspersuasive, supportive, if not final evidence.61

Bennett asserts that ‘self-definition’ can be taken as ‘supportive, if not final evidence’ of

the state of Western Australia as a literary region but maintains there also exist regions

within Western Australia. His final assertion complicates the matter further:

Just as political, administrative and other boundaries are changedaccording to changing conditions, so also should the definitions,

60Ibid., 79.61Ibid., 81.

37

characteristics and boundaries of literary regions be continually re-examined and revised.62

In the final analysis, Bennett claims the state-as-region formulation and the formulation

of regions within the state as valid ways of understanding and identifying borders within

Australia’s physical environment, but that the borders illustrated by these two

formulations are subject to change at any time.

As a result of complicated constructions like this one, Bennett has been accused

of not taking a firm enough stance on issues of literary regionalism: ‘He is unable to

make precise claims about the way a certain region may affect its literature.’63 It is not

only Bennett, however, at which this excerpt points the finger. As easily the single

greatest contributor to the cause of Australian literary regionalism, when Bennett’s

rhetoric is shown to be faulty or deficient, this implicates all scholars writing on the

subject. After all, his three-pronged formulation for the borders of the literary region in

Australia is representative of the variety of such formulations being proposed by

Australian scholars at this time. Even if he has not made a convincing case for any one

formulation, it can be said that he has captured the breadth of contemporary thought on

this subject.

Not long after Bennett proposed this particular method of identifying regional

borders, a more sophisticated way of articulating literary regionalism was developed

that purported a divide between the centre and the periphery in Australia. Bennett’s

method owes a debt to the longstanding state-as-region formulation, while this new

articulation bears a stronger resemblance to the dichotomy between the city and the

bush discussed above. Its dominant influence, however, is practical experience, though

this does not mean the work done by Bennett and others in the late 1970s and ‘80s is

overlooked.

62Bruce Bennett, Place, Region and Community, 14.63McKernan, 548.

38

Beth Watzke explains the origins of the dichotomy between the centre and the

periphery:

Regionalism as a concept has developed along with an awareness ofAustralia’s difference and diversity in terms of cultures, communities andplaces, as well as an assertion that the ‘centre’ in terms of literary workand publication (as well as political and economic power) is the East, oras it is often referred to, Sydney–Melbourne.64

Watzke identifies a couple key elements of this dichotomy: ‘Sydney–Melbourne’

(sometimes referred to as ‘Sydney–Canberra–Melbourne’) as the centre of Australian

culture and cultural production, and also that it is impossible to assert a centre without a

previously established ‘awareness of Australia’s difference and diversity in terms of

cultures, communities and places’. This last point suggests that earlier articulations of

regional borders perhaps paved the way for this later, more sophisticated one.

Susan McKernan discusses the practical experiences that inform this particular

understanding of literary regionalism:

Writers and critics who live outside the centres of the East coast feel thattheir work will be overlooked by publishers and readers in the centre,and regionalism asserts the importance of writing which does notconform to the current fashions of the centre; the regional approachpresents a way of renewing Australian literary life so that it does notbecome a tired imitation of an ‘international’ literary model.65

Clearly, publishing opportunities and literary fashion are integral to a formulation of

literary regionalism that draws upon a divide between the centre and the periphery;

these are some of the practical matters alluded to above. It is worth noting that

McKernan’s comment comes much earlier (1986) than the other comments in this

section that concern themselves with the centre and the periphery. This can be

explained by looking closely at the content of the above excerpt, which, while it

demonstrates some of the practicalities informing this formulation, is primarily

concerned with the association between parochialism or provincialism and literary

64Watzke, 22.65McKernan, 548–49.

39

regionalism. McKernan’s concern and the criticisms of regionalism that give rise to it

will be more fully examined in Part III (‘Challenging early regionalism’) of this chapter,

but for now it should suffice to say that this particular articulation is a flawed though

still helpful illustration of the dichotomy between the centre and the periphery.

Bennett provides a far simpler and more accurate articulation of this concept:

‘Marginality from presumed centres of power is one of the keys to regionalism.’66 This

excerpt also contains within it the seeds of a more complicated implication, which is

that those who are ‘marginalised’ will view regionalism differently than those who are

‘from presumed centres of power’. In fact, Bennett maintains that ‘it is a psychological

fact that those who inhabit a perceived centre are less likely than those who inhabit the

perceived periphery to believe in the values of regionality’.67 However, before

addressing challenges (such as ‘that those who inhabit a perceived centre are less

likely ... to believe in the values of regionality’) to the various formulations of literary

regionalism discussed above, it is first necessary to understand some of the ways in

which Australian scholars justify their interest in the physical environment and the idea

of ‘the region’ as a legitimate critical paradigm for the examination of literature.

B. Justifying ‘the region’

Australian scholars in the 1970s and ‘80s typically employed one of two

justifications for their interest in the physical environment and belief that the region can

constitute a legitimate critical framework. These two justifications, while both relevant

to the full array of thought on the subject, remain distinct from one another. The first of

these justifications is that the region is distinctive. This is a precarious articulation that

scholars have frequently been at pains to prove, as was evidenced above when Bennett

66Bruce Bennett, An Australian Compass: Essays on Place and Direction in Australian Literature (South

Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1991), 72.67Ibid., 16.

40

debated the relative merits of the state-as-region formulation and the ‘subregion within

the state’-as-region formulation.

Nonetheless, many early proponents of literary regionalism in Australia

maintained that the region is a distinctive entity, abounding with particular

characteristics and qualities. Furthermore, since it is literary regionalism that is being

discussed, it is not enough for these characteristics and qualities to be simply evident in,

for example, the physical environment; they must also be evident in the writers and

artists resident in that region, thereby indelibly marking them with the regional stamp.

Watzke establishes the importance of the ‘region as distinctive’ formulation in the

evolution of critical debate on the subject of literary regionalism:

In Australia, discussions of how to define the West inevitably involvediscussions of regionalism, and often evolve into debates about themerits and limitations of posing any particular geographical space andmaking literary claims to it as a unique ‘region’.68

It seems the various ways of apprehending Australia’s physical environment and

identifying regional borders in this environment, which were described above, all rely

on this notion of the region as distinctive or ‘unique’. Yet, it is equally clear that if the

region is somehow shown not to be distinctive, it will render these formulations

impotent. In fact, the region must be shown to be not only distinctive, but capable of

imprinting its residents with a manifestation of this distinctiveness.

A second justification for the belief that the region can constitute a legitimate

critical framework for the study of literature maintains that diversity is the key

ingredient rather than distinctiveness. Of course, these two justifications are not

mutually exclusive. In fact, they occupy much the same territory—a region must first

be distinctive in order for the existence of regions to be used as evidence of diversity in

a larger unit such as the nation. Still, diversity seems to be a slightly later (as well as an

only slightly more sophisticated) justification of literary regionalism in Australia.

68Watzke, 22.

41

Bennett claims that, when it comes to literary regionalism as a critical paradigm,

‘the first, and guiding, principle must surely be a recognition of diversity’.69 He is not

alone in this opinion: ‘The real strength of the argument for regional grouping of

Australian writing is its insistence on the diversity of Australian literature.’70

Furthermore, Geoffrey Bolton and his colleagues argue in their book Farewell

Cinderella: Creating Arts and Identity in Western Australia, that ‘exploration of

regional diversity will lead to an understanding of the subtleties of Australian society

and culture as a whole’.71 This is one reason why diversity is seen as the key to literary

regionalism—because it reveals the ‘subtleties’ of Australian culture, rather than

showing it to be homogenous.

However, this last excerpt also raises a fundamental question about how the

existence of regional diversity in Australia is determined. Farewell Cinderella tackles

this issue as well:

Is it unreasonable to suggest that isolation fosters distinctive traits in thelocal culture, so that scholars can write of a Western Australian‘identity’? Just as Australian culture in its formative years had toovercome the reproach of being merely a provincial transplant of Britishoriginals, so there is space for regional diversity within Australianculture. Despite Sydney’s progress in recent decades, Australia still doesnot have, and never has had, a single metropolitan centre dominatingcultural exchanges in the same way that London was the metropolis forthe British Empire and Commonwealth.72

It seems that in order to demonstrate the existence of diversity in Australia, Bolton and

his colleagues find it necessary to invoke the notion of a division between the centre and

the periphery. This demonstrates the interconnectedness of the various ways of

‘defining “the region”’ found in Section A and the justifications of these definitions

contained in Section B.

69Bruce Bennett, Australian Compass, 72.

70McKernan, 548.71Geoffrey Bolton, Richard Rossiter, and Jan Ryan, eds., Farewell Cinderella: Creating Arts and Identity

in Western Australia (Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 2003), 4.72Ibid., 3.

42

However, both of the aforementioned justifications rely on the assumption that

literary regionalism is inextricably linked to the distinctive creative output of the region.

In the absence of a distinctive creative output, the region is assumed to no longer be

distinctive, in which case it can also no longer stand for diversity in the context of the

nation. Consequently, literary regionalism is thought to have ceased usefulness as a tool

for critical analysis and debate. The prevalence of this assumption is illustrated by the

following excerpt:

At its extreme—and critics such as Bennett are careful to avoid thisposition—the idea of regional writing suggests that literature may beread simply as a reflection of the community from which the writercomes and be valued according to the accuracy of its depiction of aparticular place or society.73

While McKernan is seemingly reluctant to let regionalism off the charge of being

‘simply a reflection of the community from which the writer comes’ (in other words, a

distinctive creative output), she is forced to recognise that Bennett does not, in fact,

endorse this position. In fact, at the time McKernan was writing (1986), most advocates

of literary regionalism in Australia were beginning to move beyond this narrowly

conceived understanding of regional literature.

Just a couple years after McKernan wrote on the subject, however, P. R. Hay

targeted the notion of a distinctive creative output as it relates to literary regionalism:

Whilst it is not important that writers work from an overt sense of place,there is a related principle that should be consciously promoted, and thatis the defence of diversity. ... To strive for the preservation of diversityagainst the standardisers of the market is to strive for the uniqueness thatmakes community identification (and hence place identification)possible.74

Hay seems to be saying that regional writers should not be limited to subjects that are

‘simply a reflection of the community from which the writer comes’—or, in his own

words, they should not have to ‘work from an overt sense of place’. Nonetheless, he

73McKernan, 549.74P. R. Hay, ‘Place and Literature’, Island Magazine 34/35 (Autumn 1988): 35.

43

continues to advocate diversity as the key to literary regionalism, but without indicating

how this balance can be achieved in practical terms. This final piece of the puzzle

would be left to later advocates of literary regionalism in Australia, whose ideas will be

surveyed in Part IV (‘The importance of the reader to a new understanding of

regionalism’) of this chapter.

III. Challenging early regionalism

The various articulations of Australia’s regional landscape outlined above have

all been challenged by critics at one time or another. Indeed, while many scholars have

written about literary regionalism in Australia, most have done so only in passing and

usually to disparage it. It is only Bruce Bennett who has devoted a significant amount

of scholarship over an extended period of time to establishing the terms necessary for an

active critical debate on the subject of literary regionalism. However, the time and ink

spent dismantling the idea of literary regionalism far outstrips that spent building its

case. The most common criticisms of literary regionalism in Australia have been

separated into four categories: ‘Regionalism and parochialism/provincialism’,

‘Nationalism and the region’, ‘The region in the world’, and ‘The role of universities’.

These categories cover the themes of virtually all of the most often expressed criticisms

of literary regionalism, as well as being relevant to all the different ways in which the

borders of literary regions can be conceived.

For that matter, many of these criticisms do not respond to any specific

articulation of literary regionalism, but rather seem interested only in an outright

dismissal of the concept:

In the end, though, while it may have been the shaping factor,regionalism has become irrelevant: the achievement transcends it. Once

44

the location has been fully recognised and comprehended, ideally itbecomes the standpoint from which the writer looks out.75

Davidson does not appear to be responding to any particular formulation of literary

regionalism discussed in Part II of this chapter. Instead, it would seem he has thrown up

some sort of mental block, refusing to even consider regionalism as a viable critical

framework for the analysis of literature and culture in Australia. Davidson, while

initially recognising regionalism as a potential ‘shaping factor’, then proceeds to

summarily discard it as ‘irrelevant’.

In spite of the lack of critics who consider the full spectrum of literary

regionalism articulated in Part II, it is nonetheless helpful to examine the available

criticisms, as these are integral to the formulation of a later and more sophisticated

understanding of literary regionalism. This survey begins with perhaps the most

common criticism of literary regionalism—that it is a justification of what are

essentially parochial or provincial interests.

A. Regionalism and parochialism/provincialism

For better or worse, the terms ‘parochialism’ and ‘provincialism’ are used almost

interchangeably by critics of literary regionalism in Australia. These two terms taken

together constitute one of the oldest criticisms of literary regionalism, as evidenced by

the dates attached to the following excerpts:

Many people (especially those interested in the arts) in the various partsof Australia do indeed fret about what they see as their ‘isolation’ andseek to console themselves by arguing that their communities aredeveloping special identities, local skills, and unique qualities. It isunderstandable but usually unfortunate because the road to that kind ofself-conscious cultivation of cultural difference leads nowhere .... Istrongly suspect that people in Western Australia (or for that matter inSouth Australia, Tasmania or Queensland) who are preoccupied with

75Jim Davidson, ‘Writing and the Regional Factor: Some Notes’, Westerly 23, no. 4 (Dec. 1978): 79.

45

defining notions of apartness are quite often also defending localparochialism, small-mindedness, limited vision, and amateurism.76

It is necessary to distinguish between the social and artistic purposes andaspirations of a community. Images of identity can serve the former butmight limit the latter. In the absence of linguistic and racial determinantsof regional differences the cultivation of local interests can produce thatparochialism Walter Murdoch attacked. Regionalism can becomeprovincialism by claiming immunity from large movements of ideas inthe outside world.77

The first of the above excerpts was delivered at the 1978 seminar organised by

Fremantle Arts Centre Press, while the second was published in 1980. Clearly, this

particular criticism attached itself to the conversation about literary regionalism in

Australia from its earliest days. It should also be clear that there is little variety in the

content of these two accusations. In fact, all such accusations basically boil down to a

single statement: ‘Literary regionalism is inward-looking when there is no cause for

introspection on this scale in Australia; this will surely result in small-mindedness.’

However, some critics actually attempt to define the terms of dismissal, which is

a slightly more useful enterprise:

I think we can separate out regional and provincial. As I use it,provincial means a posture of the mind, the imagination, towards aperceived centre, towards a metropolis. It is a formation in reaction tothe centre. I would use regional as a posture growing out of specialconditions surrounding or forming the imagination—geography,historical accident, distance, climate. Provincialism may be a false kindof regionalism, or a ‘low regionalism’.78

Moorhouse’s definition of ‘provincial’ draws upon the notion of a divide between the

centre and the periphery. As demonstrated in Part II, literary regionalism is often

conceived in similar terms. Moorhouse is careful to distinguish his definitions of

‘parochial’ and ‘regional’, but when a specific articulation of regionalism is taken up by

others as fodder for accusations of parochialism, this dichotomy is often present; in

other words, they do not bother to make the same distinction. After all, a divide

76Peter Ward, ‘What “Sense of Regionalism”?’, Westerly 23, no. 4 (Dec. 1978): 71–72.77Leonie J. Kramer, ‘Islands of Yesterday: The Growth of Literary Ideas’, Westerly 25, no. 2 (1980): 96.78Moorhouse, 62.

46

between the centre and the periphery reinforces the notion of regionalism as inward-

looking and small-minded, or, more precisely, as a reactionary trend—the periphery

reacting to the centre by looking inward and closing itself off to ‘large movements of

ideas in the outside world’.

A slightly different manifestation of this most common criticism is that regional

literature is stylistically provincial:

There is nothing as experimental here as the short fiction being written,chiefly in Sydney, by Frank Moorhouse, Michael Wilding, VickiViidikas, Peter Carey, Murray Bail and others. Although this mayindicate a conservative attitude to experimentation in Western Australia,it also indicates ... a healthy scepticism about prevailing fashions and aconcern that the virtues of realism should not be lost in the self-conscious game-playing that sometimes accompanies modernexperimentation in short fiction.79

Bennett summarises a common criticism of regional literature—namely, that it does not

engage with the literary fashions of the period, or is simply not experimental enough.

This is similar to Leonie J. Kramer’s warning that ‘regionalism can become

provincialism by claiming immunity from large movements of ideas in the outside

world’. If literary fashions are understood as ‘movements of ideas in the outside

world’, then the reluctance Bennett identifies marks regional writers as provincial. In

spite of this being a common criticism of literary regionalism, Bennett’s rebuttal will

not convince everyone; his rhetoric of ‘scepticism about prevailing fashions’ and

‘concern [for] the virtues of realism’ implies a conscious rejection by regional writers

without addressing the possibility that these writers are simply ignorant of ‘prevailing

fashions’.

However, dismissing literary regionalism as simply parochial appears to have

fallen out of favour in recent times, even as critics continue to dismiss it on other

grounds. It is important, nonetheless, to acknowledge this particular criticism of literary

79Bruce Bennett, ed., New Country: A Selection of Western Australian Short Stories (Fremantle:

Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1976), xi.

47

regionalism, if only because of the frequency with which it was deployed in early

conversations about regionalism and regional literature.

B. Nationalism and the region

Another frequently employed criticism of literary regionalism is that Australia

lacks the regional diversity necessary to justify such a critical framework. When this

particular criticism was first articulated (as early as the 1978 seminar organised by

Fremantle Arts Centre Press), it instigated a debate about the relative merits of

nationalism and regionalism and whether or not Australia is truly homogenous. Or, to

employ terms used elsewhere in this thesis, whether or not it is possible to draw borders

in order to distinguish regions within Australia. The relevant question is, of course,

whether Australia’s physical environment is most productively understood as a whole or

in smaller parts, and how using this understanding of the physical environment as a

critical framework bears upon the study of literature. This resonates with the

aforementioned definition of the region as a divide between the centre and the

periphery, because it is ultimately concerned with determining the centrality and, thus,

the dominance of the concept of either the region or the nation in Australian culture.

Of course, this particular criticism relies on the assumption that literary

regionalism is inextricably linked to the distinctive creative output of the region. It is

important to note these sorts of assumptions and oversights on the part of critics of

literary regionalism in Australia when and wherever they occur. It is particularly

important, however, to note them in relation to nationalism, since this is an especially

notorious subject in Australian literary discourse. Like the bush myth, nationalism is

part of a chorus of literary references commonly sung by Australian scholars. It is also

used often and to great effect as the basis for criticism of regionalism in this country.

By calling attention to the reliance of the nationalist critique on the assumption of a

48

distinctive creative output, this reveals flaws in the criticism—flaws which will

eventually lead to the dismissal of nationalism and regionalism as a valuable dichotomy.

The following excerpt, quoted in part in the Introduction to this thesis, provides

an overview of the perceived challenge regionalism presents to the cause of nationalism:

Regionalism ... means the advocacy and advancement of the interests,functions, and competence of parts of a nation-state as against thosesame aspects of the whole state. It is in certain respects a healthycondition. It can contribute to the well-being of a people and their state.On the other hand it may be harmful if it weakens a sovereign state whenthe best interests of all can be better served by the larger entity.80

Regionalism in Australia has been perceived as a challenge to the long-standing ideal of

nationalism, because it is believed ‘it may be harmful if it weakens a sovereign state’.

The importance of the ‘national construct’ in Australian culture has elsewhere been

comprehensively demonstrated, and from this it is possible to understand how literary

regionalism falls by the side. Gillian Whitlock earlier observed (in an excerpt quoted in

the Introduction to this thesis), however, that the nation can be conceived in alternative

ways, and in fact Canada has conceived of itself in a fashion that is exactly opposite to

Australia—by building itself up from the region to the nation.81

Yet, Whitlock is apparently not prepared to say that Australia could re-conceive

of itself in this manner—as a nation composed of regions. She, like so many other

Australian scholars, believes the power of the national in Australia is too great for the

regional to gain anything but the most precarious foothold in the public imagination.

However, there are those few who believe it is possible:

Writing which is strongly regional in orientation ... shows signs of anattempt to extend and modify, if not abandon, the national inventory. ...The inventory of regional epitomes ... is functioning not merely as a listof imputed Queensland characteristics, but as a source of rhetoricalfigures with which to explore and articulate a range of moral andpsychological themes, not entirely displacing the master-inventory of

80Preston, 3.81Whitlock, ‘Queensland’, 88.

49

Australian epitomes in this function, but operating as an importantsupplement to it.82

While Patrick Buckridge implies in this excerpt that he believes regionalism can make

some inroads into the public imagination, he notably refers to nationalism as the

‘master-inventory of Australian epitomes’.

In another example of this sort of qualified support of literary regionalism, Bruce

Grant turns his attention to Western Australia. Specifically, he is interested in the way

in which the state can be understood as a ‘microcosm’ of the nation:

It is the Australian dilemma in a microcosm. A small, conservativepopulation huddles in the south-west corner, a capital looks abroad fordefence and development, and the pioneering frontier life of the state’snorthern half is as remote from what the people of Perth, its suburbs andnearby towns regards as civilization as it is from the thoughts of thepeople of Melbourne and Sydney.83

In this excerpt, Grant proposes that the state of Western Australia is a ‘microcosm’ of

the nation, and yet he stops just short of proposing it as an alternative way in which to

conceive of Australia’s physical environment. In other words, it is an interesting idea

but not something upon which to act. Even in the case of scholars who are willing to

consider alternative ways in which to conceive of Australia, it seems there are very few

calling for the overthrow of nationalism from its position of prominence.

Nonetheless, there exists a perception that Australian scholars writing about

literary regionalism are interested in exactly this sort of revolutionary behaviour:

In Australia it has not been uncommon to find commentators payingmore attention to what literature should be, than to what it actually is. Itis not just that creative writers and critics take a different approach totheir tasks; it is that critics not infrequently look for something inliterature which reflects their own experience or accords with theirsympathies; while writers search their subjects for the unexpected truthsthey might reveal. So any trend one might detect towards regionalism

82Patrick Buckridge, ‘Nationality and Australian Literature’, in Australian Studies: A Survey, ed. James

Walter (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1989), 153.83Bruce Grant, The Australian Dilemma: A New Kind of Western Society (Rushcutters Bay: Macdonald

Futura Australia, 1983), 126.

50

and away from nationalism in literary values, is likely to be encouragedby commentators, rather than insisted upon by writers.84

The ludicrousness of this statement should be immediately evident, as this thesis clearly

demonstrates that there are remarkably few scholars, or ‘commentators’, advocating

literary regionalism in Australia. Certainly, scholars who would supplant nationalism

with regionalism have been shown to be a rare breed.

In fact, some scholars maintain that, in Australia, writers have done more to

support the cause of literary regionalism than has ever been done by ‘commentators’:

Canadian literary critics do not have such a distaste for regionalliterature. In discussing this difference, Gillian Whitlock identifies thesuccessful construction of an Australian identity which helped to cut thecultural umbilical cord to Europe from the 1890s. This successfuldeployment of the bush myth, as Russel Ward describes it, has producedin Australia a focus on the national literary tradition to the exclusion ofregional variations in that tradition. This is, as Whitlock and SusanMcKernan note, a characteristic of Australian literary criticism, notAustralian writing. It is not that we do not have literary texts that arerichly textured by specific localities; it is that the attention of criticsfocuses on the national or universal characteristics of these texts.85

Chilla Bulbeck’s assertion directly contradicts Kramer’s earlier comment. In fact,

Kramer herself (perhaps inadvertently) provides further ammunition for the opinion that

it is Australian writers, rather than ‘commentators’ as maintained above, who are most

interested in literary regionalism:

Henry Lawson and Joseph Furphy seemed, to the architects of literarynationalism, to be writers who clearly met its aspirations. Yet both areintensely regional writers. Neither could claim to speak for the nation asa whole. ... If they seem to be representatively Australian, it is becausethe local origins of their work have been transcended by their capacityfor generalising experience; or for suggesting that the life they know islarger than itself. We are asked to accept the part for the whole.86

This excerpt reveals the ability of nationalism to usurp even the most obvious symbols

of literary regionalism. With such vast powers and influence, it is no wonder Australian

scholars have been hesitant to propose regionalism as an alternative to nationalism and a

84Kramer, 95.85Bulbeck, 73–74.86Kramer, 90.

51

new way of conceiving of Australia’s physical environment. Long before literary

regionalism appeared in the scholarly record, however, writers most likely began an

informal dialogue on the subject in forums such as the state-based Writers’ Centres and

local branches of the Fellowship of Australian Writers (FAW).

Clearly, the subject of nationalism holds great sway in Australian culture.

Scholars interested in literary regionalism in Australia have not presented any explicit

and comprehensive critique of its influence, but that does not mean it has gone

uncriticised:

For those who fought so very hard for the establishment of subjects inAustralian literature—the existence of which we now take for granted—arguing for the distinctiveness of Australian literature was part of abroader strategy of cultural assertion which was appropriate to itstime. ... My suggestion is that the isolationism seen as necessary to thefoundation of the discipline has been perpetuated long beyond the timeof its usefulness, a residual assumption that subtly shapes some of ourways of thinking and ‘doing’ Australian literature into the 1990s.87

Leigh Dale is, of course, alluding to the use of distinctive creative output as a necessary

justification for the drawing of borders. In this case, ‘the distinctiveness of Australian

literature’ is used to justify national borders, which are in turn used to justify ‘the

establishment of subjects in Australian literature’. Dale’s point is, however, that this

particular logic ‘has been perpetuated long beyond the time of its usefulness’. She goes

on to say that this

is the real reason why Australian literary criticism seems somewhatisolated: because the basic premises of arguments for our existence,appropriate to the circumstances when they were first introduced (asingle and clear hegemony) no longer make sense in the climate oftheoretical pluralism, the interest in interdisciplinarity, and the volatileand often productive relationships between literary and cultural studies.88

While Dale does not identify regionalism as an alternative to the nationalist model, it

seems a likely candidate, as it would most certainly ‘make sense in the climate of

theoretical pluralism’. After all, literary regionalism is premised upon a breakdown of

87Leigh Dale, ‘New Directions: Introduction’, Australian Literary Studies 19, no. 2 (Oct. 1999): 135.88Ibid.

52

the monolithic belief in ‘the nation’ into a more varied and even amorphous formulation

of ‘the region’. Also, though this idea has not yet been explored in any depth, later

articulations of literary regionalism engage with ‘the interest in interdisciplinarity’ and

the ‘often productive relationships between literary and cultural studies’.

C. The region in the world

The last two excerpts in the above section of this thesis come from an article

written by Leigh Dale, which was published in a 1999 edition of Australian Literary

Studies. However, the sort of critique of nationalism contained in these excerpts was

first heard in the late 1980s (though it did not become common until the 1990s). In the

former decade, nationalism presented a barrier to the scholarly uptake of literary

regionalism, as was detailed in ‘Nationalism and the region’. These two ways of

apprehending Australia’s physical environment—nationalism and regionalism—and

using it as a critical framework to enhance the appreciation of Australian literature did

not often come into direct conflict; nonetheless, nationalism and regionalism served as

implicit critiques of one another.

In the 1990s, however, critiques of nationalism (like Dale’s) resulted in

internationalism, universalism or globalism supplanting nationalism as the most

significant challenge to literary regionalism in Australia. These terms, like

‘parochialism’ and ‘provincialism’, are used almost interchangeably by critics. (For the

purposes of this thesis and the sake of simplicity, however, ‘internationalism’ will

hereafter be used unless the situation requires otherwise.) Furthermore, they are like

nationalism in that they do not often explicitly engage with the terms of literary

regionalism. Instead, they serve as a challenge to it by virtue of their replacement of

nationalism as arguably the most influential perspective or critical framework applied to

Australia’s physical environment by the literary and scholarly communities.

53

Perhaps the only published source that openly examines the interactions of

internationalism and regionalism in Australian literature was written by Bennett in the

late 1990s:

The shift in one generation from local to global has been astounding. Inthe culture of literary criticism and theory, this shift has been signified bya move from an interest in physical ‘place’ or ‘setting’ to notions of a‘site’, where ideologies clash and compete, to the most recently emergingconcept of a cyberspace ‘syte’, where a simultaneous interactive theatreof gossip, opinion and compared impression of what is ‘new’ occurs.89

The interest in ‘physical “place” or “setting”’ that Bennett refers to is, of course, the

interest in regionalism, while the interest in a ‘site’ is more typical of internationalism.

It would seem that ‘the shift in one generation from local to global’ has been more than

‘astounding’; it has also largely escaped the notice of the Australian scholarly

community. This fact is perhaps more indicative of just how far literary regionalism has

slipped from the minds of Australian scholars, than it is of the importance of

internationalism as a category for critical interrogation in the early 21st century.

Internationalism did not, of course, suddenly appear as a fully formed concept in

the 1990s, thus displacing the dominant nationalist critique of literary regionalism.

Rather, internationalism has always been present in one form or another in the

conversation about literary regionalism in Australia. At the unofficial inception of this

conversation in 1978, for example, there were very few instances of scholars actually

criticising literary regionalism on this basis, but speakers nonetheless made preemptive

responses to the hypothetical charges laid by internationalism. These early criticisms of

internationalism were characterised by a glib dismissal of the subject, especially as a

challenge to the values of literary regionalism:

‘Internationalism’ is generally the reflection of a dominant culture group—which, as with the art market, is constantly on the lookout for novelty.The provincial ‘internationalist’ may well find himself rejected in favourof some authentic regionalist—Mark Strand’s enthusiasm for the work of

89Bruce Bennett, ‘Home and Away: Reconciling the Local and the Global’, Salt 11 (1999): 241.

54

Les Murray, while remarking that ‘Robert Adamson would not last fiveand a half minutes in New York’ is case in point.90

Clearly, this statement does not represent careful consideration of internationalism. Part

of the reason Shapcott and his contemporary, like-minded critical brethren did not

produce any sound criticism of internationalism was that these ideas lacked a critical

structure to criticise. However, perceptions of internationalism amongst the Australian

scholarly community would soon change.

Of course, as was stated earlier, it is rare that Australian scholars invoke the

terms ‘internationalism’ and ‘regionalism’ in the same breath. After all, literary

regionalism effectively disappeared from the scholarly discourse at the end of the

1980s, just as internationalism was coming to the fore. Whether internationalism is

responsible for the decline in the currency of literary regionalism is largely a matter of

speculation, but in recent times it has certainly presented itself as an influential and

penetrating criticism of the popular 1980s critical framework. It is more common,

however, for scholars to compare examples of Australian regionalism with examples

from other parts of the world. In this way, rather than more explicitly through the

critical framework of internationalism, they examine ‘the region in the world’.

It has never been easy, however, to make a case for the relevance of regionalism

in Australia, and it is particularly difficult when making comparisons with other

countries:

There was no real comparison to be made between regionalism in India,with its strong historical and linguistic basis, and geographical orpolitical regionalism in Australia.91

If by ‘regionalism’ we mean that we can cut this country up intodivisions as historically, socially, politically and linguistically different asNorth America’s Eastern Seaboard, Deep South, Middle West and SouthFar West, then clearly we are deluding ourselves. We do not have suchdiversity in Australia.92

90Thomas Shapcott, ‘People Placed in Time, Seminar Postscript’, Westerly 23, no. 4 (Dec. 1978): 70.

91Kramer, 89.92Ward, 70.

55

Kramer and Ward clearly believe regionalism is irrelevant in Australia. Another scholar

writes, ‘Australian literature is in the process of developing regional characteristics

comparable to (say) the difference between American writing of the East and the West

Coast’, before conceding Kramer and Ward’s point: ‘We do not appear to have reached

a similarly clear distinction yet.’93 As for why a ‘similarly clear distinction’ has not yet

been reached, the lack of regional diversity is often mentioned, with particular reference

to the lack of diversity represented by regional dialects comparable to those found in the

United States:

A. G. Mitchell and his associates have identified the distinctive featuresof an Australian accent and shown that, with some nation-widedifferences in social class but very little other variation, it spans thecontinent. On the lexical side, though regional differences are greater,the position is not dissimilar.94

Of course, this just means other features are saddled with a greater responsibility for

defining regional borders.

W. H. New and Bennett suggest some possible features:

Here is possibly a point of most relevant overlap between WesternCanada and Western Australia: the function of the resistance touniformity.95

It is perhaps significant that both [Willa] Cather and [Peter] Cowan are‘Western’ writers on their respective continents, establishing an aestheticwhich they both have felt appropriate to the vast, largely unpeopledspaces they inhabited.96

W. H. New and Bennett have both identified examples of overlap between literary

regionalism in Australia and that of other countries with a more established regional

tradition—Canada and the United States, respectively. It is perhaps notable that the

cross-cultural examples that do the most to justify articulations of regionalism in

93Manfred Jurgensen, ed., Queensland: Words and All (Brisbane: Outrider/Phoenix Publications, 1993), x.94J. F. Burrows, ‘Fossicking about the Territory: Testing for Specimens of an Australian Narrative

Dialect’, in Reconnoitres: Essays in Australian Literature in Honour of G. A. Wilkes, ed. Margaret Harrisand Elizabeth Webby (Sydney: Oxford University Press and Sydney University Press, 1992), 36.95W. H. New, ‘Rearticulating West’, Westerly 35, no. 3 (1990): 15.

96Bruce Bennett, Australian Compass, 120.

56

Australia both come from so-called ‘first-world’, (predominantly) English-speaking,

Western nations, rather than from an Asian nation, for example, which it has already

been pointed out has a much stronger ‘historical and linguistic basis’ for regionalism.

Similar to the way in which the term ‘regionalism’ is used, the use of the term

‘internationalism’ in the context of this thesis does not represent a narrowly conceived

and well-defined critical framework or body of criticism. Instead, it represents a diverse

cross-section of ideas intended to position contemporary thought in relation to a certain

understanding of the physical environment. It stands as a counterpoint to nationalism,

which, as was demonstrated earlier, purports to be the most productive method of

apprehending Australia’s physical environment and employing it as a critical framework

for the study of literature. Of course, internationalism posits a different and necessarily

larger understanding of the physical environment. In order to establish the credibility of

this framework, internationalist criticisms of Australian literary regionalism do not all

hinge on comparisons to regionalism in other countries.

Some criticisms focus on the representation of minority or marginalised groups

in regional literature or within a conception of literary regionalism. In other words, they

accuse Australian literary regionalism of promoting only the majority culture’s interests

—that is, the interests of the white, Anglo-Celtic, male. In doing so, they implicitly

criticise the nationalist agenda (in addition to more explicitly criticising regionalism)

and align themselves with internationalism. For example:

The presupposed commonality of regional interests isolates writers withbroader concerns and obstructs or denies those potentially fruitful literarycrossovers, such as might be expected to occur in bi- or multi-lingualcommunities.97

While Australia is not generally thought of as a ‘bi- or multi-lingual’ nation, there are

certainly ethnic groups residing in all of its states and territories for whom English is not

97Philip Mosley, ‘“Walloon Literature”: Some Questions of Regionalism in a Bi-lingual Culture’, in The

Literature of Region and Nation, ed. R. P. Draper (London: Macmillan, 1989), 236.

57

their first language. Indeed, English was not the first language of the original

inhabitants of this land. It is possible, however, to regard the above excerpt as speaking

by implication for all marginalised cultures and communities—even those for whom

English is their first and only language—as surely they, too, have ‘broader concerns’.

Many scholars contest this idea of ‘regional interests’ obstructing or denying the

voices of minority and marginalised community members:

The general concentration of critical attention upon local or regionalliteratures is part of the centrifugal process by which the myth of a GreatNational Canon has been deconstructed. Necessarily, the process hasdrawn appreciation to the cultural works of ethnic, linguistic or racialminorities—to the words of speakers of under-languages or -dialects, tothe ideas of groups out of cultural power.98

Clearly, Mark S. Madoff believes that the ‘concentration of critical attention upon local

or regional literatures’ can benefit not only the so-called ‘majority culture’, but also

‘groups out of cultural power’. It should be noted, however, that when he writes about

the ‘general concentration of critical attention upon local or regional literatures’, he is

referring to Canadian and not Australian literature. Nonetheless, there is nothing in this

statement that would imply it is applicable only to Canadian literature, and surely this is

not the case. If regional literature is not viewed as a monolithic entity, whereby specific

traits (for example, exclusive attention to the local, stylistically less experimental) are

said to embody the regional, then it can be said that literary regionalism encourages

diversity rather than limits it.

D. The role of universities

As was previously noted, Australian writers have been among the most energetic

advocates of the various formulations of regionalism and regional literature. Australian

scholars willing to defend literary regionalism, on the other hand, are remarkably thin

98Mark S. Madoff, ‘The British Columbian History of Place’, in The Literature of Region and Nation, ed.

R. P. Draper (London: Macmillan, 1989), 220.

58

on the ground. Having already presented many scholarly criticisms of literary

regionalism in the previous sections of Part III (‘Challenging early regionalism’), this

section looks at what advocates of literary regionalism have to say about the scholarly

community more generally. This may seem like a departure from the stated purpose of

Part III, which is to present criticisms of early regionalism, and yet putting these

challenges into perspective undoubtedly assists in this aim. By giving advocates of

literary regionalism the right of reply, it becomes possible to understand how a shared

place of origin (in other words, the university) might have resulted in commonalities

between scholars’ explicit but otherwise various criticisms, as well as (and perhaps

more importantly) how it might have resulted in a generalised disinterest in the subject

amongst the scholarly community.

Bennett, as the single most vocal scholarly advocate of literary regionalism in

Australia, has some heated words on the subject:

In neglecting to give adequate attention to Australians’ understanding ofthe places, regions and communities they have inhabited, Australianuniversities have failed in an important aspect of their role as leaders ofsignificant thought. More concerned, in their humanities faculties, asleast, with a narrowly based criticism than with creativity, they havereinforced the tendencies of a colonised culture.99

Bennett’s criticism of not just a few vocal, anti-regionalist scholars, but rather the

entirety of the Australian university system, rings loudly in the empty auditorium

reserved for discussions on this subject. Undeterred, he continues:

It is clear that the wish of many academics in the humanities atAustralian universities has been to remain disengaged from localconditions and local cultural expression. More common have beenjudgementalism and a tendency to ridicule local achievements.Supporting their outlook has been a universalist view of knowledge,which remains unimpressed with relativised notions of culture-specificknowledge or beliefs.100

99Bruce Bennett, Australian Compass, 12.

100Ibid., 13.

59

According to Bennett, Australian universities have ‘reinforced the tendencies of a

colonised culture’ and ‘ridiculed local achievements’, while promoting ‘a universalist

view of knowledge’ the implications of which were charted in the previous section

(‘The region in the world’) of this chapter. He blames the universities, rather than

individuals within the system, for fostering a culture that is antithetical to the ideals of

literary regionalism.

In another article, Bennett criticises not only the Australian university system

but also the theories, such as ‘structuralism and deconstructionism’, that are so often

embraced by its humanities faculties:

One of the disappointing shortcomings of contemporary criticalmovements, including most versions of structuralism anddeconstructionism, is their neglect of place as a serious considerationeither within writers’ work or as a factor in what, and how, they write.This general lack of interest in topography, geography, climate, thespatial relations of town to cities and seas, the composition ofpopulations and their movements seems to derive from a commonacademic misconception that ideas float free of all these stimuli andconstraints. Common experience, and writers’ own accounts suggestotherwise. It will be obvious that I don’t accept the fashionable view thatthe author, outside his or her work, should be dead to the critic. Asstudents of literature I believe we should be prepared to look moreclosely at writers’ statements about place, (as about other aspects of theirwork), both as features within literary works and as factors in theirgenesis.101

Bennett appears to attribute the various criticisms of literary regionalism heard in Part

III (‘Challenging early regionalism’) of this chapter to the ‘disappointing shortcomings

of contemporary critical movements’, which have led to a ‘neglect of place as a serious

consideration’. Then, in a most damning conclusion, he observes that it was at

universities that these ‘movements’ first found fertile soil, took root and began to grow.

‘Contemporary critical movements’ and their implications for the study of literary

regionalism are further discussed in Chapter 3 in a section titled ‘Literary theory’.

101Bruce Bennett, Place, Region and Community, 2–3.

60

IV. The importance of the reader to a new understanding of regionalism

The conversation about literary regionalism in Australia died down in the early

1990s, but a few scholars and writers had previously hinted at a (largely unrealised)

future direction for the study of this subject. Perhaps in response to the criticisms

sustained by earlier formulations, the collective intellectual weight of these individuals

seemed to gravitate towards a new aspect of literary regionalism. Once again, this was

not an organised critical or scholarly movement, but rather an unspoken consensus that

appears to have developed in response to larger changes in the intellectual culture. For

the first time since literary regionalism in Australia was unofficially launched at the

1978 seminar as a subject for debate, there was a suggestion that the physical

environment was not necessarily the most important aspect of regionalism. Instead, this

new formulation of literary regionalism stressed the importance of the reader.

Some scholars were already challenging the idea of the physical region as a

source of identity in the mid-1980s, looking instead to metaphysical manifestations of

the region:

Efforts to ascribe fundamental regional differences to environmentalfactors, partly asserted on the ground that culture is based on the personalexperiences of writers, artists, and others, are not completely satisfyingbecause there is a multiplicity of local variation.

As a result, one suggestion that emerged during the debate wasthat regionalism in Canada, for instance, in the West and in theMaritimes, is based on a mythicisation about common interests, ratherthan on reality.102

The possibility of literary regionalism deriving its imaginative powers from the

metaphysical—or, as Richard Preston puts it, from ‘a mythicisation about common

interests’—rather than the physical, upsets the balance of ideas discussed up to this

point. In particular, it brings into question the emphasis placed on the role of the

physical environment as arguably the dominant concern of Australian literary

regionalism in the late 1970s and ‘80s. It is notable, however, that a majority of the

102Preston, 5.

61

conversations along these lines that have reached Australia were born and bred

overseas, usually in that hotbed of literary regionalism, Canada.

Of the few home-grown examples of this interest in the metaphysical

manifestations of literary regionalism, most of them were articulated by Bennett (who,

not coincidentally, has ties to Canada and has written articles comparing Australian and

Canadian literary regionalism):

Let me now raise some of the problems involved in analysing thequestion of literary regionalism. ... First among the problems is atemptation to swallow the physical geographer’s notion of region and tolook for unique characteristics. The term allows more flexibility thanthat. For literary and cultural purposes region may be an area, space orplace of more or less definite extent or character and, more figuratively, astate or condition of the mind, having a certain character or subject tocertain influences.103

Bennett clearly understands that the most common perception of regionalism in

Australia is the ‘geographer’s notion of regionalism’ (in other words, the physical

environment) and is looking to expand upon this perception. However, he provides no

explanation of how exactly the region may be understood ‘more figuratively [as] a state

or condition of the mind’. It is not that Bennett’s articulation of literary regionalism is

necessarily wrong, but that it has not yet been fully conceived.

Bennett has attempted to justify literary regionalism in terms of the metaphysical

on several occasions, the earliest of which were interesting and yet still insufficient. In

this excerpt, Bennett alludes to a book, Articulating West, by the Canadian literary

scholar W. H. New:

The attractive flexibility of New’s procedures is also apparent in hisinclusion of contemporary literature, which others might exclude on thegrounds that it is insufficiently place-oriented. New comments on amovement in the second half of the 20th century away from an ‘artisticlanguage out of the real landscapes among which writers moved’ to ‘thelandscape that is language itself’. In this process, the geographicalfrontier was transformed from a physical to a metaphysical space. Whileit is important that traditional definitions of a regional literature should

103Bruce Bennett, Place, Region and Community, 13.

62

be extended to accommodate such perceptions, certain questions mightalso be asked of the modernisation process. For example, have westernwriters been more conservative in matters of literary experiment thantheir eastern equivalents (as appears the case in Australia but not inCanada)? How do these different concepts of place relate to highereducation, travel, mass communications and the increasing urbanisationof writers?104

Bennett is correct in thinking that the ‘traditional definitions of regional literature

should be extended to accommodate [new] perceptions’, and yet the attitude towards

‘literary experiment’ of western versus eastern writers would seem to have little to do

with the move from a physical to a metaphysical articulation of regionalism.

Of course, it has already been noted that Australian scholars, including Bennett,

were on average not adequately equipped in the 1980s to answer questions about how

and why literary regionalism could be reconceived as something that transcends the

physical, where it had resided for so many years in both scholarly debate and the

popular imagination. Yet, Bennett has explicitly connected literary regionalism and the

role of the reader:

It is possible to make literary judgements about the value of certain kindsof writing about place; with the proviso that value should be related tofunction. Although local communities would place different valuationsupon certain work according to criteria such as its relevance to theirconcerns, its exactness of detail or the frequency with which it namesrecognisable land-marks, the literary critic may also make appropriateinterpretations of the work or works and evaluate technique in relation totheme. Discrepancies will occur: for instance, readers in a country townmay give a special accolade to ‘local colour’ while the university literarycritical community may give higher value to linguistic complexity andoverall coherence of the work. Each of these institutionalised responsescan learn from the other and thereby learn more about the function andvalue of literature. Reader-response theory encourages this kind ofanalysis.105

This excerpt from a 1985 publication reveals Bennett’s early interest in the relationship

between the reader and ‘certain kinds of writing about place’. It does not, however,

104Bruce Bennett, ‘Concepts’, 78.105Bruce Bennett, Place, Region and Community, 32.

63

explicitly and summarily prioritise the reader ahead of the physical environment in a

conception of literary regionalism, though it hints at this possibility.

It was only a few more years before Australian scholars were regularly invoking

the role of the reader. As usual, Bennett provides the most succinct overview of this

trend:

Now, at the beginning of the 1990s, I believe that readers should bebrought more firmly into this equation. For not only has reader-powerexpressed itself in an increasingly commercialised marketplace, but it hasalso made its mark theoretically in projections of readers as makers ofmeaning and even as rewriters of texts. In this process, the role projectedfor writers has, regrettably been diminished.106

While I disagree with Bennett’s last statement about the diminishing role of the writer

(for reasons that will be explained in Chapter 3), I otherwise agree wholeheartedly with

his sentiments. Of course, these sentiments are a response to recent changes of

emphasis in literary theory in Australia—changes that included ‘projections of readers

as makers of meaning’. This excerpt also recognises the role of the ‘increasingly

commercialised marketplace’ (by which Bennett presumably means developments in

book publishing, distribution, rights sales, and so forth) as it is shaped by ‘reader-

power’. In Bennett’s invocation of both contemporary critical theory and the

marketplace, for the first time, an advocate of literary regionalism in Australia has

presented the necessary justifications for a conception of regionalism that transcends the

physical. Bennett’s acknowledgement of the importance of the reader represents the

potential for significant advances in thinking on the subjects of regionalism and regional

literature. Yet, the above excerpt is from an article about Australian literary journals,

not literary regionalism. Neither Bennett nor any other Australian scholar has explicitly

made this connection between literary regionalism and the role of the reader with the

106Bruce Bennett, Australian Compass, 213.

64

full benefit of the mature understanding of reader-response theory that developed in

Australia in the 1990s.

Nonetheless, it must be acknowledged how far Bennett’s thinking on this issue

has come since literary regionalism in Australia first addressed the role of the reader:

This is also the ‘flattery of realism’—the pleasure of being written about,which can be a relationship developed between reader and writer on aregional basis which has nothing to do with literary values as weunderstand them.107

This excerpt comes from the 1978 seminar organised by Fremantle Arts Centre Press,

and in it Moorhouse summarily dismisses the idea of a relationship between the regional

writer and the regional reader as having ‘nothing to do with literary values’.

Yet, similar to Bennett’s invocation of ‘reader-power’ as a significant force in

‘an increasingly commercialised marketplace’, other Australian scholars have asserted

that the real influence of the reader can be found in her relationship with the publishing

industry, both as someone who can influence this industry and is influenced by it:

The remarks above serve to demonstrate how simplifying it would be toattempt to understand the literature of the period just in terms of so manyindividual texts or individual authors. What was published and how itwas read depended first on the sheer availability of papers like theBulletin; the forms that writing would be liable to take, and the subject-matter it would consider, would then be influenced by the styles of theparticular paper or magazine and by the kinds of audience it sought toaddress.108

While this excerpt addresses literary production in the late 19th and early 20th centuries

in Australia, it is safe to generalise the authors’ assertions to the present day and to the

effects the modern ‘paper or magazine’ (and to this I would add ‘publishing house’)

might have on the way in which a text is conceived, written, received, and read. For

example, with limited avenues for publication, a writer might be ‘influenced by the

107Moorhouse, 66.108David Carter and Gillian Whitlock, ‘Institutions of Australian Literature’, in Australian Studies: A

Survey, ed. James Walter (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1989), 119.

65

styles of the particular paper or magazine’ or publishing house, and write a different text

than she might otherwise have written. David Carter and Gillian Whitlock continue:

A study of literature which concentrates merely on individual texts andindividual authors will over-simplify the literature’s social context andeffects; its relation to other, political, aesthetic and intellectual,discourses; and the degree to which its very textual details aredetermined by the options and constraints offered by available forms ofpublication and dissemination.109

This excerpt not only addresses some of the theoretical concerns alluded to in this

section of the thesis, but it also hints at the need for publishing opportunities and the

possible effects on regional literature (and on readers of this literature) if such

opportunities are lacking or absent. The ‘study of literature which concentrates merely

on individual texts and individual authors’, which Carter and Whitlock warn ‘will over-

simplify the literature’s social context and effects’, is an allusion to the strong New

Critical and Leavisite traditions in Australian literary criticism. The authors would

likely prefer ‘projections of readers as makers of meaning and even as rewriters of

texts’, or a contextualist approach.

By engaging with the reader, literary regionalism in Australia establishes ‘its

relation to other ... discourses’. In particular, literary regionalism can re-establish its

relevance in the scholarly and popular imagination by engaging with the influence on

the reader of publishing and literary theory—not forgetting the reciprocal nature of this

interaction and the reader’s potential influence on these features. Advocates of literary

regionalism in Australia, by addressing the issue of publishing, acknowledge that

regions are at least in part defined by their access to publishing opportunities, which is

to say access to readers and the public imagination. By engaging with contemporary

literary theory, they further assert that the public imagination is of utmost importance to

literary study; therefore, they cannot be limited to a definition of literary regionalism

that is exclusively grounded in the physical environment. Clearly, without an

109Ibid., 134.

66

understanding of the reader as integral to future formulations of literary regionalism in

Australia, this idea would not have survived into the 1990s, much less the 21st century.

67

68

Chapter 2

Regional anthologies: A piece of the historical context of regionalism

I. An introduction to regional anthologies

On the subject of regional anthologies, Bruce Bennett writes in his chapter on

‘Literary Culture since Vietnam: A New Dynamic’ in The Oxford Literary History of

Australia:

Regional anthologies have been more numerous in contemporaryAustralia than any other kind. Frequently published in the state or regionwhich provides their focus, these anthologies have often been designedto raise awareness of the landscapes, people and ways of living of theregion. Western Australia has been the leading contributor to a regionalliterary consciousness, but all states and territories, and a number of sub-regions have been represented, especially those from outside the ‘goldentriangle’ of Sydney–Melbourne–Canberra.110

Regional anthologies are not addressed in earlier chapters of The Oxford Literary

History of Australia, because literary regionalism does not become an Australian

preoccupation until the 1970s—the very point in time (post-Vietnam War) at which

Bennett’s chapter begins its analysis. This evidence suggests that the priorities of

Australian literature prior to the 1970s did not involve identifying borders in order to

discriminate units smaller than the nation (in other words, regions) for the purposes of

critical consideration.

While Bennett refers to the frequent publication of regional anthologies in his

chapter on Australian fiction since 1965, Dennis Haskell tackles the topic in a

subsequent chapter of The Oxford Literary History of Australia on Australian poetry. In

this chapter, titled simply, ‘Poetry since 1965’, Haskell writes:

One feature of the contemporary period has been greater awareness ofpoetry outside the mainstream, principally because of region, gender orethnicity. Regional awareness, and a refusal to be swamped by the majorpopulations centres, have resulted in the publication of a number ofanthologies concerned with a particular area of this large country.111

110Bruce Bennett, ‘Literary Culture since Vietnam: A New Dynamic’, in The Oxford Literary History of

Australia, ed. Bruce Bennett and Jennifer Strauss (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1998), 258.111Dennis Haskell, ‘Poetry since 1965’, in The Oxford Literary History of Australia, ed. Bruce Bennett

69

Haskell goes on to claim that

the publication of these regional anthologies is an important phenomenonof the period, allowing some new voices to emerge, providing a fullerdepiction of Australian poetry than that of the Sydney–Melbourne basedanthologies, and reminding us that in the age of the global village peopleoften gain a sense of identity from communities (plural) smaller than thatof the nation.112

It seems Haskell believes globalisation is at least partly responsible for the renewed (or

simply new?) focus on the region in Australia. In other words, he believes globalisation

has given rise to an equal and opposite reaction—the sometimes parochial desire to

recapture a sense of community, place and region.

Other scholars have different theories about the origins of this interest in literary

regionalism in Australia. For example, David Headon writes in the introduction to an

anthology of literature from the Northern Territory, North of the Ten Commandments: A

Collection of Northern Territory Literature:

The Literature Board of the Australia Council, since its inception duringthe Whitlam Labor Government years (1972–75), has played a majorrole in the encouragement of cultural diversification. One important by-product has been the renewed interest in ‘regional’ literature.113

In Headon’s opinion, it was the establishment of the Literature Board of the Australia

Council that provided the necessary impetus to new interest in literary regionalism.

This explanation for the genesis of Australian interest in this topic will be further

explored in Chapter 3 of this thesis in a subsection titled ‘Government as an instrument

in the field of cultural production’.

Whatever the explanation for its genesis, beginning in the 1970s, regional

anthologies became much more than just an occasional or parochial endeavour, which is

what they had been prior to this date. Then, in the 1980s, there was a boom in the

and Jennifer Strauss (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1998), 272.112Ibid., 273.113David Headon, ed., North of the Ten Commandments: A Collection of Northern Territory Literature

(Sydney: Hodder & Stoughton, 1991), xix.

70

production of regional anthologies that mirrored the ascendancy (outlined in Chapter 1

of this thesis) of critical and popular interest in the subject of literary regionalism.

These anthologies actively promoted ideas associated with regionalism and regional

literature and participated in a larger critical debate on the subject. This new sensibility

is perhaps attributable to the rise of the academic in Australia around this time, as

universities and those employed by them gained esteem in the larger community, both

national and international. Also, the flourishing of Australian literature as a subject of

scholarly research and teaching—the first full course in Australian literature was

introduced by A. D. Hope in 1955 at Canberra University College (later Australian

National University), but such courses did not become common for many more years—

meant there was a larger audience for this type of publication.

II. States and territories other than Western Australia

This is a summary discussion of regional anthologies produced in Australian

states and territories other than Western Australia. It is meant to provide a context for

the more comprehensive discussion of regional anthologies in Western Australia that

follows, so it contains many generalisations. I make no claims to comprehensiveness in

the following sections; many regional anthologies receive such limited distribution

outside the state or region in which they originated, that it is nearly impossible to

account for their existence unless one resides in that state or region at the time of their

release and closely attends to such matters. Nonetheless, this is an accurate portrait of

regional variation in Australia based on a careful study of the available regional

anthologies. It also identifies the various trends associated with this form that

transcended regional variation and contributed in important ways to the evolution of

literary regionalism in Australia.

71

Ken Gelder and Paul Salzman observe one of the most important among these

trends:

In the period under discussion here [1970–88] ... writers have beenparticularly interested in defining themselves against other places, andidentifying with a place that they can, however critically, identify ashome. Regional anthologies have proliferated.114

Clearly, the rising tide of interest in literary regionalism in Australia in the late 1970s

and 1980s (as outlined in Chapter 1 of this thesis) was matched by a proliferation of

regional anthologies published during this same period. Throughout this period, and

even in more recent years, it is possible to trace in the introductions to these anthologies

the growth of an increasingly sophisticated understanding of the processes involved in

identifying, defining and producing a regional literature and sense of regional identity.

This evolution is especially apparent across the breadth of Western Australian

anthologies, considering the large numbers that have been published. However, it is

also evidenced in regional anthologies published in other Australian states and

territories, in particular those with a similarly vibrant regional culture and the means to

publish books, such as South Australia and Queensland.

A. Northern Territory

Regional anthologies concerned with the Northern Territory include the

aforementioned North of the Ten Commandments: A Collection of Northern Territory

Literature, which was published in 1991 and contains a wide variety of writings, from

poetry, short stories and novel excerpts, to diaries, letters and newspaper items. It also

includes jokes, yarns and Aboriginal song cycles. Another regional anthology

concerned with the Northern Territory, Extra-territorial: Stories and Poems from the

Northern Territory Literary Awards, was published in 1996.115 The occasional (in other

114Ken Gelder and Paul Salzman, The New Diversity: Australian Fiction 1970–88 (Melbourne: McPheeGribble, 1989), 87.115Derek Wright, ed., Extra-territorial: Stories and Poems from the Northern Territory Literary Awards

72

words, created for a special occasion) aspect of Extra-territorial makes it qualitatively

different from other regional anthologies, as it implicitly redirects attention from the

region to the occasion.

This difference can best be understood by examining the approaches taken by

the two editors as expressed in their introductions. In the introduction to North of the

Ten Commandments, for example, Headon maintains that

the literature of the Northern Territory consistently confronts the readerwith paradox and contradiction, idiosyncrasy and absurdity, as some ofthe writers cited in the preliminary epigraphs suggest. Indeed, any bookon the subject purporting to be representative and historically accurate isvirtually bound to use juxtaposition as its main principle of organisation:black/white, paradise/purgatory, Christian/coloniser, church/Dreaming,spirit/flesh, civiliser/savage, Wet/Dry, oasis/desert, north/south—tomention only the most prominent. Through a rationale built on binaryopposites, North of the Ten Commandments attempts to do justice to theextraordinary diversity and grandeur of the region, and its myriadscribes. One thing is certain: the Northern Territory supplies more ofMark Twain’s ‘incredibilities’ of Australian history than any other area inthe entire country.116

In this excerpt, Headon asserts a construct that establishes ‘Northern Territory literature’

as a definite category with definite rules, specifically the characteristics of ‘paradox and

contradiction’. Of course, common sense would indicate that not all literature written in

the Northern Territory embodies these qualities, and not all literature that embodies

these qualities is written in the Northern Territory, but to make such a strong assertion of

regional particularity and inclusiveness—‘all of Northern Territory literature fits these

characteristics’—is typical both of a certain type of regional anthology and of the study

of regional literatures, more generally. Headon’s assertion of superiority—‘The

Northern Territory supplies more of Mark Twain’s “incredibilities” of Australian history

than any other area in the entire country’, and, elsewhere, ‘Northern Territory writing is

the most exciting expression of regional literature in the country for an assortment of

(Darwin: NTU Press, 1996).116Headon, xvii–xviii.

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cultural, geographical, environmental and social reasons’117—is also typical of those

interested in literary regionalism and invested in a particular region.

In contrast, Wright’s introduction to Extra-territorial begins:

The present anthology contains a selection of winning, commended andshortlisted material from the 1994 and 1995 Northern Territory LiteraryAwards. These Awards consist of both local and national competitions,so the collection is not an anthology of Northern Territory writing and isnot intended as such. Since Territorian writers are often honoured in thenational as well as in the local competitions, however, they figureprominently in the volume and, appropriately, account for half of itscontents.118

Clearly, the emphasis of the anthology is on the competition, rather than any shared

characteristics in the works of writers from the Northern Territory. As the editor notes

near the end of his introduction, ‘if the Awards take the Territory to the nation, the

reciprocal process, by which the nation comes to the Territory, is equally important’.119

This is decidedly not the case in North of the Ten Commandments, where the emphasis

is on the region as an intrinsic and exclusionary whole. Nonetheless, Wright adds—the

impression is that he feels almost compelled to do so—that the judges of the contest

‘remarked on the strong sense of place’ and ‘the emphasis on experience peculiar to the

Northern Territory’ in the works by writers from the Northern Territory.120

It is worth noting that neither of the regional anthologies discussed here

questions the validity of equating the borders of the Northern Territory with the borders

of a literary region. Also, in spite of what the editors of these two anthologies claim is a

strong sense of place and regional identity, there does not exist an abundance of regional

anthologies originating in the Northern Territory—especially not during the period

identified above as a high water mark for the publication of such anthologies in other

Australian states and territories.121 The reasons for this are probably many and varied,

117Ibid., xix.118Derek Wright, 1.119Ibid.120Ibid.121Other anthologies of writing from the Northern Territory include: Marian Devitt, ed., True North:

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and any attempt to identify them at this point in the narrative would be largely

speculative.

B. Tasmania

Tasmania-based publishing house Twelvetrees Publishing Company published

Effects of Light: The Poetry of Tasmania, in 1985.122 Effects of Light adheres closely to

the model of North of the Ten Commandments, celebrating the region and its writers

rather than a special occasion. Also, Vivian Smith and Margaret Scott, the book’s

editors, make grand claims about the heritage and relative importance of Tasmanian

poetry: ‘Tasmania has a place in Australian literature quite out of proportion to its size

and population. More writers of interest have been born in the island than is generally

recognised.’123

Smith and Scott proceed to explicate the logic of their volume:

In this anthology we have attempted to represent the best work of poetsborn in Tasmania and of those from other parts of the world who havesettled at least temporarily in the island. We have also included anumber of poems which illustrate impressions that Tasmania and itssurrounding oceans and archipelagos have made upon poets who haveencountered these places only in brief visits or secondhand.124

In this instance, the editors of Effects of Light exceed the standard set by the Northern

Territory anthologies surveyed above—they explain the minimum requirements to be

considered for inclusion in their book, rather than taking for granted an understanding

of what it means to be a ‘Territorian’ or Tasmanian writer. This is an early attempt to

define what it takes to be included in a regional anthology.

Contemporary Writing from the Northern Territory (Darwin: CDU Press, 2004). Red on Red: ACollection of Contemporary Writing from the Northern Territory (Winnellie: Northern Territory Writers

Publishing Group, 2000). Marian Devitt, ed., Landmark (Darwin: Northern Territory Writers’ Centre andNTU Press, 1999). Bugs & Bliss: A Collection of Contemporary Northern Territory Writing (Winnellie:Northern Territory Writers Publishing Group, 1991).122Smith and Scott.123Ibid., i.124Ibid.

75

Aside from this example, Effects of Light adheres closely to the conventions

detailed above in regards to North of the Ten Commandments. These conventions,

which are typical of many regional anthologies, include a heightened sense of

importance and a belief in the distinctiveness of the region, both of which are

exemplified in the following excerpt:

The development of Tasmanian poetry can be seen as a kind ofsimplified replica, a sharper more highly-coloured version of mainlandcomplexity. The poetry of Tasmania, like that of Australia as a whole,begins with transportation ballads and includes examples of both themost nostalgic of convict songs and the most energetically rebellious.125

The comparison of Tasmanian poetry and the poetry of ‘Australia as a whole’—a

comparison that prompts the editors to reflect that the former is a ‘more highly-coloured

version’ of the latter—is a clear attempt by the editors of Effects of Light to imbue their

topic with a heightened sense of importance. Furthermore, the use of phrases such as

‘the most nostalgic’ and ‘the most energetically rebellious’ is evidence of an attempt to

establish the distinctiveness of the region. These phrases reveal the editors’ bias, since

it is surely impossible to prove levels of nostalgia and rebelliousness. Of course, in all

such statements the editors are trying to ‘sell’ their book.

Another hallmark of regional anthologies, which was found in North of the Ten

Commandments and can also be found here, is to define with great specificity and in a

limiting fashion the attributes of the regional writer:

Since the time of Louisa Anne Meredith at least, a poetry has emergedthat is specifically and characteristically Tasmanian. Its tone,customarily, is muted, pensive or intimate; its forms are often elegiac,meditative or lyrical; above all, its concern in many instances is with anouter world that is emblematic of an inner one, with the private colloquyand what Gwen Harwood has called ‘parables of fate’.126

The immense confidence with which the editors of Effects of Light make this

declaration belies an underlying uncertainty. Smith and Scott cannot possibly justify

125Ibid., ii.126Ibid., iii.

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this declaration in light of the great variety of texts contained within their selected

volume.

It is possible to understand the relatively limited output of regional anthologies

from the Northern Territory and Tasmania as a consequence of their lack of established

publishing houses.127 After all, as Bruce Bennett noted in his essay on Australian fiction

post-1965, regional anthologies are ‘frequently published in the state or region which

provides their focus’. In fact, Bennett understates the point: regional anthologies are

almost without exception published in ‘the state or region which provides their focus’.

That North of the Ten Commandments was published by Hodder & Stoughton in Sydney

is, perhaps, more indicative of the weakness of the Northern Territory’s publishing

industry than it is of any widespread success the volume might have been expected to

achieve.

Since the publication of Extra-territorial, Northern Territory University has

changed its name to Charles Darwin University; correspondingly, NTU Press has now

become CDU Press. While the name has changed, not much else has: neither CDU

Press, nor NTU Press before it, have ever been considered major Australian university

publishing houses. This list usually includes only University of Queensland Press,

University of New South Wales Press, Melbourne University Publishing, and University

of Western Australia Press. University publishing houses are subject to a unique set of

forces that will be more fully addressed in Chapter 4 in the section devoted to

University of Western Australia Press, but it is safe to say that writers from the Northern

Territory are not well served by local publishers.

Tasmanian book publishing is a similar story. Since the publication of Effects of

Light, Twelvetrees Publishing Company has ceased operation. It has been replaced by

127Other anthologies of writing from Tasmania include: Robyn Mathison and Lyn Reeves, eds., Moorilla

Mosaic: Contemporary Tasmanian Writing (Lauderdale: Bumble-bee Books, 2001). Carol Patterson andEdith Speers, eds., A Writer’s Tasmania (Dover: Esperance Press, 2000).

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numerous small presses—especially common are writer-owned presses, serving the

abundance of Tasmanian poets—but none with any far-reaching reputation (not to

mention distribution network). Few of these publishing houses enjoy a prestige

approaching even the limited amount once enjoyed by Twelvetrees. It is highly

questionable whether any of the publishing houses currently operating in Tasmania have

the necessary resources to assemble a regional anthology equal in quality to Effects of

Light. Also, considering their lack of prestige, it is unlikely they would be able to entice

a substantial number of Tasmanian writers, many of whom enjoy excellent literary

reputations in mainland Australia, to contribute to such a volume.

C. South Australia

In contrast to the relatively quiet literary cultures of the Northern Territory and

Tasmania, South Australia has been the site of numerous provocative literary

movements, most notably the Jindyworobaks and the Angry Penguins. Adelaide, in

particular, is considered by many to be a literary city, a reputation enhanced by its

longstanding Friendly Street poetry readings and the renowned biennial international

Adelaide Festival of Arts. South Australia is also home to the well-reputed Wakefield

Press, which has published three of the state’s most recent regional anthologies—of

poetry, fiction and essays. An earlier anthology, R. H. Morrison’s A Book of South

Australian Verse,128 was published in 1957 by Adelaide-based Mary Martin.129

A Book of South Australian Verse is unique as a regional anthology, because

Morrison possessed an understanding of regional literature that was unparalleled at the

time he was working. For example, he recognises that South Australian poetry exhibits

‘symptoms of insularity’ and ‘has not been entirely free from certain literary

128R. H. Morrison, ed., A Book of South Australian Verse (Adelaide: Mary Martin, 1957).

129Other anthologies of writing from South Australia include: Moya Costello and Barry Westburg, eds.,

Bringing the Water: New Writing from South Australia (Kent Town: South Australian Writers’ Centre,1993).

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indiscretions’, such as excessive pride in the local ‘indigenous stringybark, mulga,

waratah, and Sturt pea’.130 Furthermore, he is quick to note that while some critics ‘may

be able to discern all sorts of links in the work of those who have shared the background

of life in South Australia’, the ‘extent to which such things matter is a moot point’.131

Clearly, Morrison is not especially defensive of his stance or of his native state’s writers.

None of his rhetoric attempts to explain, however, why it is important to collect the

work of South Australian writers into a single volume; it is this exception that most

clearly marks the book as an early regional anthology. The most sophisticated of the

later anthologies will challenge such assumptions.

Twenty-nine years after the publication of Morrison’s anthology, South Australia

celebrated 150 years of statehood, thus inspiring the publication of a further two

regional anthologies. Both The Orange Tree: South Australian Poetry to the Present

Day132 and Unsettled Areas: Recent Short Fiction133 quietly note in their front matter that

they are ‘A South Australian Jubilee 150 publication’. However, no further mention is

made of this occasion, which means they need not be considered ‘occasional

publications’ in the manner of the Northern Territory’s Extra-territorial.

Instead, both books abide by many of the most basic precepts of the regional

anthology. To begin, the editors provide their justifications for the two books:

For a long time the discussion of Australian poetry focussed on theproblem of national identity: it worried about whether a poet should flashthe badge of Australianism or internationalism. Whilst a poetic creedmay keep a writer practising, the real poem is closer to home. It comesfrom where the poet lives, which may not be a place.134

A great deal of lively, imaginative and technically accomplished work isbeing written here by people with a wide variety of backgrounds andages. But little of it has so far been published because, as far as I can

130R. H. Morrison, 5.131Ibid.132Pearson and Churches.133Taylor, Unsettled Areas.134Pearson and Churches, xv.

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determine, this healthy and vigorous flowering of short fiction withinSouth Australia is a comparatively new phenomenon.135

The editors of both books also attempt to establish the superiority—or, at the very least,

the distinctiveness—of the texts they have anthologised. Pearson and Churches assert,

for example: ‘The growth of poetry in South Australia has reflected and often

anticipated the development of poetry within Australia.’136 Meanwhile, Taylor writes

that, though he could not identify a ‘peculiarly South Australian quality’,

certain preoccupations emerge clearly. One is childhood and the worldas seen through the eyes of a child, presented here in several cases withastonishing clarity. Another preoccupation is with age, and with theconfusions, the pathos and yet also the dignity of the very old.137

Taylor appears confused in his attempts to define a regional literature, perhaps because

he finds himself at cross-purposes. His statement about the lack of a ‘peculiarly South

Australian quality’ signals his desire to engage with and perhaps question the validity of

the burgeoning debate on this subject. Yet, he proceeds to present the anthologised

writers as sharing one or more distinctive traits, perhaps in response to pressures to

‘sell’ his book by emphasising how it is unique. Clearly, his statement about the

‘preoccupation’ of the anthologised writers with the themes of ‘childhood’ and ‘age’

could be made about almost any fiction written in any part of the world.

Published in 1995 by Wakefield Press, Southwords: Essays on South Australian

Literature examines many aspects of life and literature in South Australia and provides

an interesting perspective on the previously published regional anthologies.138 By the

mid-1990s, the conversation about literary regionalism in Australia had died down, but

Philip Butterss’s observations range across the origins and history of the movement, to

its contemporary significance:

135Taylor, Unsettled Areas, unnumbered.

136Pearson and Churches, xvi.137Taylor, Unsettled Areas, unnumbered.138Philip Butterss, ed., Southwords: Essays on South Australian Literature (Netley: Wakefield Press,

1995).

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The trend towards globalisation is itself, in part, responsible forcontinuing assertions of the importance of the regional and the local.Literary criticism has devoted increasing attention to the question ofregionalism in Australian literature over the past decade.139

It is now possible to say that the Sydney/bush opposition has been welland truly dismantled, but there remains a considerable focus on the eastcoast in the various ways that ‘Australian literature’ is constructed.140

Overlapping with this focus on regionalism is postmodernism’s interestin the local, as a counterpoint to the forces of globalisation.141

Southwords clearly exemplifies a more sophisticated notion of literary regionalism,

taking into account the problems associated with defining the region, as well as the

necessarily constructed nature of categories such as ‘Australian literature’ and ‘South

Australian literature’. This advanced perspective, seen here for the first time in this

survey of regional anthologies, can perhaps be attributed to the lateness of this

anthology’s arrival on the scene.

Butterss confirms this impression with his definition of ‘South Australian

literature’:

As with all essentialising, any attempt to find what is distinctive in SouthAustralia will necessarily ignore difference—ignore the variety inphysical characteristics from the South East to the West Coast, thediverse cultures and subcultures that thrive here, and the variationswithin those cultures and subcultures, not to mention class difference andgender difference. On a personal level, we all feel the distinctiveness ofplace—South Australia will have a particular set of associations,experiences, memories for each of us. But there are an infinite numberof possible South Australias.142

He elaborates on this point by providing a justification for the publication of an

anthology of South Australian writing:

Even if there are many South Australias, there is, to use BenedictAnderson’s phrase, an ‘imagined community’ of South Australians. Fora significant number of people who live in this state, being ‘South

139Ibid., ix.140Ibid., x.141Ibid.142Ibid., xi.

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Australian’—having horizontal bonds with other South Australians—isan important part of their personal and social identity.143

Graham Rowlands, editor of the regional anthology Dots Over Lines: Recent

Poetry in South Australia, makes a similar assertion:

Local editors want to edit, local poets want to submit to, local publisherswant to publish and local readers want to read state and regional poetryanthologies. (Most of them sell out.) Arbitrary borders and boundariesmake for state and regional presses. How fortunate for poets! Whyshould we have to be national figures or confined to the closet?144

It seems both Rowlands and Butterss believe regional anthologies are shaped by the

collective interests of editors, writers, publishers, and readers. Writers from a given

region do not need to share a certain quality or thematic interest for their work to be

regarded as regional literature or considered for inclusion in a regional anthology.

Rather, the implicated parties simply need to demonstrate an interest in seeing writers

from their region placed in proximity to one another and identified as a product of the

region. This idea is identical to many of those discussed in Part IV (‘The importance of

the reader to a new understanding of regionalism’) of Chapter 1.

Of course, a publishing house is one of the most essential parties in any such

scheme. Dots Over Lines was published by Adelaide University Union Press (AUUP)

in 1980. However, AUUP ceased operation within the year. A publishing house that has

survived (though it now publishes under a dual imprint with Wakefield Press, who also

handles all of its distribution) is the Friendly Street Poets publishing venture.

The monthly Friendly Street poetry readings, the Friendly Street Poets annual

anthology of poems read at the Friendly Street poetry readings, and the Friendly Street

Poets publishing venture, are all important institutions in the South Australian literary

scene. While many of the publishing efforts of Friendly Street Poets are intended to

sustain a regional literature (for example, the publication of works of individual South

143Ibid., xii.144Graham Rowlands, ed., Dots Over Lines: Recent Poetry in South Australia (Adelaide: Adelaide

University Union Press, 1980), 12–13.

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Australian poets), the Friendly Street poetry readings and the derivative Friendly Street

Poets annual anthology do not appear to fit this same description. The prefaces to the

latter rarely even mention South Australia, much less provide a justification for the

promotion of South Australian literature. The reason for this is that these collections, as

well as the readings from which they are derived, include poets from outside South

Australia—both national and international. In many ways, these are occasional

publications, celebrating the occasion of the poetry reading rather than the region.

To this category of occasional publications, it is useful to add the category of

‘specialised regional publications’. These are publications that deal with the region but

also have another and more specific focus, such as women’s writing or love poetry. In

the same way that the occasion can overwhelm the region in the aforementioned

occasional publications, so too can the more specific focus overwhelm the region in

specialised regional publications. I mention this because there have been several of this

type of publication in South Australia—one of which was published by the Friendly

Street Poets, while another was a one-off publishing venture by the Women’s Art

Movement.145

The impact a local publishing house can have on the publication of regional

literature—and, in particular, regional anthologies—is evident from the examples cited

above. In those states and territories where a well-reputed publishing house with

significant resources does not exist, such as the Northern Territory and Tasmania, there

is a correspondingly low output of regional anthologies. Of course, this raises the

question, ‘Is the output of regional literature, more generally, similarly affected?’ It has

previously been noted, for example, that a surprisingly large number of writers live in

Tasmania and that many of them are quite successful.

145Examples of specialised regional publications from South Australia include: Anne Brewster and Jeff

Guess, eds., The Inner Courtyard: A South Australian Anthology of Love Poetry (Kent Town: Friendly

Street Poets, 1990). Jenny Boult et al., eds., Pearls: Writing by South Australian Women (Adelaide:Women’s Art Movement, 1980).

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An essay in Southwords addresses this very matter:

The notion of Australian ‘regional’ literature is a problematic one. Untilrecently attention has focussed on ‘national’ traits, a concept (measuredespecially against the competing claims of universalism) that has beenremarkably productive of energetic and at times acrimonious debate.Nevertheless, some regional areas have emerged: Western Australia,assisted by a lively press at both the University of Western Australia andthe Fremantle Arts Centre Press, has been able to lay claims to seriousattention. Queensland, too, has established a clear regional voice, againthrough a strong University Press. What of South Australia? There wasa time when it was reasonably represented by publishers of somesignificance but that representation has sadly diminished over recentyears. None of the three universities possesses a press (although FlindersUniversity, through its Centre for Research in the New Literatures inEnglish has made a significant contribution, as has the Friendly Streetpoetry group) and commercial publishing for adult readers has beenreduced to one press only, Wakefield Press.146

Robert Sellick clearly believes the existence of a reputable local publishing house has a

positive effect on the production of a regional literature, in the sense that more of it is

published. In the case of Queensland (discussed below), where University of

Queensland Press (UQP) is the dominant publishing force in the state—and where a

large number of regional anthologies have been published by both this and other

Queensland-based publishing houses—it is possible to assert that the example of UQP

has inspired a wider and infectious sense of literary regionalism.

D. Queensland

The first published anthology of Queensland literature was A Book of

Queensland Verse, edited by J. J. Stable and A. E. M. Kirwood and published in 1924 to

coincide with the centenary of Queensland settlement.147 Thus, it has an ‘occasional’

dimension. The next two anthologies of Queensland literature also mark a special

occasion: The Queensland Centenary Anthology 148 and Never Kill a Dolphin and Other

146Robert Sellick, ‘The Jindyworobaks and Aboriginality’, in Southwords: Essays on South Australian

Literature, ed. Philip Butterss (Netley: Wakefield Press, 1995), 102.147J. J. Stable and A. E. M. Kirwood, eds., A Book of Queensland Verse (Brisbane: Queensland Book

Depot, 1924).148R. S. Byrnes and Val Vallis, eds., The Queensland Centenary Anthology (London: Longmans, 1959).

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Short Stories149 both appeared in 1959, the centenary of ‘responsible government’ in

Queensland. The editors of these three early regional anthologies abide by many of the

same rules as those of the later anthologies examined from the Northern Territory,

Tasmania and South Australia. In other words, they justify the existence of their

anthologies by alluding to the distinctive qualities of the region’s literature—what

Stable and Kirwood term the ‘Queensland note’.150 Patrick Buckridge and Belinda

McKay much later label this an ‘attempt to define an essence, an identity, a central

tradition or an historical destiny immanent in Queensland’s literature’.151 Often, this

involves an (implicit or explicit) valuing of the region’s literary output over that

produced in other regions, or even in Australia as a whole.

In fact, Buckridge asserts in his essay ‘Queensland Literature: The Making of an

Idea’, that Stable and Kirwood may very well have been the founders of this model (at

least where Queensland literature is concerned):

What I have tried to show in this paper is that the idea of ‘Queenslandliterature’ has a history. It is a relatively short history; subject tocorrection I think it begins no earlier than the 1920s, which makes itquite a lot younger than the idea of Australian literature. J. J. Stablecertainly believed he was the first to imagine the poetry of this State as aunitary and distinctive whole, and he was probably right.152

This excerpt testifies to both the relatively early appearance of the idea of ‘Queensland

literature’ in comparison to other Australian state or regional literatures, as well as

Stable and Kirwood’s rather doubtful assertion that the literary output of a state can be

imagined as a ‘unitary and distinctive whole’. The latter is an example of what

Buckridge calls ‘an inability ... to theorise “regionality” in literature adequately’.153

149Never Kill a Dolphin and Other Short Stories: Contemporary Queensland Writing (Brisbane: Fortitude

Press, 1959).150Stable and Kirwood, xviii.151Patrick Buckridge and Belinda McKay, eds., By the Book: A Literary History of Queensland (St. Lucia:University of Queensland Press, 2007), 7.152Patrick Buckridge, ‘Queensland Literature: The Making of an Idea’, Queensland Review 2, no. 1 (Apr.

1995), 40.153Ibid., 38.

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Only time and a lively conversation about literary regionalism in Australia will enable

this ability to be properly developed.154

Buckridge discusses the manner in which this occurs:

Literary regionalities, like literary nationalities, are invented—andreinvented—if and when they are needed, and in nearly every decadesince the 1920s (the ‘60s are an odd exception) someone has produced aversion of this particular regionality, in response to an interesting varietyof political and cultural ‘needs’. The moment may have arrived at whichQueensland needs yet another, and perhaps fuller, version of itself as aliterary region; if so, those earlier versions will form an important part ofthe context.155

Perhaps the curious drought of regional anthologies in the 1960s contributed to the

renewed interest taken in the subject in the late 1970s and ‘80s. Even if this is not the

case, Buckridge’s point about the invention of literary regionalities still stands:

understandings of regional literature—and of the role of a regional anthology—change

with the passing of time and the changing needs of writers and readers. In the ‘late

1970s and the 1980s, the heyday of Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s ascendancy as premier’,

for example, Buckridge and McKay identify a

vigorous academic debate ... between those who saw the ‘Queenslanddifference’ as a reality and those who regarded it as an invention ofconservative politicians and a compliant media, designed to concealQueensland’s essential continuity with the rest of Australia.156

It is impossible to ignore the similarities between the timeline Buckridge and McKay

identify and the one identified in this thesis as representative of a vibrant conversation

about literary regionalism in Australia. Clearly, during this period in Queensland,

regional anthologies would have been understood as contributing to the former debate.

The 1980s saw many regional anthologies published in Queensland that fit the

mould of their contemporaries in the Northern Territory, Tasmania and South

154Assisting in this aim were two early critical surveys of Queensland writing: Henry Arthur Kellow,

Queensland Poets (London: George G. Harrap, 1930). Cecil Hadgraft, Queensland and Its Writers: 100

Years, 100 authors (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1959).155Buckridge ‘Queensland Literature’, 40.156Buckridge and McKay, 2.

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Australia.157 However, there were also two anthologies published that offer new

insights: Sunshine Kaleidoscope158 and Beyond the Verandahs.159 Both books were

written, edited and published by writers’ groups—The Sunshine Writers’ Group and the

Ashgrove Writers, respectively. As a result, they do not fit within many of the

parameters for regional anthologies outlined above. Most notably, neither book engages

in even the most modest way with the notion of being an anthology of Queensland

literature (in spite of the former book’s subtitle, ‘A Collection of Short Stories by

Queensland Writers’) or regional literature, more generally. These anthologies are

concerned only with the writers in their writers’ group, rather than looking outside their

group to engage with the idea of literary regionalism or to apprehend their place in the

larger community.

In spite of their deficiencies as regional anthologies, I have included these two

books in this survey, because they demonstrate the implications of an active and healthy

regional literature. Books and writers’ groups such as these are inspired by the

examples around them, specifically other local writing and publishing efforts. It is no

coincidence that there are more examples of local writers’ groups in Queensland

publishing their own books than in any other state or territory in Australia. This is

related to the publication of large numbers of more traditional regional anthologies in

Queensland, as well as the prominence of University of Queensland Press, both of

which draw attention to the local literary culture that exists outside the traditional book

publishing centres of Australia. Also, it is possible Queensland’s demographics are a

157Other anthologies of writing from Queensland include: Nigel Krauth and Robyn Sheahan, eds.,

Paradise to Paranoia: New Queensland Writing (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1995).

Elizabeth Perkins and Robert Handicott, eds., North of Capricorn: An Anthology of Verse (Townsville:Foundation for Australian Literary Studies and James Cook University of North Queensland, 1988).Susan Johnson and Mary Roberts, eds., Latitudes: New Writing from the North (St. Lucia: University ofQueensland Press, 1986). Peter Putnis, ed., Downs Voices (Toowoomba: Darling Downs Institute Press,

1978).158

Sunshine Kaleidoscope: A Collection of Short Stories by Queensland Writers (Buderim: Penclaren

House, 1988).159

Beyond the Verandahs: A Book of Short Stories (Ashgrove: Ashgrove Writers, 1997).

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contributing factor; since the population is not clustered in the capital city (like other

Australian states and territories), but rather is more evenly dispersed across the state,

there is perhaps more emphasis on the need for local literary production and/or

reluctance to rely on a centralised means of production.

In 1998, three years after Buckridge published his article in Queensland Review

calling for ‘another, and perhaps fuller, version of [Queensland] as a literary region’, the

regional anthology 50 Years of Queensland Poetry, 1940s–1990s, was published by

Central Queensland University Press.160 One of the first things Philip Neilsen and Helen

Horton do that sets them apart from the editors of other regional anthologies is that they

take stock of the many and various factors contributing to the growth of interest in

Queensland literature:

The last ten years have seen a reaffirmation of vitality in Queenslandwriting, with the setting up of both the Queensland Writers’ Centre andthe Queensland literary magazine Imago: New Writing in the late 1980s,and more recently Central Queensland University Press.161

Clearly, Neilsen and Horton believe publishing opportunities represent a significant

force at work in the promotion of literary regionalism in Australia, and thus are integral

to a fuller understanding of the subject.

The editors also spell out their reasons for compiling a regional anthology:

A number of critics have argued that fostering a sense of regionalism cancounter both the hegemony of centralising literary and culturalinstitutions in the two metropolitan regions of Sydney and Melbourne,and also, the domination of the nationalist and masculinist perspectiveswhich seem insensitive to gender, spatial or other differences.162

Neilsen and Horton perceive their book as contributing to a national literary culture

through a diversification of the voices being represented. Furthermore, unlike editors of

other regional anthologies who maintain they are bringing a new geographical (or

160Philip Neilsen and Helen Horton, eds., 50 Years of Queensland Poetry, 1940s–1990s (Rockhampton:

Central Queensland University Press, 1998).161Ibid., ix.162Ibid., xi.

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‘spatial’) diversity to the national literary culture, Neilsen and Horton’s argument is

unique for its inclusion of gender and other differences. They maintain that, through a

regional literature, women and other minority writers are able to find a voice that has

been denied to them in the nationalist literary tradition, which is dominated by

masculinist and Anglophile forces.163

However, even as regionalism is established as a foil for nationalism, the editors

also compare it to internationalism or universalism. In this comparison, which has not

been addressed in any of the previously surveyed regional anthologies, regionalism

frequently loses favour—as evidenced in the ‘The region in the world’ section of

Chapter 1. An awareness of this fact is perhaps what inspired Neilsen and Horton to

launch a preemptive attack on this perspective:

‘Regionalism’ is a controversial word. Conventional literary criticismcan be critical of the ‘regional’ perspective in literature because it can beargued to neglect the ‘universal’ .... What can be pointed out is thatregionalism has had a relatively weak emphasis in Australian literaturewhen compared to cultures like that of Canada, and literary critics havebeen suspicious of the regional qualities of literature, perhaps for fear ofseeming parochial—a still-present fear in Australia, not yet free of thesense of exile from London or New York.164

Clearly, Neilsen and Horton’s introduction to 50 Years of Queensland Poetry marks a

high point in the conversation about literary regionalism that began perhaps as early as

the 1920s, but did not fully ignite until the late 1970s and into the 1980s, and then had

already died down again by the time this book was published in 1998. Neilsen and

Horton bring to their introduction an unsurpassed awareness of all that has gone before

them on the subject of literary regionalism in Australia. While the particular

163At least one other anthology of Queensland writing was published in the 1990s that exhibits a

sophisticated understanding of regionalism and addresses themes of ‘multiculturalism’: ManfredJurgensen, ed., Queensland: Words and All (Brisbane: Outrider/Phoenix Publications, 1993). This book

celebrates the tenth anniversary of the literary journal Outrider, which was based in Brisbane, though itsought to reach a national audience with its collections of ‘multicultural literature’. Queensland: Wordsand All contains prose fiction, poetry, interviews, literary criticism, reviews, artwork, and non-fictionarticles on subjects ranging from opera in Queensland to the histories of several different Queensland

publishing operations.164Neilsen and Horton, xi.

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implications of the above excerpt will only be further examined in the Conclusion to

this thesis, it is, nonetheless, testament to the fact that interest in regional literatures

remains and draws strength from its earlier articulations—especially in Queensland,

where this interest has always been strong.165

E. New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT

I do not consider the literary output of writers from New South Wales, Victoria

and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), to be examples of regional literature.

Writers from these places are writing from the cultural centres of Australia—what is

sometimes referred to as the ‘Sydney–Melbourne axis’ or ‘the “golden triangle” of

Sydney–Melbourne–Canberra’. In contrast, regional literature is something that is

created by writers located outside the cultural centres, or who, at the very least, have an

established relationship with a region and a readership located outside the cultural

centres (usually as a consequence of former residency in that region). While my

reasons for excluding writers from New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT from

consideration as regional writers will be further explicated in Chapter 3, it is extremely

telling to note that none of these regions has ever produced a regional anthology

comparable to those produced in the other states and territories of Australia.

For example, the promisingly titled collection of short stories Canberra Tales is

the work of Canberra-based writers’ group Seven Writers.166 While many of the stories

are set in Canberra, the anthology as a whole does not engage with any of the ideas

associated with literary regionalism. Most tellingly, its contributions policy is restricted

165Further evidence of this enduring interest was published in 2002: Robyn Sheahan-Bright and Stuart

Glover, eds., Hot Iron Corrugated Sky: 100 Years of Queensland Writing (St. Lucia: University of

Queensland Press, 2002). While the Cataloguing in Publication Data lists the book as ‘history andcriticism’, it is notable that the bulk of the book is made up of more than 40 substantial excerpts fromcreative works by Queensland writers. Furthermore, where there is ‘history and criticism’, it appears inthe form of 11 new essays by notable Queensland writers rather than by academics. The book was

published to mark Queensland’s centenary of federation, but it is in no other way a traditional occasional,state-based regional literature anthology.166Margaret Barbalet et al., Canberra Tales (Ringwood: Penguin, 1988).

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to a circle of seven writers, rather than being open to the work of other Canberra-based

or ACT-based writers. This is, of course, similar to the previously discussed anthologies

from Queensland, which were also produced by writers’ groups. For the same reasons

the latter anthologies were excluded from consideration as regional anthologies—they

do not engage with the terms of regional literature, nor in the promotion of regional

writers or writing, but rather in self-promotion—so too will Canberra Tales be

excluded. In fact, most literature anthologies that are presented as a product of New

South Wales, Victoria or the ACT, fit this description—they are the work of a writers’

group from the region, rather than a true regional anthology.

The collection of poetry and short stories ReCollecting Albury Writing: Poetry

and Prose from Albury and District 1859 to 2000, presents an entirely different

challenge to the categories of regional literature and the regional anthology.167 Produced

by Booranga Writers Albury, this anthology never actually tells you where Albury is

located, which suggests that the editors and publisher of the book did not expect it to be

distributed outside the region—or at least not outside the eastern states, where residents

may have more familiarity with Albury than individuals located in, for example,

Western Australia. As a result, the anthology seems more parochial than many of the

state-based anthologies discussed elsewhere in this chapter.

In the end, however, I exclude ReCollecting Albury Writing and similar efforts

from my consideration of regional anthologies, not because it is parochial, but because

it is a type of specialised regional anthology, the likes of which has been seen in Pearls:

Writing by South Australian Women and The Inner Courtyard: A South Australian

Anthology of Love Poetry. In each of these instances, the anthologisers (and, thus, the

anthologies) are more concerned with their theme—whether it be women’s writing, love

poetry, or Albury and District—than they are with exploring notions of literary

167Jane Downing and Dirk H. R. Spennemann, eds., ReCollecting Albury Writing: Poetry and Prose from

Albury and District 1859 to 2000 (Albury: Letao Publishing, 2000).

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regionalism. Jane Downing and Dirk H. R. Spennemann write in the introduction to

their anthology: ‘In making a final decision, the work that featured Albury and District

found preference.’168 Clearly, the editors are not so interested in engaging with the idea

of writers emerging from and shaped by a specific place and its corresponding culture—

the essence of the debate about literary regionalism in Australia as surveyed in Chapter

1—as they are interested in compiling a book of material about that place. Admittedly,

this is one way of apprehending the physical environment and using it to provide a

particular perspective on (or to enhance the understanding of) a body of literature, and

yet it is the narrowest sense in which this might be accomplished. Furthermore, it is not

one that the previously surveyed regional anthologies have embraced, perhaps because

the editors of these anthologies recognise its limited potential as a critical framework.

A Sydney-based anthology, In the Gutter ... Looking at the Stars: A Literary

Adventure through Kings Cross, embodies many of these same qualities.169 Mandy

Sayer and Louis Nowra, the book’s editors, are more interested in presenting ‘a vivid

picture of Kings Cross’—as stated on the back cover of their book—than in engaging

with the idea of Kings Cross as a region inhabited by writers and readers. For example,

a writer who has lived all her life in Kings Cross but chooses to set her stories elsewhere

would have no place in such an anthology. This is an ironically parochial stance for a

seemingly urban and cosmopolitan anthology. Nonetheless, I am not dismissing the

anthology on the basis of its parochial-ness, but rather its failure to engage on even the

most basic level with any of the ideas associated with the conversation about literary

regionalism in Australia.

Literature anthologies produced in New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT,

which purport to have a regional focus, invariably turn out to be either a specialised

168Ibid., xvi.169Mandy Sayer and Louis Nowra, eds., In the Gutter ... Looking at the Stars: A Literary Adventure

through Kings Cross (Milsons Point: Random House, 2000).

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regional anthology or the work of a writers’ group.170 True regional anthologies, like

those found in the other Australian states and territories, do not exist as such in the

‘golden triangle’, because a significant part of what defines a regional anthology is that

it collects the works of writers from outside the cultural centres.

III. Western Australia

The first regional anthology published in Western Australia was also the first of

its kind in Australia, preceding Stable and Kirwood’s 1924 A Book of Queensland Verse

by eight years. Westralia Gift Book: To Aid YMCA Military Work and Returned Nurses’

Fund by Writers and Artists of Western Australia was edited by four individuals,

including the formidable Walter Murdoch, and published in 1916.171 The anthology

contains 40 pages of advertisements, most of them for Perth-based businesses, at the

front and back of the book. It also contains many illustrations, some of which are

printed in colour. The black-and-white illustrations include photographs of Western

Australian scenes and also some line drawings, while the colour illustrations are

reproductions of paintings of a wide variety of subjects. Notably, the colour

illustrations are the only feature of the book that was not produced locally; the

remainder of the individuals contributing to its production—including writers, artists,

printers, and binders—were all found in Western Australia.172

In reference to the contributions of these individuals, and especially of the

writers and artists, Murdoch writes in his foreword:

Art and letters have not had much encouragement so far in WesternAustralia; perhaps the struggle for the mastery of Nature has been too

170Other anthologies of writing from New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT, that could be characterised

as specialised regional anthologies include: Patrick Morgan, ed., Shadow and Shine: An Anthology ofGippsland Literature (Churchill: Centre for Gippsland Studies and Gippsland Institute of AdvancedEducation, 1988).171Walter Murdoch et al., eds., Westralia Gift Book: To Aid YMCA Military Work and Returned Nurses’

Fund by Writers and Artists of Western Australia (Perth: V. K. Jones, 1916).172Ibid., 4.

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engrossing. But, if I am not greatly mistaken, there are things in thisvolume good enough to convince everyone—except those whoseunalterable conviction it is that no good thing can come out of WesternAustralia—that we have our share of creative talent, which only lacksencouragement and a field for its exercise.173

It seems the trends associated with regional anthologies, as evidenced in the survey of

regional anthologies produced in states and territories other than Western Australia,

were established early. These trends include championing the local talent (though

Murdoch is careful not to overstate this case) and the assertion that distance from the

centres of cultural production results in a lack of opportunities, thus contributing to the

tenuous status of the arts in the region.

However, there are also many things about the regional anthology that have

changed since the publication of Westralia Gift Book in 1916. Perhaps most notably,

Westralia Gift Book is an occasional publication intended to raise money to benefit the

YMCA and the Returned Nurses’ Fund in their efforts during World War I. The

advertisements appearing at both the front and back of the book are evidence of this

aspect of the publication. Consequently, the anthology is focussed on the occasion, and

the region becomes little more than a convenient organisational and marketing

principle; there is almost no engagement with issues of literary regionalism. This is

typical of the earliest regional anthologies. The transition to modern regional

anthologies, many of which present regionalism as an engaging critical framework for

the analysis of literature and culture, represents a significant change in attitudes towards

literary regionalism in Australia.

The second regional anthology published in Western Australia was also an

occasional publication. The impetus behind this book, West Coast Stories: An

Anthology, published in 1959 by the Sydney-based Angus & Robertson, was to raise

173Ibid.

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money and establish a trust fund.174 Henrietta Drake-Brockman, the editor of the

anthology, explains:

To honour its obligation to Mr. Samuel Furphy, who did not long survivehis wife, and to preserve the self-built home of a great Australian, theWestern Australian Fellowship of Writers has now established a trustfund. All royalties from this anthology, selected from the works of itsmembers for that purpose, will be paid to the fund.175

The house was named the Tom Collins House, ‘in honour of Furphy’s pen-name of Tom

Collins, chosen when he wrote Such is Life’.176 While the house has been renovated and

moved since the publication of this anthology, it is still home to the Western Australian

branch of the Fellowship of Australian Writers (FAW [WA]). In spite of the

commendable reasons for its production, the book is otherwise unremarkable as a

commentary on regional literature. Similar to Westralia Gift Book, no one involved in

its production was interested in asking the question, ‘Why produce an anthology of

Western Australian writers?’ To them, the answer was self-evident: the anthology was

meant to benefit the FAW (WA), so Western Australians were the people most likely to

contribute writings (free-of-charge) to such an anthology, as well as the people most

likely to buy it when it was finally published.

The next effort at an anthology of Western Australian writing did not appear for

nearly fifteen years. When Sandgropers: A Western Australian Anthology was finally

published in 1973, it contained short stories, poetry and criticism, as well as a more

sophisticated understanding of regional literature.177 Dorothy Hewett, the editor, writes

in her introduction:

Western Australian writers have always been in a particularly centralposition to evaluate the virtues of physical isolation. I often have theimpression that some of our eastern brothers have an idea that writers inWestern Australia live in some kind of Arcadian innocence, archetype of

174H. Drake-Brockman, ed., West Coast Stories: An Anthology (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1959).

175Ibid., xi.176Ibid.177Dorothy Hewett, ed., Sandgropers: A Western Australian Anthology (Nedlands: University of Western

Australia Press, 1973).

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a perpetual Thoreau’s Walden, a refuge from the megalopolis of Sydneyor Melbourne.178

Hewett also writes, perhaps in an effort to dispel any illusions of undue pride conjured

up by this last statement: ‘We ... live in one of the most parochial, unsympathetic and

backward regions in Australia (second only to Queensland?)’179 Clearly, she is engaging

with the contemporary debate about literary regionalism in Australia.

However, Hewett’s interpretation of the terms of this debate is polarised and

absolutist—insisting, for example, that is possible to assess the relative parochial-ness

or backwardness of one region as compared to another. Hewett acknowledges the

problems associated with this stance, but she is not prepared to dismiss it entirely:

This anthology does not seek to parade ‘write Westralia’ deliberatelyacross its pages, but I think there are certain themes and pre-occupationsthat do engage writers living in this part of the continent. Some of ushave gone in for ancestor worship, or ancestor burying, the bush is stillreally just across the subway from the dog’s home, childhood beckons usall with the nostalgia for those romantic rituals and ceremonies madevalid by time.180

Considering Sandgropers was published in 1973, and it has been previously

demonstrated that the conversation about literary regionalism in Australia did not really

gain momentum until the late 1970s if not the 1980s, Hewett’s attitude is not surprising.

Nonetheless, it is notable, because it represents one of the earliest attempts by the editor

of a regional anthology to engage in a debate about literary regionalism in Australia. It

seems that, not only did Western Australia produce the first regional anthology in

Australia in the form of Westralia Gift Book in 1916, but it also produced the first

‘modern’ regional anthology.

In 1976, still two years in advance of the seminar organised by Fremantle Arts

Centre Press and the unofficial beginning of the conversation about literary regionalism

in Australia, another Western Australian literature anthology was published. Bruce

178Ibid., x.179Ibid.180Ibid., xii.

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Bennett was the editor of New Country: A Selection of Western Australian Short Stories,

marking his first official foray into the realm of regional literature. He made good use

of the opportunity, showcasing in the introduction his nuanced understanding of the

subject matter. This includes a detailed discussion of the contributions made by

previous Western Australian literature anthologies to the debate about literary

regionalism—a first in the history of Australian regional anthologies:

One of the justifications for a regional anthology is that it can provide‘local colour’ by recreating the sights, sounds and smells of differentlocalities within a region. If the inhabitant reads a well-writtendescription of his area, he may be moved to acknowledge, ‘That’s how itis, that’s what it’s like to live here’, while the outsider can be given avivid mental picture that enables him to ‘see’ and ‘feel’ the placeconcerned, or its people.

Although quite a number of the stories in this selection will evokethat kind of recognition, ‘local colour’ in this selection is generally lessimportant than in the earlier anthology [West Coast Stories: AnAnthology]. Without losing their sense of place, many of the stories inNew Country do serve another important function: that of increasing ourself-knowledge through an understanding of significant pressures andstrains within the private and communal lives of Western Australians.181

The progression from regional literature as ‘local colour’ to regional literature as

‘increasing our self-knowledge’ is an important one, and Bennett is right to

acknowledge its role in the production of regional anthologies. However, this

progression is in many ways incomplete: whereas the former stage includes both locals

and outsiders in its conception, the latter stage performs a wholesale elimination of the

outsiders in favour of the locals.

Of course, production of cultural value is an activity that occurs both within and

outside the cultural centres; however, there is usually a disproportionate emphasis on

those centres. One of the aims of regional literature is to rectify this balance. This

cannot be accomplished, however, by swinging the pendulum of influence in the

entirely opposite direction. Any such formulation is untenable and will likely be

discounted for its provincialism. Additionally, while ‘increasing our self-knowledge’ is

181Bruce Bennett, New Country, viii.

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an important and admirable ambition, it is still important for those dwelling in the

cultural centres to ‘“see” and “feel” the place concerned, or its people’. At the very

least, this is because they control many of the practicalities involved in the production

of cultural value—the publishing houses and literary journals, for example, but also a

critical mass of the reading population that makes commercial publishing viable.

In spite of Bennett’s surprisingly introverted assessment of the function of New

Country, he still possesses a nuanced understanding of the influence of place on people,

and specifically on writers:

The relationship between literature and the society in which it isproduced is always problematical. Perhaps not too much can be claimedabout Western Australian life from a selection of stories by six differentand quite distinctive writers of short stories. Nevertheless they do, as agroup, seem to signal a transition from the writing of an isolated, frontierstate to one which is increasingly influenced by the problems of a widerworld.182

Again, it is clear Bennett is responding to an evolving debate about literary regionalism

in Australia. He seems to want to distinguish himself as someone who does not believe

in a direct correlation between the region and a set of typical characteristics that are

embodied in the work of writers resident in that region. Writing in the mid-1970s,

Bennett would have been at the forefront of scholarly thought on this subject in Western

Australia, which was in turn leading the way for greater Australia.

The poetry anthology Soundings: A Selection of Western Australian Poetry, was

clearly intended as a companion volume to New Country.183 Not only were these two

books published in the same year (1976), but they share the same interior and cover

design. However, Soundings presents a much less nuanced and interesting version of

regional literature than the one found in Bennett’s introduction to New Country.

Whereas Bennett acknowledges that ‘the relationship between literature and the society

182Ibid., xi.183Veronica Brady, ed., Soundings: A Selection of Western Australian Poetry (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts

Centre Press, 1976).

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in which it is produced is always problematical’, Brady is convinced of a direct

correlation between the two. She is insistent that, in the poems she has selected for

inclusion in the anthology, ‘you get the flavour of life in this western third of the

continent’.184 According to Brady, this ‘flavour’ is comprised of several identifiable

characteristics: ‘a sense of space’, ‘a sense of the strange, bemused charm of Perth’, and

‘the sense of challenge and the ability to see the world as new’.185 Nonetheless, it must

be acknowledged that not every poem in this collection lives up to Brady’s assertions; in

fact, the thematic and stylistic content of the poems varies widely. The views espoused

in the introduction to Soundings, in regards to literary regionalism, are clearly those of

an earlier time—or, more likely, Bennett’s aforementioned views are simply ahead of

his time, making Brady’s seem dated by contrast.

In 1979, three years after the release of New Country and Soundings and only

one after the seminar organised by Fremantle Arts Centre Press, three additional

regional anthologies were published in Western Australia. They are Lip Service,186 Wide

Domain: Western Australian Themes & Images,187 and Summerland: A Western

Australian Sesquicentenary Anthology of Poetry and Prose.188 While the

sesquicentenary was obviously a significant factor in the publication of these three

regional anthologies, their publication also followed close on the heels of the important

series of essays on the subject published in a 1978 edition of Westerly; consequently,

1979 was marked by significantly increased interest in the debate surrounding literary

regionalism in Australia. The powder was primed for an explosive inter-book debate

184Ibid., xi.185Ibid., xi-xii.186Helen Weller, ed., Lip Service (East Perth: Nine Club, 1979).

187Bruce Bennett and William Grono, eds., Wide Domain: Western Australian Themes & Images (London:

Angus & Robertson, 1979).188Alec Choate and Barbara York Main, eds., Summerland: A Western Australian Sesquicentenary

Anthology of Poetry and Prose (Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press, 1979).

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about regional—and especially Western Australian—literature, largely setting aside the

concerns of the occasion.

It was Alec Choate, in his introduction to the poetry section of Summerland, who

gave voice to the sentiment that the sesquicentenary was not of primary importance:

None of the poetry selected for this book is attentive to thesesquicentenary of the founding of white settlement in Western Australia,and it is doubtful if poetry could be bothered to look for any significancein such a punctuation mark of local history.189

It should be noted that Lip Service is similarly disinterested in the celebrations, though it

does not take the time to state as much. In fact, Lip Service does not engage with any of

the ideas traditionally associated with literary regionalism, because it is composed of

works performed at a poetry reading. In other words, like the Friendly Street

anthologies, Lip Service is an occasional publication, celebrating the occasion of the

poetry reading rather than the region. Consequently, it will not be discussed any further

in this thesis.

In contrast, the editors of Summerland explicitly engage with the terms of

literary regionalism and, in particular, the contributions of regional anthologies to this

discussion: ‘Although appearing in the Sesquicentenary Year this collection is

deliberately not retrospective. Five previous anthologies produced between 1916 and

1973 have partly fulfilled this role.’190 In addition to dismissing the notion that

Summerland might be an occasional publication and establishing their awareness of a

tradition of Western Australian anthologies, they add a stipulation—‘Contributors had to

be domiciled in the state continuously for at least five years prior to 1 January 1979, and

any work completed or first published also in the last five years would be favoured

189Alec Choate, ‘Poetry Introduction’, in Summerland: A Western Australian Sesquicentenary Anthology

of Poetry and Prose, ed. Alec Choate and Barbara York Main (Nedlands: University of Western AustraliaPress, 1979), xv.190Barbara York Main, ‘Prose Introduction’, in Summerland: A Western Australian Sesquicentenary

Anthology of Poetry and Prose, ed. Alec Choate and Barbara York Main (Nedlands: University ofWestern Australia Press, 1979), xix.

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wherever possible.’191 Choate and Main used highly specific conditions for inclusion to

ensure their volume was distinctive and did not repeat the work of New Country, which

was published only three years earlier. This event is indicative of the burgeoning

number of regional anthologies being produced in this period and also the growing

awareness of the editors involved in their production.

While Summerland is strictly an anthology of poetry and prose, the latter

comprising both short stories and novel excerpts, the editors of Wide Domain define the

variety of materials they considered for inclusion in much broader terms:

In selecting material for this book, we have not confined ourselves toconventional literature (poems, plays, novels, stories) but have takenfreely from letters, diaries, journals and newspapers—whatever seemedmost lively, imaginative or revealing.192

Perhaps because a regional anthology that defines ‘literature’ so liberally was still a

rarity at the time of writing, so the book was already established as distinctive, the

editors of Wide Domain do not provide a set of highly specific conditions for inclusion

similar to those provided by the editors of Summerland.

Nonetheless, the editors of these two anthologies find common ground on issues

such as the contemporary treatment of place and landscape in Western Australian

writing. For example, Bennett and Grono write:

Those who write about this part of the world have often responded to theopen spaces of the state, preferring to depict man alone in the bush ratherthan men and women living and working in the city or suburbs. Butthere are signs among some contemporary writers particularly, that amore metropolitan consciousness is forming.193

The latter part of this excerpt—‘there are signs ... that a more metropolitan

consciousness is forming’—is typical of discussions about regional literature at this

time. Advocates of literary regionalism usually conceded a dominant interest in place

191Glen Phillips, ‘Preface’, in Summerland: A Western Australian Sesquicentenary Anthology of Poetry

and Prose, ed. Alec Choate and Barbara York Main (Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press,1979), xi.192Bennett and Grono, 2.

193Ibid., 2–3.

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and landscape among the region’s writers, but then quickly proffered evidence of a

movement away from this preoccupation. They were, of course, reacting against the

common perception that regional literature is synonymous with parochialism and

writing about landscape and the bush. Main exhibits the same tendency in the

introduction to the prose section of Summerland:

Having generally outlived the pioneering phase the now largelyindigenous population of writers appears either to accept or converselyignore the natural landscape—hence at present it is not generally overtlydepicted in our regional literature.’194

According to these editors, contemporary Western Australian writers are not especially

interested in addressing themes associated with place.

In fact, Main asserts that Western Australian writers have moved, not only

beyond a preoccupation with place and landscape, but beyond any association with their

home state or region:

Recent work reveals that our writers are not necessarily preoccupied withthemes or topics pertaining to their ‘home’ state. Australians are awandering people and a composite of many former nationalities thus it isnot surprising that many choose to write about other places andcircumstances which at first appear to be only remotely connected withWestern Australia. But underneath, the influence of Western Australia(or conversely the stamp of some other place) on how a writer feelsabout Western Australia is often apparent.195

In spite of their early claim that Western Australian writers are ‘not necessarily

preoccupied with ... their “home” state’, the editors are careful not to assert that Western

Australian writers have entirely abandoned Western Australian concerns—‘underneath,

the influence of Western Australia ... on how a writer feels about Western Australia is

often apparent’. After all, this would endanger their reasons for producing a regional

anthology in the first place. Instead, they hover on the verge of declaring the

irrelevance of regional identity before recoiling in the face of the implications of such

an assertion. There is a sense of self-consciousness in this behaviour, of always having

194Main, xx.195Ibid., xix.

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to keep the uncritical impulse in check, which is even more apparent in the following

excerpt:

The tyranny of distance separating the majority of the state’s populacefrom other Australians and a certain uniqueness in the observablephysiographical and biological characteristics of this state has, however,produced, if not a crop of unique writers, a collection of prose and versewith an identifiable regional patina.196

Glen Phillips will not go so far in the preface to Summerland as to assert that Western

Australian writers are ‘unique’ as a result of their Western Australian origins, but only

that they possess ‘an identifiable regional patina’. This statement is clearly constrained

by self-consciousness.

Bennett discusses the origins of this self-consciousness in the introduction to

The Literature of Western Australia, ‘a collection of scholarly essays on a number of

important themes about Western Australia, its people and its resources’:197

Twenty-five years ago, this attitude was unforgettably dubbed the‘Cultural Cringe’, which may be applied with particular force in its twomain forms of expression to the Western Australian experience: thecringer either dismisses the local writer and his work as beneath noticecompared with the inherited storehouse of British and European or even‘eastern states’ literature (the most usual reaction to Western Australianwriters and writing), or he exalts the claims of the local above all else (ifmade in Westralia it must be good). The welfare of literary culture isthreatened by both these manifestations of the cringe.198

Bennett’s analysis of the workings of the ‘Cultural Cringe’ indicates that such an

attitude has likely informed the activities of both the advocates of literary regionalism in

Australia and its detractors. However, a time when Western Australians can be proud—

but not overly proud—of the accomplishments of Western Australian writers can not be

too far in the future, and literary regionalism just may be integral in bringing about this

development:

196Phillips, ‘Preface’, xi.197Bruce Bennett, ed., The Literature of Western Australia (Nedlands: University of Western Australia

Press, 1979), v.198Ibid., xii.

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The tendency to think in terms of national stereotypes (e.g. that a single‘tradition’ of writing predominates) is giving way to an examination ofthe varieties of writing that Australians have produced. Similarly, thestudy of Australian literature in its regional aspects—to which this bookcontributes—has emerged as a means of building an understanding ofways in which the land or local conditions may have shaped, or beenshaped by, the literary imagination.199

These last two excerpts easily represent the most sophisticated early overview of the

interest in literary regionalism in Australia. Previous discussion of Western Australian

anthologies would seem to indicate that this is no coincidence, since Western Australian

scholars and writers have always been leaders in this discourse. The publication of The

Literature of Western Australia in Western Australia’s sesquicentenary year is

symptomatic of this position—it is, after all, a rare book-length scholarly analysis of

regional literature rather than simply a regional anthology with a scholarly introduction

—as well as helping to consolidate it. At the time Bennett was writing, however, it

remained to be seen how long this interest in ‘the study of Australian literature in its

regional aspects’ would persist, and whether or not it would be allowed sufficient time

for its ambitious programme to be fully realised.

Two years later, Fay Zwicky, the editor of Quarry: A Selection of Contemporary

Western Australian Poetry, contents herself with observing that ‘much has already been

said on the subject of regional attributes’ and ‘seeking poems to bolster regional clichés

did not play a part in my selection’.200 She continues awhile in this theme before

concluding,

Clearly no single formula can do justice to the complexity of adaptationto a shifting environment, and Western Australia has been subject tosome new social and economic pressures over the last few years.Whether these are reflected in more recent poetic work can be left to thereader to assess.201

199Ibid., xiii.

200Fay Zwicky, ed., Quarry: A Selection of Contemporary Western Australian Poetry (Fremantle:

Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1981), i.201Ibid., i–ii.

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Zwicky’s conclusion is perhaps unsurprising, as the publication of her anthology

followed so closely behind that of a spate of other Western Australian anthologies that

devoted much time and attention to these issues.

Quarry seems to have established a trend that would be carried out in

subsequent anthologies of Western Australian literature published in the 1980s—in

other words, a lack of interest in issues of regionalism and regional literature. However,

its companion volume published the following year, Decade: A Selection of

Contemporary Western Australian Short Fiction, represents a rare divergence from this

trend:

Decade presents the work of twenty-one contemporary WesternAustralian writers of short fiction. ... Decade is the first open selection ofshort fiction by Western Australian writers since West Coast Stories in1959. New Country (Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1976), thisanthology’s immediate predecessor, presented the work of six writerswho were considered by the editor, Bruce Bennett, to be leadingpractitioners in the genre in Western Australia in the mid-seventies.202

Clearly, B. R. Coffey warmly embraces a dialogue on the subject of literary regionalism,

even going so far as to trace the history of its publication for the reader. He also makes

unabashed proclamations about the state of Western Australian writing and its particular

influences:

A sense of isolation has long been seen by many as a major problem forwriters in Western Australia, and it can be argued that it is only in the lastdecade that an increasing number have gained the self-confidence andthe kind of support that has enabled them to overcome this feeling.There are a number of factors that seem to have contributed to thecreation of a more supportive, encouraging environment. Some of thosewhich readily come to mind are, the increased availability of works ofserious contemporary literature, the efforts of the literary journalWesterly, the establishment of contemporary and comparative literatureand creative writing courses, and writer-in-residences, at our tertiaryinstitutions, the increased publishing opportunities that have grown fromthe establishment of Fremantle Arts Centre Press, and, of course, ageneral increase in community interest in the Arts.203

202B. R. Coffey, ed., Decade: A Selection of Contemporary Western Australian Short Fiction (Fremantle:

Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1982), v.203Ibid., vi.

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This level of engagement with the idea of literary regionalism is rare amongst

anthologies of Western Australian literature published in the 1980s. It almost appears to

be a throwback to the previously surveyed anthologies of Western Australian literature

published in the 1970s.

Four more years passed before Portrait: A West Coast Collection was published

to coincide with the occasion of the tenth anniversary of Fremantle Arts Centre Press.204

The editors (one of whom, notably, also edited Decade) felt this anthology of short

stories and poetry ‘would be an appropriate way to celebrate a decade of publishing,

since the Press opened its imprint in 1976 with the publication of two anthologies—

Soundings (Poetry) and New Country (Short Fiction)’.205 While this statement may be

true, the anthology does not provide much in the way of insight into the progression of

the debate about regional literature and instead focuses on the demands of the occasion.

In 1988, just two years after the publication of Portrait, two additional Western

Australian anthologies were published. Another two anthologies were published the

following year, 1989. In contrast to Portrait, these four books provide a wealth of

insight into the contemporary debate (or lack thereof) surrounding literary regionalism

in Australia—though not in the way of Western Australian anthologies published in the

1970s. The two anthologies published in 1988 were Celebrations: A Bicentennial

Anthology of Fifty Years of Western Australian Poetry and Prose206 and Margins: A West

Coast Selection of Poetry 1829–1988.207 Impressions: West Coast Fiction 1829–1988

was published in 1989, but its design, publication date, and publishing house all tie it

inextricably to Margins—a prose anthology to complement the earlier poetry

204Coffey and Jenkins.205Ibid., 9.

206Brian Dibble, Don Grant, and Glen Phillips, eds., Celebrations: A Bicentennial Anthology of Fifty

Years of Western Australian Poetry and Prose (Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press, 1988).207William Grono, ed., Margins: A West Coast Selection of Poetry 1829–1988 (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts

Centre Press, 1988).

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anthology.208 Wordhord: A Critical Selection of Contemporary Western Australian

Poetry was also published in 1989.209 The reason for this sudden burgeoning of regional

anthologies in Western Australia was, of course, because 1988 marked the Australian

bicentennial. In fact, the two volumes published in 1988—Celebrations and Margins—

both received funding from the Australian Bicentennial Authority.

Yet, none of the anthologies prioritises the occasion over the region, which

means they cannot be dismissed as occasional publications. In fact, they neither discuss

the occasion, nor engage with many of the ideas taken up in the introductions to

previously discussed regional anthologies. For example, Margins is the only anthology

to specify its qualifications for inclusion and engage with the debate about what it

means to be Western Australian:

Which introduces the troublesome question: who is a Western Australianpoet? Although such factors as birthplace, schooling, reputation, andsubject matter were considered, the answer in broad terms is: anyonewho has lived in Western Australia for a significant period and has eitherbegun writing poetry or has developed as a poet while living here.210

This relatively simple answer to a complicated question does not differ noticeably from

the definitions supplied in earlier regional anthologies. Yet, it would seem that what

was once a common feature of regional anthologies has fallen by the wayside, perhaps

because it has been deemed obsolete or obvious.

The only time the editors of Celebrations even address the subject of regional

literature is to deny their book can be categorised as such:

Although this anthology is the result of an idea which originated in theFAW (WA), Celebrations is meant to represent Western Australianwriters of the past fifty years on their merits rather than their affiliations.At the same time it is meant to represent Australia’s western third, and inthat sense not to be only a ‘regional’ collection.211

208Peter Cowan, ed., Impressions: West Coast Fiction 1829–1988 (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre

Press, 1989).209Dennis Haskell and Hilary Fraser, eds., Wordhord: A Critical Selection of Contemporary Western

Australian Poetry (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1989).210Grono, Margins, 20.211Dibble, Grant, and Phillips, x.

107

Clearly, there is great unease about the role of the regional as it relates to literature. In

particular, the editors of this anthology seem concerned about the marketability of

regional literature; they appear to believe the only way they will find a readership for

their book is by emphasising its role within the context of Australia as a whole.

Similarly, Margins engages only briefly with the idea of literary regionalism and

in fact resists such discussion in favour of other concerns:

Rather than summing up the value of Western Australian poetry ... orattempting to establish a coherent Western Australian poetic tradition ...,or elucidating recurring themes and concerns ..., or proudly drawingattention to important discoveries ..., I would prefer to let the poemsspeak, clearly and sometimes movingly, across the years, forthemselves.212

This appears to be an attempt by Grono to hide the fact that he is not interested in

engaging with the terms of the debate surrounding literary regionalism. Instead, the

reader is encouraged ‘to let the poems speak ... for themselves’, as if such an injunction

could render the Western Australian origins of these works obsolete, or at least invisible.

Considering Impressions and Margins were designed by the people at Fremantle

Arts Centre Press to appear as complementary volumes of Western Australian literature,

it should come as no surprise that Impressions does not engage with the conversation

about literary regionalism. The way in which it dismisses these concerns, however, is

remarkable:

The new publishing ventures [in Western Australia during the 1970s]proved a stimulus for longer work, and writing of great variety. It wasperhaps surprising just how much there was, and how wide a range ofsubject. The need for this kind of local encouragement was clear. Morewriting began to be published, locally and elsewhere, than at any othertime.213

Notably, this excerpt is written entirely in the past tense—for example, ‘The need for

this kind of local encouragement was clear’ (emphasis mine). Consequently, Cowan

212Grono, Margins, 20.213Cowan, Impressions, 15.

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appears to be saying there no longer exists this need for ‘local encouragement’ in

Western Australia. He seems to believe it is no longer necessary to take any special

interest in regional literature; it can survive on its own merits. While this is an

encouraging idea, I will demonstrate in later chapters how this is still not the case. It is

not that regional literature is not as good as that which originates in the cultural centres

—it is just as good—but rather that writers from different regions do not enjoy equal

access to opportunities designed to facilitate the production of literature. Also, the

differing ways in which regional literature is read both within and outside its region of

origin is still a significant factor in its reception. As a result, I contend the ‘local

encouragement’ of regional literature is still very much relevant.

However, this does not seem to be the consensus among the editors of the

aforementioned three regional anthologies published in Western Australia during the

late 1980s. They appear to believe the debate is finished and that an unspecified

conclusion has been reached, which allows them to continue to publish regional

anthologies but not to overstate the importance of the region within these works.

Dennis Haskell and Hilary Fraser’s Wordhord bucks this trend, if only slightly.

At the very least, they make a strong case for the integrity of a state-based regional

identity:

It may be argued that ‘Western Australia’ is an artificial, politicallydetermined concept, which has nothing to do with literature. However,such boundaries, once formulated, become a part of people’s lives. Thebest feature of the interest in regionalism which has emerged inAustralian literary circles in recent years is the diversity it points to.Australian literature is no longer thought of as homogenous fromKalgoorlie to Cairns to Canberra.214

Still, they shy away from any definitive statements about the significance of regional

literature and settle for a more modest analysis of the significance of the region. When

214Haskell and Fraser, 13.

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the discussion turns to parochialism, the editors again give vague—if slightly more

defensive—answers:

Geographical position does matter but there is less evidence in Wordhordof parochialism or paranoia, much less purity. One measure of increasedmaturity in the state’s poetry might be found in the treatment oflandscape. For one thing, there is now little descriptive verse, andimagined landscapes are more important than literal ones.215

These examples of engagement with the issues of literary regionalism, even as they

represent advances in the level and content of the debate, should not detract from the

dominant trend away from such concerns. Certainly, the other three anthologies

published around this time show symptoms of a growing disinterest in the subject, if

only with the academics who compile such anthologies.

Since the publication of Wordhord and Impressions in 1989, however, the

prospects for regional anthologies in Western Australia have changed dramatically. In

short, not a single anthology has been published in Western Australia since 1989 that is

presented as a regional anthology. In 1993, for example, the first in what would

become a series of anthologies was launched by Janet Holmes à Court and went on to

win a ‘Special Award’ in the 1994 Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards. This

anthology, Summer Shorts, was edited by well-known television journalist and

newsreader Peter Holland.216 Summer Shorts 2 was published the following year,217 with

the final volume (unsurprisingly titled Summer Shorts 3) bringing closure to the

franchise in 1995.218 The three titles are largely unremarkable, with the exception of the

following feature: it is clear only from the introduction to the first volume that these are

collections of Western Australian writing. This fact is not stated anywhere on the front

or back covers of this volume, nor is it to be found anywhere at all in the second and

215Ibid., 14.216Peter Holland, ed., Summer Shorts (South Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1993).217Peter Holland and Barbara Holland, eds., Summer Shorts 2 (South Fremantle: Fremantle Arts CentrePress, 1994).218Bill Warnock and Diana Warnock, eds., Summer Shorts 3 (South Fremantle: Fremantle Arts CentrePress, 1995).

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third volumes in the series. The decision to market these books as something other than

regional anthologies was most likely influenced by a desire to have them stocked in

interstate stores, which are typically hesitant to stock Western Australia-specific titles.

This occasion clearly marks a new phase in the conversation about literary regionalism

in Australia.

The Summer Shorts titles are significant because they represent the first time

Fremantle Arts Centre Press downplayed the Western Australian-ness of an anthology it

published. This would not be the last time, however, as evidenced by a new series of

anthologies launched just one year after the publication of the final book in the Summer

Shorts series. The anthologies in this new series—published by Fremantle Arts Centre

Press beginning in 1996 and appearing annually until 2000 (with one final, outlying

anthology published in 2004, though it retains many of the same traits as the other five

anthologies)—were all edited by B.R. Coffey, who also edited the previously mentioned

Decade and Portrait anthologies. However, in the ten-year interim between the 1986

publication of Portrait and the 1996 publication of the first of these anthologies,

Sunburnt Country: Stories of Australian Life, a great many regional anthologies were

published and a great deal changed in the conversation about literary regionalism in

Australia.219 Nonetheless, Sunburnt Country was reprinted in 1997, 1998 and 2002—a

testament to its popularity. This book does not contain an introduction or a preface, nor

does it state anywhere on the front or back covers that it is a collection of writings by

Western Australian authors. Yet, the Contributors’ Notes at the end of the book reveal

that every writer has a Western Australian connection.

The very next year, Fremantle Arts Centre Press published Golden Harvest:

Stories of Australian Women.220 The year after that it was Blokes: Stories from

219B. R. Coffey, ed., Sunburnt Country: Stories of Australian Life (South Fremantle: Fremantle Arts

Centre Press, 1996).220B. R. Coffey, ed., Golden Harvest: Stories of Australian Women (South Fremantle: Fremantle Arts

Centre Press, 1997).

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Australian Lives.221 And, unsurprisingly, the next two years saw two more books:

Summer Days: Stories from Childhood222 and Rough with the Smooth: Stories of

Australian Men.223 Like Sunburnt Country, these books contain neither an introduction

nor a preface, and it is not stated anywhere else that they are collections of writings by

Western Australian authors. Nonetheless, all the contributors lived some part of their

lives in the state. In fact, they have all been previously published by Fremantle Arts

Centre Press; these anthologies are composed entirely of excerpts from their published

works, presumably to keep costs down for the publishing house. Certain best-selling

Fremantle Arts Centre Press authors, such as Sally Morgan and A. B. Facey, have

different excerpts from their work appearing in all five anthologies. Other notable

writers, including Elizabeth Jolley and Faye Davis, appear in four of the anthologies,

with still more writers appearing in more than one anthology.

Golden Summers: Stories of Australian Lives was published in 2004, four years

after the last anthology in this series.224 As is noted on its imprint page, ‘An earlier

edition of this anthology, Golden Harvest, was published by Fremantle Arts Centre

Press in 1997.’ Golden Summers contains excerpts from the work of two additional

writers, Kim Scott and T. A. G. Hungerford, but the content is otherwise unchanged

from the 1997 publication of Golden Harvest. It still does not specify outside the

Contributors’ Notes the Western Australian connections of all the writers. Again, it

must be said that this occasion clearly marks a new phase in the conversation about

literary regionalism in Australia. However, it also signals a continued interest in

221B. R. Coffey, ed., Blokes: Stories from Australian Lives (South Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press,

1998).222B. R. Coffey, ed., Summer Days: Stories from Childhood (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press,

1999).223B. R. Coffey, ed., Rough with the Smooth: Stories of Australian Men (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre

Press, 2000).224B. R. Coffey, ed., Golden Summers: Stories of Australian Lives (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre

Press, 2004).

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Western Australian writers, even if the reader is unaware that what she is reading is

‘Western Australian’.

Other anthologies that follow a similar pattern of publishing only Western

Australian writers but not identifying them as such, and are not part of the

aforementioned two series, include Sibling Stories (1997)225 and The Child is Wise:

Stories of Childhood (2005).226 Of course, these two anthologies, as well as the series of

anthologies published between 1996 and 2000 (with one outlying anthology published

in 2004), could be said to be specialised regional publications—that is, publications that

deal with the region, but also have another and more specific focus that can overwhelm

the region (for example, siblings or childhood). The focus of the most prominent

Western Australian publishing house on this type of regional anthology in the period

since 1989, as opposed to the more traditionally conceived regional anthology

commonly published in the previous two decades, is perhaps symptomatic of a

declining interest in regional anthologies. This declining interest could be either

instigating or responding to a decline in critical and popular interest in issues related to

literary regionalism in Australia.

A total of 13 regional anthologies were published in Western Australia during the

1970s and ‘80s, whereas only two had been published in the previous 150 years of

white settlement. Since the end of the 1980s, not a single literature anthology has been

published that explicitly acknowledges it is composed of Western Australian writers.

Considering the central role Western Australian book publishing has played in the

cultivation of a regional literature in Australia, the current practices of the state’s

publishing houses raise questions about the future of Australian literary regionalism.

225Barbara Holland, ed., Sibling Stories (South Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1997).226Janet Blagg, ed., The Child is Wise: Stories of Childhood (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press,2005).

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Chapter 3

Regional literature: A new working definition

I. Preliminary definitions

The first two chapters of this thesis surveyed the history of critical interest in

literary regionalism in Australia—a feat necessarily including the contributions of many

writers and scholars. These individuals operated with more or less explicit definitions

of terms such as ‘the region’ and ‘regional literature’. Their definitions were not always

internally consistent, much less consistent with the definitions employed by other

writers and scholars, nor were they always clearly articulated. However, now it is time

to define these terms in a fashion that supersedes all previous definitions and can be

used for the remainder of the thesis.

Specifically, in this chapter I will define both ‘literature’ and ‘the region’. I will

also define my timeline, which is to say I will explain why this thesis focuses on the

period from 1970 to the present in its discussion of the production and publication of a

regional literature in Western Australia. Finally, towards the end of the chapter, I will

define the terms ‘regional literature’ and ‘regional publishing’.

A. ‘Literature’

Literary theorists such as Terry Eagleton have questioned the use of genre alone

to define ‘literature’. Instead, he suggests that ‘social ideologies’ play an integral role in

the definition of this term:

What we have uncovered ... is not only that literature does not exist inthe sense that insects do, and that value-judgements by which it isconstituted are historically variable, but that these value-judgementsthemselves have a close relation to social ideologies. They refer in theend not simply to private taste, but to the assumptions by which certaingroups exercise and maintain power over others.227

227Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction, 2d ed. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,

1996), 14.

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Eagleton, a Marxist, is interested in defining literature as something that is neither

objective, nor ‘just what people whimsically choose to call literature’.228 He

understands the application of this label as a value judgement, subject to the forces of

culture, class, gender, and myriad other factors, including contemporary fashion as

defined by the cultural elite. Or, as he expresses it elsewhere, ‘One can think of

literature less as some inherent quality or set of qualities displayed by certain kinds of

writing all the way from Beowulf to Virginia Woolf, than as a number of ways in which

people relate themselves to writing.’229

I pay due, but admittedly brief, attention to this argument and its counter-critics,

including Harold Bloom. By convention, this debate about the definition of literature is

unending; a book could be written on the subject—indeed, several have been—and still

it would not provide encompassing coverage. Nonetheless, there is at least one more

theoretical stance on the definition of literature that is deserving of attention for its

relevance to the subject matter and approach of this thesis:

The literary text is the product, first, of a writer who elects to write apoem, a drama or a prose fiction, itself a choice knowingly made withina cultural context which is also known to ascribe meaning to thesegenres. Second, it is the product of a reader who recognises, by way oftheir own ‘literary competence’, that what they are reading is indeed aliterary text. In this respect, the text is so indelibly inscribed by theseascriptive consciousnesses that we may say that one of its determinatecharacteristics is its sense of being ‘literary’.230

It is no coincidence Peter Widdowson has chosen the forms of ‘a poem, a drama or a

prose fiction’, to illustrate his definition of literature. Indeed, these are the forms a

reader most commonly ‘recognises’ as literature. Clearly, Widdowson’s and Eagleton’s

definitions of literature do not agree, as Eagleton would not tolerate the use of genre in

his definition. Nor would Eagleton abide such definitive criteria (specified as ‘first’ and

228Ibid.229Ibid., 8.230Peter Widdowson, Literature (London: Routledge, 1999), 96.

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‘second’) when discussing the production of a ‘literary text’, insisting instead that the

criteria are always subject to change with the shifting of cultural power.

To his credit, Widdowson is resistant to simplistic criteria, as well:

While accepting ... it is ‘futile’ to seek a ‘single linguistic criterion, or setof criteria’ for distinguishing ‘literary’ from ‘non-literary’ genres andtexts, I would argue that ‘literature’ as a concept retains a meaningfulcultural sense, and that is the functional one I work with here.231

Arguably, the ‘meaningful cultural sense’ of literature Widdowson alludes to is the same

one he identified earlier—‘a poem, a drama or a prose fiction’. Nonetheless, it is

notable that Widdowson’s definition remains open to the possibility of other forms

being addressed as literature. Distinctions of this sort between the ‘literary’ and ‘non-

literary’ will be ‘based principally on an assessment of the social and cultural effects of

“the literary” rather than on any attempt to locate intrinsic aesthetic or linguistic

characteristics of “literariness”’.232

In order to advance my argument about the concept of regional literature and its

production in Western Australia, I have chosen to adopt the basic tenets of Widdowson’s

definition of literature. Not coincidentally, it is one that is also embraced by many of

the most influential forces in book production—government funding bodies for the arts,

publishing houses, the ‘general reader’, and so forth. In other words, my choice of a

definition of literature is informed, at least in part, by its functional or practical

prospects.

These prospects can be illustrated using the example of Andrew Taylor’s report

when he was engaged by the Western Australian Minister for the Arts to undertake a

review of ‘the investment of [the Western Australian] Government in publishing and

literary works’.233 This review, submitted to the Government in June 1995, of necessity

231Ibid., 16.232Ibid., 94.233Andrew Taylor, ‘Review into the Investment of Government in the Publishing of Literary Works’,Report for the Government of Western Australia, June 1995, 2.

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provides highly specific definitions for the terms it employs, the most notable of which

is the term ‘literary’:

For this Review, it was decided to use the Literature Board’s definition of‘literary’ as meaning ‘fiction, drama, poetry, autobiography, biography,essays, histories, literary criticism or other expository and analyticalprose’ (Black, 1994, Evaluation of Book Subsidies Program, p. 19) withthe added conditions that these should not have a predominantlyacademic, educational, governmental, trade or business orientation orstyle, and that they should be able to participate in a broadly based, asdistinct from a narrowly specialist, cultural debate.234

This is a pragmatic definition designed to capture what might be funded by the

Government. Considering Taylor is writing about the ‘investment of Government in the

publishing of literary works’ in Western Australia, and I am writing about the

‘production of a regional literature in Western Australia’, it would seem appropriate that

we adopt the same definition of literature. The ‘investment of Government’ is, after all,

a significant factor in the production of a regional literature.

However, Taylor’s definition includes one significant inconsistency. He includes

‘essays, histories, literary criticism or other expository and analytical prose’ in his

definition of ‘literary’, and yet later stipulates that ‘these should not have a

predominantly academic, educational, governmental, trade or business orientation or

style’. Further, he states that ‘they should be able to participate in a broadly based, as

distinct from a narrowly specialist, cultural debate’. Yet, it would seem that ‘essays,

histories, literary criticism or other expository and analytical prose’ very rarely

‘participate in a broadly based ... cultural debate’. In fact, these forms are in almost

every real-life application, if not by actual definition, ‘academic’ or ‘educational’. In

Widdowson’s words, these are not the forms a reader most commonly ‘recognises’ as

literature.

Consequently, for the purposes of this study, literature will be understood as

comprising fiction, poetry, drama, and life-writing. Other forms of writing, such as

234Ibid., 3.

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‘essays, histories, literary criticism or other expository and analytical prose’, will not be

investigated within this framework, except in those rare instances when individual titles

can be shown to ‘participate in a broadly based, as distinct from a narrowly specialist,

cultural debate’. For example, Jenny Gregory’s City of Light: A History of Perth since

the 1950s, while it is quite clearly a history book, does ‘not have a predominantly

academic [or] educational ... orientation or style’ and participates ‘in a broadly based ...

cultural debate’, as testified by its robust sales figures.235 Therefore, according to my

own definition, it is considered within the scope of this thesis as a work of literature.

There are many history books, in particular, published in Western Australia that

represent exceptions of this sort, but there are many more that do not; therefore, the

above definition of literature remains a useful tool for differentiating these types of

publications.

I will discuss both book and electronic publishing of the forms that comply with

my definition of literature. Those forms that exist outside this scope will, of course,

serve as references and guideposts for my study.

B. ‘The region’

As was discussed in Chapter 1, ‘the region’ in Australia has been defined in

many different ways. An exceedingly brief review of these reveals one of the earliest to

be a dichotomy between the city and the bush. This particular way of understanding

Australia’s physical environment and identifying borders within it (that could be seen to

constitute regions) persisted strongly for many years and still, to some extent, persists

today. Yet, it was superseded (at least in the scholarly conversation) by alternative

formulations of the region, including the identification of borders along state lines and

borders within states; for example, in Western Australia there is the Kimberley, the

235Jenny Gregory, City of Light: A History of Perth since the 1950s (Perth: City of Perth, 2003).

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Wheatbelt, the Goldfields, and so forth. A later formulation posited a division between

the centre and the periphery, thereby instigating a discussion about the influence of

proximity and access to publishing houses and other such features on the development

of a regional literature.

This last formulation represented the greatest advance to date in the conversation

about literary regionalism in Australia, and yet the physical environment was still

perceived as the most important facet of literary regionalism. However, around the

same time as this was happening, a few scholars and writers hinted at a new direction

for the study of this subject. This (largely unrealised) formulation of literary

regionalism stressed the importance of the reader over that of the physical environment.

It was a response to recent changes of emphasis in literary theory, including the

increasing popularity of reader-response criticism.

The definition of ‘the region’ that will be used for the remainder of this thesis—

and that is most relevant to its discussion of the production of a regional literature in

Western Australia—takes as its starting point this emphasis on the role of the reader. In

other words, the reader’s sense of the region and its borders is privileged above other

ways in which these might be conceived, including the formulations mentioned in the

previous two paragraphs. From here, I advance the discussion by noting that it is not

only those who read who contribute to a sense of the region. Everyone associated with

the region in question, particularly past and present residents, will—as long as they can

be said to make conscious choices—participate in the conversation about what exactly

defines the region, not just the reader.

Drawing as it does on the residents’ sense of it, the region can be defined by ‘a

sense of “identification” or “consciousness of kind” which the inhabitants of a particular

regional area feel for that region and/or for their fellow inhabitants of that region’.236

236Ralph Matthews, The Creation of Regional Dependency (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983),

17–18.

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This understanding of the region as defined by a ‘sense of “identification”’ shared by

those associated with the region (and, in particular, residents of the region), forces one

to reconceive other, more commonly held notions of what defines the region. For

example, Doreen Massey cautions against ‘thinking of places as areas with boundaries

around’, and instead suggests that ‘a “place” is formed out of the particular set of social

relations which interact at a particular location’.237 Notably, Massey uses the term

‘place’ where I have chosen to use ‘region’, but she nonetheless successfully illustrates

the movement away from the notion of the region as grounded primarily in the physical

environment. She continues:

Instead then, of thinking of places as areas with boundaries around theycan be imagined as articulated moments in networks of social relationsand understandings, but where a large proportion of those relations,experiences and understandings are constructed on a far larger scale thanwhat we happen to define for that moment as the place itself, whetherthat be a street, or a region or even a continent. And this in turn allows asense of place which is extroverted, which includes a consciousness ofits links with the wider world, which integrates in a positive way theglobal and the local.238

Rather than taking its cue from and being formed out of the physical environment,

Massey claims that a definition of the region is ‘formed out of the particular set of social

relations which interact at a particular location’, a process which begins and ultimately

ends with the residents of the region in question. This is remarkably similar to the

observation that the region is defined by a ‘sense of “identification”’ shared by those

associated with it, particularly residents of the region.

Yet, Massey also observes in the above excerpt that, while the residents of the

region in question might be the ones sitting at the table where the conversation about a

definition of the region is being had, it would seem there are other parties sitting at their

elbows. National and international media, as well as creative work from writers, artists

and filmmakers, which originate outside the region in question but find their way in—as

237Doreen Massey, Space, Place and Gender (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994), 154–55, 168–69.238Ibid., 154–55.

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much does in these often sparsely populated areas—can significantly impact on a

definition of the region. Of course, residents of the region in question have the final

word in all such matters, including determining which voices from outside the region

are allowed to participate in the conversation about what defines the region—although

residents might not always be aware this is what they are doing, or the implications of

their decisions.

Massey also makes the important observation that ‘the identities of places are

inevitably unfixed’:

They are unfixed in part precisely because the social relations out ofwhich they are constructed are themselves by their very nature dynamicand changing. They are also unfixed because of the continual productionof further social effects through the very juxtaposition of those socialrelations.239

Since ‘social relations’, which are so essential in a definition of the region, are by their

very nature ‘dynamic and changing’, a given definition of the region is also subject to

change. These changes can be brought about by any number of factors, including

population change (increase or decrease in the birth rate, an influx of new residents,

especially if they differ from the current population in an observable fashion); a change

in the local economy (‘boom or bust’, technological changes in the means or mode of

production); or the sudden rise to prominence of a notable or controversial figure

(politician, writer, filmmaker).

Of course, the effects of these sorts of occurrences are not limited to the bounds

of the region in which they occur. For example, a large migration of people to

Queensland will affect not only Queensland, but will also affect the states from which

these people originated (in this example, typically Victoria and New South Wales).

Another example from Queensland reveals how the election of Pauline Hanson and the

One Nation party to the House of Representatives changed the way in which

239Ibid., 168–69.

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Queensland, at least for a time, defined itself as a region, but it also changed the way

Australia as a whole thought of itself. In Western Australia, the establishment and

subsequent success of Fremantle Arts Centre Press in the promotion of Western

Australian literature has been instrumental in changing eastern state perceptions of the

arts in Western Australia from a sort of provincial backwater, to a literary and cultural

hub. It has also changed the way other regions in Australia (for example, South

Australia and Queensland) think about and approach issues of regional publishing and

regional literature, which then impacts on their definition of the region.

Clearly, it is a mistake to think of the region and regional identity as defined by a

single factor—the physical environment:

Instead of presuming organic links among people, culture, and territory—‘Texans are individualistic and bold because of the rugged, openlandscape’ or ‘Tasmanians are reserved because they are located so closeto the cold winds of Antarctica’—we must instead ask how suchcommon sense is produced. By analysing how the imagination shapesand delimits the physical world, we gain insight into the political workachieved by assumptions about environmental determinism and into howspatial practices in turn generate certain social and political orders.240

Allaine Cerwonka insists that it is the ‘imagination [which] shapes and delimits the

physical world’, rather than a direct correlation between the region, regional identity,

and the physical environment. Of course, Cerwonka is not the only person to invoke the

concept of imagination with reference to the ‘physical world’:

In his analysis of the terms by which nations originally becamesignificant political communities, Benedict Anderson notes that nationsare constructed through an imagined organic connection between people,culture, and place. Historically, this imagined organic connection wasachieved through the development of maps, museums, and the census, allof which helped delineate a ‘people’, and narrate its cultural andhistorical connection with the territory claimed by the nation-state.241

In Australia, the nation is not the only ‘imagined community’. In fact, a powerfully

‘imagined organic connection between people, culture, and place’ exists on a regional

240Allaine Cerwonka, Native to the Nation: Disciplining Landscapes and Bodies in Australia

(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), 5–6.241Ibid., 2.

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level in Australia. Similar to the ‘connection’ with the nation described above, this

regional connection is ‘achieved through the development of maps, museums, and the

census’. Often, these ‘maps, museums, and the census’ are products of the state (as

opposed to the nation, or any sub-region within the state), so the state becomes a source

of regional identity. This particular sense of the region is enhanced by a variety of other

factors, including those as various as Bennett’s aforementioned ‘physical geography,

regional administration and functional land-use’. Also, sport plays a significant role in

the establishment and reinforcement of a state-based regional identity in Australia. In

fact, the state in Australia is an especially powerful source of identity, with which

residents often feel ‘a sense of “identification” or “consciousness of kind” ... for that

region and/or for their fellow inhabitants of that region’.

To put it as simply as possible: state borders are a convenient way in which ‘the

[Australian] imagination shapes and delimits the physical world’. More so than sub-

regions within the state, or any other formulation of the region in Australia, state

borders are the most commonly recognised marker of regional borders. Therefore, this

thesis uses state borders—in particular, the borders of the state of Western Australia—to

represent the region, since there is a ‘sense of “identification”’ shared by those

associated with Western Australia, particularly residents of Western Australia.

C. My timeline

This study of the production of a regional literature in Western Australia is

concentrated on the period from 1970 until the present day. There are many reasons for

this timeline, not the least of which is that there was very little book publishing in

Western Australia prior to 1970, much less publication of books that meet the

aforementioned qualifications to be considered literature. Of the three publishing

houses examined in-depth in this thesis, only one existed prior to 1970; University of

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Western Australia Press was established in 1935 as University of Western Australia Text

Books Board.

Only a very limited amount of University of Western Australia Press’s

publishing programme prior to 1970 falls within the parameters of the definition of

literature employed in this thesis. According to this definition, only work that can be

shown to ‘participate in a broadly based, as distinct from a narrowly specialist, cultural

debate’ is considered literature, thereby exempting most ‘essays, histories, literary

criticism or other expository and analytical prose’. Jenny Gregory notes in her

introduction to A Press in Isolation: University of Western Australia Press 1935–2004,

that ‘textbooks had been an integral part of the Press’s early publishing history.

However, in the 1970s, as the Press increasingly focussed on publishing in the

humanities, the idea of the textbook gradually began to fall out of favour in that area.’242

Thus, University of Western Australia Press began publishing in the 1970s a small but

slowly increasing number of books that could be said to ‘participate in a broadly based,

as distinct from a narrowly specialist, cultural debate’.

Excepting the few works published by University of Western Australia Press that

could be considered literature, the publication of literature in Western Australia in the

period prior to 1970 was almost exclusively carried out by the literary journal Westerly

(established in 1956). Furthermore, community newspapers in the late 19th and early

20th centuries regularly published poetry and short stories, unlike most contemporary

newspapers. In other words, literature was the stuff of periodical publication, rather

than book publication, in Western Australia up until approximately the early 1970s. A

possible exception to this rule is Paterson’s Press, which was based in Perth and

published at least 75 works of literature in the period between 1916 and 1963; however,

242Gregory, introduction to A Press in Isolation: University of Western Australia Press 1935–2004, byCriena Fitzgerald (Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 2005), 5.

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it is not known how effectively these works were distributed or how they were

received.243 Nonetheless, 1970 roughly demarcates a major shift in the production of a

regional literature in Western Australia.

Of course, as has already been detailed in Chapters 1 and 2 of this thesis, the

1980s represent the heyday of interest in the subject of literary regionalism in Australia.

This section attempts to demonstrate, however, that any consideration of these interests

must begin in the early 1970s. Changes beginning in the 1970s laid the groundwork

necessary for this later burgeoning of interest in the subject. Government initiatives at

both the state and federal levels, especially as they related to the Australia Council and

its Literature Board, as well as Western Australia’s sesquicentenary celebrations and the

Australian bicentennial, were particularly influential in determining this timeline. These

changes are charted in the ‘Government as an instrument in the field of cultural

production’ subsection of this chapter.

Another reason for beginning my timeline with this date is that it roughly marks

a significant shift in the culture of literary criticism and literary theory in Australia. I go

into greater detail on this subject in the section titled ‘Literary theory’, but for now it is

important to note that

formalism, in the guise of New Criticism as a teaching practice, wasmost strong and persuasive in the Cold War years, and ... since then, andparticularly from the latter 1970s, it’s been losing its grip on theprofession.244

The displacement of formalism made room for literary theories that are far more

amenable to literary regionalism. In fact, Sneja Gunew maintains that ‘thinking about

cultural difference in an Australian context began around 1979, when questions of

“positionality” or “perspectivism” were just beginning to stimulate a major debate in

243‘Paterson’s Press’, in Austlit: The Australian Literature Resource (20 Feb. 2008, accessed 13 July2008); available from http://www.austlit.edu.au.244John Docker, In a Critical Condition: Reading Australian Literature (Ringwood: Penguin, 1984), 210.

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cultural studies.’245 Gunew is referring specifically to ‘[multi-]cultural difference in an

Australian context’ (emphasis mine), but the timeline she sketches is also relevant to

regional difference. After all, ‘positionality’ is of obvious importance in the study of

regionalism. Gunew inadvertently demonstrates this when she writes that

‘postmodernist and post-colonialist debates ... have undoubtedly precipitated a wide-

spread acceptance of the fact that positionality—where you stand in relation to what you

say—is central to the construction of knowledge’.246 The very essence of literary

regionalism would seem to be connected to this idea of ‘where you stand in relation to

what you say’ that found acceptance in the Australian literary critical community only in

the 1970s.

II. Cultural studies

My research into the production of a regional literature in Western Australia

draws upon many different disciplinary approaches, including book history, print culture

studies and publishing studies, as well as literary studies and cultural studies. This

variety of approaches enables a fuller understanding of the subject matter, including

aspects as various as literary criticism and theory, the history of a publishing house, the

economics of book publishing, and the role of visual elements such as cover design in

the production of a regional literature. It is possible, however, to understand these

diverse ‘genres’ of research and writing as all having a place under the interdisciplinary

banner of cultural studies. In fact, this arrangement is in many ways preferable to

conceiving of the various types of research that compose this thesis as originating in

wholly separate disciplines, thereby reducing the chances of productive exchange. It is

necessary, then, to better understand the field of cultural studies, as well as the terms

245Sneja Gunew, Framing Marginality: Multicultural Literary Studies (Carlton: Melbourne University

Press, 1994), 5.246Ibid., 1.

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‘culture’ and ‘cultural value’, especially since these terms have already been employed

in my definitions of both ‘literature’ and ‘the region’.

The following excerpt from Chris Jenks goes a long way towards defining

‘culture’ as the word is used in this thesis:

The concept of culture implies a relationship with the accumulatedshared symbols representative of and significant within a particularcommunity, what we might describe as a context-dependant [sic]semiotic system. Culture, however, is not simply residue, it is ... inprogress; it processes and reveals as it structures and contains. Culture isthe way of life and the manner of living of a people. It is often conflatedwith the idea of high culture; this is an understanding both too restrictiveand too exclusive.247

In this excerpt, Jenks makes several important observations. First, that culture (like the

definition of ‘the region’ discussed above) is subject to change. Second, (again like the

region) it is defined according to those associated with it—the ‘way of life and manner

of living of a people’. Finally, that culture should not be confused with ‘high culture’.

Clearly, the terms ‘culture’ and ‘the region’ have a lot in common; this is because the

region is defined by the culture of its residents and those associated with it.

While this definition of culture is hardly new (T. S. Eliot, for example, used it in

Notes towards a Definition of Culture in 1948), it gained prominence alongside the

popularisation of cultural studies as a field of critical enquiry. The latter occasion

transpired ‘over no more than the past thirty years, initially in Britain and then ... North

America and Australia’.248 Since its inception (or at least its acceptance by the

academy), cultural studies has been imagined as interdisciplinary. In other words,

cultural studies ‘is best viewed as an interdisciplinary clearing house within the

humanities providing a useful interface at which the concerns of different disciplines,

and of other interdisciplinary knowledges, can enter into fruitful forms of dialogue’.249

247Chris Jenks, Culture (London: Routledge, 1993), 121.

248Ibid., 151.249Tony Bennett, ‘Cultural Studies’, in Discipline Surveys, vol. 2 in Knowing Ourselves and Others: The

Humanities in Australia into the 21st Century, ed. Reference Group for the Australian Academy of theHumanities (Canberra: Australian Research Council, 1998), 79.

128

This is, of course, the reason why cultural studies provides a useful interdisciplinary

home for the types of research undertaken in this thesis.

Yet, cultural studies has always had a particularly strong relationship with the

discipline of social anthropology. This should not be surprising, as culture has been

defined as the ‘way of life and manner of living of a people’, which is close to the

interests of social anthropology. In fact, these interests have characterised cultural

studies from its earliest days:

We can point to two features that characterised [cultural studies] when itfirst appeared in Great Britain in the 1950s. It concentrated on‘subjectivity’, which means that it studies culture in relation to individuallives, breaking with social scientific positivism or ‘objectivism’. ... Thesecond distinguishing characteristic of early cultural studies was that itwas an engaged form of analysis. Early cultural studies did not flinchfrom the fact that societies are structured unequally, that individuals arenot all born with the same access to education, money, health-care, etc.,and it worked in the interests of those who have fewest resources. ...These two defining features of early cultural studies were closelyconnected because it is at the level of the individual life that the culturaleffects of social inequality are most apparent.250

This excerpt makes it clear why cultural studies is an appropriate mode in which to

study the production of a regional literature—both cultural studies and literary

regionalism are marked by their responsiveness to ‘subjectivity’ and to instances of an

unevenly structured society. The connection between literary regionalism and the

former feature (that is, ‘subjectivity’) should be clear, given earlier discussions about

the region as ‘formed out of the particular set of social relations which interact at a

particular location’. As for the latter feature, Part III (‘Defining “regional literature”

and “regional publishing”’) of this chapter demonstrates that the producers of regional

literature examined in this thesis are (almost by definition) also ‘those who have the

fewest resources’ in an unevenly structured society. Accordingly, a cultural studies

approach should work in the interests of literary regionalism.

250Simon During, ed., The Cultural Studies Reader (London: Routledge, 1993), 1–2.

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The above excerpt also explains why cultural studies has for so long been

perceived as an advocate of popular culture—traditionally, popular culture has few

‘resources’ inside the halls of academia. However, if cultural studies has established a

clear linkage with popular culture, then the term ‘culture’ (as opposed to ‘cultural

studies’) seems to have kept its distance:

It is taken for granted that certain forms of culture are worthy ofnurturing for the sake of an imagined national cultural identity. Itdoesn’t seem to matter that very few people participate, enjoy and haveaccess to these forms, or that they exclude large numbers on account ofclass, race and ethnic cultural differences. Even those that are excludeddon’t usually question the need for national opera, ballet, theatrecompanies and symphony orchestras to be supported with public money.According to the Australia Council (1986), ‘95 per cent of Australianssay that the success of our artists and performers give Australians a senseof pride in our achievements’.251

Clearly, the terms ‘culture’ and ‘high culture’ have once again been conflated, if not by

the author of this excerpt, then by the Australia Council. When this happens, regional

interests (including regional literature) are commonly perceived as being outside the

realm of high culture, since they are regional and therefore not ‘worthy of nurturing for

the sake of an imagined national cultural identity’ (emphasis mine). It would seem

these interests need an advocate in the arts and perhaps also academia. The field of

cultural studies, as an interdisciplinary advocate of the ‘interests of those who have

fewest resources’ and of popular culture rather than high culture, is the perfect candidate

for this role.

The following sections use cultural studies as a critical and theoretical lens

through which to examine several subjects designed to build a case for a new definition

of regional literature and regional publishing. Changes in literary theory are shown to

have laid the necessary groundwork for use of the concept of a ‘field of cultural

production’ in this thesis, thereby taking into account the contributions of writers,

251Diane Powell, ‘Bunging It On: Public Manners and Private Taste’, in Australian Communications and

the Public Sphere, ed. Helen Wilson (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1989), 234–35.

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editors, publishers, government arts organisations, the media, readers, and so forth, in

the production of any cultural work including, obviously, the production of a regional

literature. Specific contributions from the field of cultural production that are examined

include government, publishing and ‘paratext’, as they influence the production of a

regional literature in Western Australia. A final section on ‘minority literature’

considers the manner in which significance is assessed (and who makes this

assessment), thus re-establishing the importance of the concepts of culture and cultural

value to this study.

A. Literary theory

It is a difficult task to trace the history of an idea or theory, and yet most literary

scholars would agree that ‘in this century, in English-speaking countries, it is text-

centric formalism which has held the institutional power, and for this reason has become

the orthodoxy, the ideologically dominant approach’.252 In Australia, ‘text-centric

formalism’ has adopted various guises, but it is most apparent in the critical vestments

of New Criticism and Leavisism. A basic summary of these two closely linked,

formalist theories goes like this:

The New Critical and Leavisite project has certainly been liberating forcriticism, particularly in its insistence on the autonomy of the text, thetext’s freedom from history and its own creator. New Criticism andLeavisism allow for the detailed inner investigation of the text’s actualworkings and modes and aesthetic shape and dramatised meanings.Further, the stress on detailed study of texts is necessary as only suchdetailed analysis can provide evidence for an argument.253

While this definition of the two literary theories is largely positive—stressing what the

theories do, rather than what they do not do—the latter is more typical. In fact, the basic

rules of New Criticism and Leavisism are frequently explained as a list of Don’ts, each

of which is called a ‘fallacy’.

252Docker, 84.253Ibid., 48.

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The ‘imitative fallacy’ states that literature is not to be understood as a reflection

of social reality or history, but rather as existing only in relation to other texts. In other

words, ‘it supposes the existence of some absolute quality in great poetry that

transcends the conditions of particular cultural contexts’.254 The ‘intentional fallacy’

states that ‘literary meaning’ is located ‘in the formal features of the text, rather than in

the author’s intention’.255 This is almost identical to Roland Barthes’s theory of the

‘death of the author’: ‘Whereas the New Critics, following Eliot, have talked of the

Intentional Fallacy, Barthes adopts the flashy phrase, the author is dead, but the meaning

is so similar it doesn’t signify.’256 This similarity is, of course, due to the fact that New

Criticism and Leavisism, as well as Barthes’s structuralism (and the later post-

structuralism and deconstructionism), are all text-based formalist criticisms.

Clearly, New Criticism and Leavisism have much in common, not the least of

which is their shared desire to isolate texts ‘from their cultural and historical

contexts’.257 It is believed these are the only circumstances in which the text’s ‘true’

meaning, or an accurate assessment of its ‘literary “greatness”’, can be determined.258

However, it is important to note that New Critics and Leavisites do not want to isolate

the text from its ‘cultural and historical contexts’ as completely as depicted by some

critics. In fact, as René Wellek observes, it would seem that as a result of these critics’

comments,

a straw man is set up: the New Critic, who supposedly denies that a workof art can be illuminated by historical knowledge at all. It is then easy toshow that poems have been misunderstood because the meaning of anobsolete word was missed or a historical or biographical allusion ignoredor misread. But I do not believe that there ever was a single reputable‘New’ critic who has taken the position imputed to him. The New Critics... have argued that a literary work of art is a verbal structure of a certaincoherence and wholeness, and that literary study had often become

254David Lodge, 20th Century Literary Criticism: A Reader (London: Longman, 1972), 291.

255David Lodge, Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader (New York: Longman, 1988), 310.

256Docker, 185.257Eagleton, 37.258Ibid.

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completely irrelevant to this total meaning, that it had moved all toooften into external information about biography, social conditions,historical backgrounds, etc. But this argument of the New Critics did notmean and could not be conceived to mean a denial of the relevance ofhistorical information for the business of poetic interpretation.259

Even if the New Critics (and to this I would add the Leavisites, even though Wellek

does not mention them) are not interested in an absolute, all-encompassing ‘denial of

the relevance of historical information for the business of poetic interpretation’, it is fair

to say that they are interested in ‘objectivity in criticism, by eliminating as far as

possible all evidence extraneous to the text, the “words on the page”’ (emphasis

mine).260 Furthermore, they demand a high level of rigour, aspiring ‘to make literary

criticism a more precise and objective discipline’.261 This view is typical of formalist

criticism.

Other conventions of formalist criticism (a broadly defined critical category

encompassing far more than just New Criticism and Leavisism, though these arguably

form its backbone) include the view that

all these supposed explanatory contexts are just more and disguisedversions of the author, who should be dismissed from view, should be‘dead’ (the Intentional Fallacy). For the text exists not in the intentionsof the author, or as a reflection of society.262

Clearly, the formalists are not amenable to a contextualist approach to literary criticism.

Or, as Docker put it in 1984, ‘In Foucault’s terms, the textcentric, formalist Leavisites

and New Critics constitute a “regime of truth”, a regime that in the main has

successfully warded off the challenge of contextual approaches.’263

Yet, the formalist ‘regime’ has not remained entirely unchallenged:

In the 20th century, contextualism has lived on mainly in the form of theFreudian approach ..., the Marxist ..., and, in Australia, the radical

259René Wellek, ‘Literary Theory, Criticism and History’, in 20th Century Literary Criticism: A Reader,

ed. David Lodge (London: Longman, 1972), 555.260Lodge, 20th Century Literary Criticism, 70.

261Lodge, Modern Criticism and Theory, 15.

262Docker, 85.263Ibid., 83.

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nationalist (rejected as reducing Australian literature to certain presumeddistinctive characteristics of popular consciousness and theenvironment).264

The prominence of the radical nationalist approach with regard to Australian literature is

debatable. Almost certainly, it has less influence today that it did in 1984 when Docker

authored the above excerpt. But self-apparent ‘facts’ have a history of being unable to

stymie this debate about the role of radical nationalism in Australian society:

Somehow or other—mainly by saying it so loudly and so often—theview is sustained that the literary nationalists were, are, and always willbe the critical orthodoxy in Australia, and the New Critics/Leavisites willalways be admirable and daring for taking on such a powerful orthodoxyand pointing to serious qualifications, doubts, neglected areas, and newinterpretations. What’s never explained is: how can they, themetaphysical orthodox, who occupy the positions of power and influencein university teaching, not be the orthodoxy, the ascendant group?265

One of the reasons why formalist literary theorists in Australia have been so successful

in painting themselves as the underdogs struggling for recognition against the forces of

the radical nationalist orthodoxy, is that this contextualist approach has been (until

recently) largely going it alone in the Australian literary theoretical wilderness, making

it an easy target. Other contextualist approaches, such as the Freudian approach and

Marxism (both mentioned by Docker as being the main challengers to formalism in the

20th century), have had relatively few proponents in Australia. More recent

contextualist approaches include book history, print culture studies and publishing

studies, which have already been mentioned as constituting an integral part of the

disciplinary map of the types of research that constitute this thesis. However, as was

detailed in the Introduction to this thesis, these particular scholarly methods have only

the briefest of histories in Australian academia.

Some of the features Docker identifies as ‘limitations of the radical nationalists’

contextual approach to cultural history and literary criticism’, are equally relevant to

264Ibid., 84.265Ibid., 164.

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these more recent contextualist approaches—book history, print culture studies and

publishing studies:266

The first problem is that it is contextual usually at the expense ofdetailed analyses of texts, which means also that it doesn’t usuallyprovide evidence for its assertions. It doesn’t, that is, usually combinecontextual and textual analysis in the one critical moment, and so ascriticism in particular it remains unsatisfactory. A second limitation liesprecisely in the historicist premise that a literary or cultural period canpossess a single unified essential spirit, which in turn is the reflection ofan essential spirit in the society or natural environment. ... But theaesthetic diversity, plurality, conflict, and contradictions of an age cannotbe compressed in this way.267

Clearly, if these claims are to be believed, the radical nationalist approach to literary

criticism is deeply flawed. In particular, the premise that ‘a literary or cultural period

can possess a single unified essential spirit, which in turn is the reflection of an essential

spirit in the society or natural environment’, is deeply troubling. Such attempts at

generalisation or essentialisation are frequently the downfall of contextualist literary

theory, which, as was noted above, ‘doesn’t usually provide evidence for its assertions’.

Book history, print culture studies and publishing studies do not essentialise as much as

the radical nationalist approach to literary criticism, but when poorly handled are

equally liable to provide contextual analysis ‘at the expense of detailed analyses of

texts’, thus overlooking the productive combination of ‘contextual and textual analysis

in the one critical moment’.

Nonetheless, a contextualist literary theory (though not the particular brand of

contextualism associated with radical nationalism) is better suited than a formalist

literary theory to the particular study undertaken in this thesis. After all,

formalism is very limited in its aims. It sets out to describe and evoke,rather than to explain. For the contextualists, the reverse is true: the textis to be seen in its relationship to something else, a preferred context,whatever it might be, that will help explicate a work’s character. ... Forthe formalist, history refers to the relationship between a text and allother texts—to ‘inter-textuality’—and historical time is not the

266Ibid., 37.267Ibid., 37–38.

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relationship of a text to a specific social history since all literary texts areseen as simultaneously present.

Consequently, contextualists and formalists differ in theirapproach to the question of disciplines and degree of specialisation. ...Contextualists are more likely to try to be interdisciplinary, to desire towork with non-critics in a common attack on the problems of culturalanalysis and explanation.268

Clearly, this thesis involves a contextualist approach, since it analyses literature in

relation to regionality in a particular time period; if it assessed ‘all literary texts ... as

simultaneously present’, there would be no need for a timeline. Also, this thesis draws

upon material and approaches unique to cultural studies, which (as noted above) is an

interdisciplinary field, and a contextualist approach to literary theory is better equipped

to handle interdisciplinarity.

More specifically, my research into the production of a regional literature in

Western Australia adopts as its theoretical framework the particular contextualist

approach known as ‘reader-response criticism’. Jane P. Tompkins defines reader-

response criticism as

not a conceptually unified critical position, but a term that has come tobe associated with the work of critics who use the words reader, thereading process, and response to mark out an area for investigation. Inthe context of Anglo-American criticism, the reader-response movementarises in direct opposition to the New Critical dictum.269

In this excerpt, reader-response criticism is not defined as a ‘conceptually unified

critical position’, but rather as host to any number of related but ultimately diverse

critical opinions. Nonetheless, there is agreement within this field of diverse critical

opinions about ‘the assertion that all discourse is ‘interested”’, which

amounts to a reinsertion of literature into the stream of ordinarydiscourse from which formalism had removed it. The New Critics hadobjected to confusing the poem with its results in order to separateliterature from other kinds of discourse and to give criticism an objectivebasis for its procedures. The later reader-response critics deny thatcriticism has such an objective basis because they deny the existence of

268Ibid., 85.269Jane P. Tompkins, ed., Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism (Baltimore:

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), ix.

136

objective texts and indeed the possibility of objectivity altogether.Relocating meaning first in the reader’s self and then in the interpretivestrategies that constitute it, they assert that meaning is a consequence ofbeing in a particular situation in the world.270

Clearly, reader-response criticism is a contextualist criticism; there are few more

straight-forward assertions of this fact than ‘that meaning is a consequence of being in a

particular situation in the world’. Nonetheless, it is worth noting that formalist

criticism, even as here defined, is also contextual, inasmuch as individual texts are seen

in relation to other texts (that is, the literary tradition). The most significant difference

between these two sorts of contextualism, however, is that the former is concerned with

the context of an individual text ‘in a particular situation in the world’, while the latter is

concerned with context only as it relates to other texts, which is but a single aspect of

the aforementioned ‘world’.

The above excerpt also states that ‘reader-response critics deny ... the possibility

of objectivity altogether’. This is an important observation, since any hint of objectivity

would render moot the definitions used in this thesis of terms such as ‘literature’ and

‘the region’; after all, these definitions rely on the assessment of cultural value.

Consequently, they are focussed on the role of the reader as the maker of meaning. Or,

as another scholar writes, ‘In considering a literary work, one must take into account not

only the actual text but also, in equal measure, the actions involved in responding to that

text.’271 These ‘actions’ are significant, because the meaning of a text could be said to

have ‘no effective existence outside of its realization in the mind of a reader’.272

Clearly, reader-response criticism is an important idea in the context of this discussion

of literary regionalism.

270Ibid.271Wolfgang Iser, ‘The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach’, in Reader-Response Criticism:

From Formalism to Post-Structuralism, ed. Jane P. Tompkins (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University

Press, 1980), 50.272Tompkins, ix.

137

In fact, parallels have been drawn between an increased interest in contextualist

literary theories such as reader-response criticism and ‘an awareness of regionality in

Australian literature’:273

One of the achievements of the orthodoxy in its prime in the late 1950sand ‘60s was to create a hierarchy of Australian literature which wascentred in Sydney and Melbourne. ... In the last few years, however,studies suggesting the continuing value and importance of the regionalliteratures previously despised (like the Jindyworobaks) or largelyignored (like the literature of Western Australia) have begun to appear.Here again, then, the orthodoxy is losing its once tight grip on what‘Australian literature’ should be taken to mean and how it should beapproached.274

In this excerpt, the ‘orthodoxy’ referred to by Docker is the New Critical and Leavisite

orthodoxy. In contrast, it is the emphasis on the realisation of textual meaning in the

reader that is driving the advent of ‘studies suggesting the continuing value and

importance of the regional literatures’.

However, interest in contextualist literary theory and the role of the reader can

be taken too far, thus undermining the credibility of reader-response criticism:

The next event in the drama of the reader’s emergence into criticalprominence is that instead of being seen as instrumental to theunderstanding of the text, the reader’s activity is declared to be identicalwith the text and therefore becomes itself the source of all literary value.If literature is what happens when we read, its value depends on thevalue of the reading process.275

The problem with this particular leap from the reader ‘being seen as instrumental to the

understanding of the text’, to the reader being seen as ‘the source of all literary value’, is

that it supersedes all the other contextual factors contributing to the production and

reception of any given work of literature. Just as formalists assert the superiority of the

text over all other considerations, the above excerpt asserts the superiority of the reader

over all other considerations. Both approaches to literary theory are equally short-

sighted.

273Docker, 178–79.274Ibid.275Tompkins, xvi.

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The assertion that the reader is ‘the source of all literary value’ does not account

for the aforementioned common sentiment among readers (and also among a particular

kind of literary theorist) ‘that “literature” as a concept retains a meaningful cultural

sense’, and this ‘sense’ is not limited to the effects of the reader on the text. Most

notably, the ‘meaningful cultural sense’ of literature still includes for the reader a

significant contribution from the author. A viable literary theory cannot claim to

identify the ‘reader’s activity’ as ‘the source of all literary value’, and yet ignore such a

fundamental component of this activity—the reader’s attribution of importance to

elements outside the reader’s influence, particularly the role of the author.

These elements, when acknowledged and respected by literary theorists, yield a

theory that maintains that

a text cannot be studied as a self-sufficient entity—we can’t be satisfiedwith merely studying its internal relations or its relationship exclusivelyto other texts. Ideally, we have to examine a text’s conditions ofproduction and consumption (or reception) as well as its specific internalreality. If we took film as our example, this kind of broad-rangingcritique would be clearly (one would think) necessary.276

Docker advocates neither a text-based formalist criticism, nor a criticism that only

accounts for a text’s ‘reception’. Instead, he proposes a more well-rounded

contextualist criticism, which examines ‘a text’s conditions of production and

consumption (or reception) as well as its specific internal reality’. With this approach

firmly in mind, the next section of this thesis considers the effects of some of these

‘conditions’ on the production of a regional literature in Western Australia.

B. Field of cultural production

My research is informed by many scholars, but notable among them is Pierre

Bourdieu, who devised the theory of a ‘field of cultural production’. In an article

276Docker, 208.

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published in the 2005 edition of Westerly, ‘Tim Winton, Cloudstreet and the

Field of Australian Literature’, Robert Dixon describes Bourdieu’s theory:

When Bourdieu talks about a field of cultural production, he means toidentify the entire set of institutions, personnel, practices and dispositionsthat work in combination to shape its possibilities and outcomes. In thecase of print culture, these include the publishing houses that produceand distribute books; the bodies that award literary prizes; thegovernment departments that give grants and frame cultural policy; theshops that sell books; the reading groups in which books are variouslydiscussed; the mass media that report on books and writers, includingnewspapers, radio and television; and the schools and universities, whichset courses, select some books and writers above others, and publishliterary criticism in scholarly journals.277

Each element of this ‘set of institutions, personnel, practices and dispositions’ can be

individually regarded as an ‘instrument’ (my term, not Bourdieu’s) of cultural

production. The aforementioned instruments are among those that work together to

shape the life of a book, from its production to reception. As a sociologist of culture,

however, Bourdieu uses case studies from the visual arts as well as literature. Yet, this

thesis concentrates almost exclusively on the application of Bourdieu’s theory to

literature and literary production.

Bourdieu’s theory of a field of cultural production necessitates the combination

of various modes of research and writing, all of which can be handled within the

framework of cultural studies. It also requires a contextualist literary theory, which

addresses literature as more than simply text existing in a social and cultural vacuum,

and instead considers the context of all the institutions that shape its production and

reception. Bennett describes both scenarios:

Literary activity is often perceived in terms of the lonely individualstruggling for self-expression. However, a more comprehensive andrealistic view includes writers, editors, publishers and readers in acontinual process of interaction—each adjusting to the demands of his orher chosen role in relation to the needs and requirements of others.278

277Robert Dixon, ‘Tim Winton, Cloudstreet and the Field of Australian Literature’, Westerly 50 (2005):

245.278Bruce Bennett, Cross Currents: Magazines and Newspapers in Australian Literature (Melbourne:

Longman Cheshire, 1981), ix.

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As argued earlier in this chapter, this particular combination of cultural studies

and contextualist literary theory is not the orthodoxy amongst Australian literary

scholars. Consequently, as was also mentioned earlier, book-length studies employing

this approach (and evidencing a nuanced understanding of the field of cultural

production as it contributes to the production and reception of literature) are rare.

Nonetheless, a few such books—all published within the last seven years—were

mentioned in the Introduction to this thesis.

It is important that literature is understood in the context of the publishing

industry and other instruments of cultural production. Of course, depending on what

they are attempting to demonstrate, some individuals will choose not to speak of

literature in these terms, and this is not necessarily wrong. Yet, it is important to bear in

mind that virtually all of the literature we receive and read today passes through and is

thus mediated by the publishing industry. To speak as if the two—literature and

publishing—were mutually exclusive is invalid, as it also would be to speak as if the

two operated in the absence of media influence, marketing campaigns, literary prizes,

writers’ festivals, and so forth. If academics, in particular, hope to have any credence in

the public sphere, they must seriously consider such practicalities when composing their

rhetoric. After serious consideration, they may then decide that coverage of these

subjects is simply not relevant to their particular study, but at least they will have

considered it; their readership is likely to notice if such matters have been summarily

discarded where they might warrant more attention.

The following excerpt helps illustrate why this approach is appropriate to the

study of a regional literature or, more specifically, Western Australian literature:

Here, in summary form, are some of the social and cultural variables thatappear to be related to the amount, quality and type of artistic andintellectual products of any particular community: the traditions of thatcommunity and those imported from other communities; the types of

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occupations pursued; the social and economic class structure; thepossibilities of moving from one class to another; the techniques ofproduction; the division of labour between classes and groups; thepresence of particular talents and skills and educational facilities.279

Clearly, the ‘types of occupations pursued’ are different in, for example, Western

Australia and New South Wales; the Western Australian economy is driven in large part

by the mining industry, whereas its role in New South Wales is not nearly as significant.

Also, there is the ‘presence of particular talents and skills and educational facilities’ in

New South Wales that do not exist in Western Australia, and vice-versa. For example,

Western Australian publishers often commission editors, designers and printers from the

eastern states, because they cannot find qualified people in Western Australia. As Taft

notes, these circumstances affect ‘the amount, quality and type of artistic and

intellectual products of any particular community’. Therefore, they must be accounted

for in any study of literature or literary culture.

However, even more important to ‘the amount, quality and type of artistic and

intellectual products of any particular community’ than the aforementioned two

examples, is access to and control of the instruments of cultural production. To briefly

illustrate what I mean by ‘control of the instruments of cultural production’, I refer to an

Australian example: As recently as 2004, 94% of all books sold in Australia that were

published by Australian publishers, came from publishing houses based in New South

Wales or Victoria.280 Furthermore, ‘40% of Literature Board grants go to writers

resident in New South Wales,’ fully 10% more than New South Wales represents as a

proportion of the Australian population.281 To argue that such factors do not have an

influence on the development of a literary culture in, for example, Western Australia,

is to display ignorance of the conditions of production of Western culturethrough history, of the financial factors involved in the production of

279Ronald Taft, ‘Mateship, Success-ship and Suburbia’, Westerly 2 (1961): 21.

280Australian Bureau of Statistics, ‘Book Publishers, 2003–04’, in Australian Bureau of Statistics (2005,

accessed 11 Feb. 2006), 6; available from http://www.abs.gov.au.281Taylor, ‘Review’, 12–13.

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both popular and ‘non-popular’ literature today, and of the productionand market factors operating within the Australian publishing industry.282

Also, such an argument would represent a retreat to the Romantic idea of the writer as a

‘lonely individual struggling for self-expression’, which was long ago discredited as a

blinkered view of the processes involved in the production of a literary work. This view

is not necessarily wrong, just incomplete. The following sub-sections aim to complete

(or, at the very least, to greatly expand) this understanding of the forces that impact on

the production of any literary work, but in particular the production of a regional

literature in Western Australia.

i. Government as an instrument in the field of cultural production

As was alluded to in the ‘My timeline’ section of this chapter, the changing

dynamics of the literary field of cultural production in Australia beginning in the 1970s

and going through the late 1980s were largely responsible for the rise to popularity of

literary regionalism in Australia. In particular, changes in governmental policies related

to the funding of literature and the arts played a significant role in shaping scholarly and

popular interest in this subject. For example,

the Literature Board of the Australia Council, since its inception duringthe Whitlam Labor Government years (1972–75), has played a majorrole in the encouragement of cultural diversification. One important by-product has been the renewed interest in ‘regional’ literature.283

The most notable change that accompanied the shift from the Commonwealth Literary

Fund (CLF) to the Literature Board in 1973, was the sudden influx of funds: ‘The CLF

in its last financial year had a budget of $250,000. The Literature Board began with a

budget increase to just over one million dollars.’284 By 1986, a mere thirteen years later,

282Ibid., 4.283Headon, xix.284Thomas Shapcott, The Literature Board: A Brief History (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press,

1988), 8.

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this amount had more than doubled to $2,882,783.285 In addition to the obvious shot in

the arm this new source of money gave more generally to Australian writers and

writing, it came with an expectation that funding would be equitably distributed among

the citizens of this vast nation.

This was no small feat in a national literary culture that had systematically

favoured writers from Sydney and Melbourne for so many years. However, the

Literature Board was assisted in their efforts by the aforementioned increase in funding

and, more specifically, the increase in the number of grants they were able to award: ‘In

two years under Whitlam the Literature Board awarded 269 fellowships to writers,

compared with a total of 207 fellowships (mostly much smaller) in the previous thirty-

four years of the existence of the board’s predecessor.’286 The equitable distribution of

funding across the breadth of the nation was further assisted by the new avenues for

publication that were opened with the help of Literature Board funds, including several

specifically devoted to the promotion of regional interests. For example, Fremantle Arts

Centre Press, a publishing house exclusively dedicated to the publication of works by

Western Australian writers, was established and published its first book in 1976 with the

expectation of Literature Board support (and, indeed, support came in the form of

publication subsidies as early as 1977). Furthermore,

within Australia, important new dimensions have been added in the1980s by the emergence of regionally based literary magazines such asIsland Magazine (from Tasmania) and Northern Perspective (fromDarwin), thus complementing a pattern of regional variation proposed byWesterly since 1956.287

As Laurie Hergenhan once observed, ‘magazines can be made or marred by the

times’.288 If the creation of the Literature Board in 1973 was excluded from

285Ibid.286Ross Terrill, The Australians: In Search of an Identity (London: Bantam Press, 1987), 309.287Bennett, Australian Compass, 216.288Laurie Hergenhan, ‘The Struggles of the Little Magazines’, Quadrant 47, nos. 7–8 (July/Aug. 2003):

85.

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consideration as part of Australia’s field of cultural production, a significant factor in

the production and reception of regional literature in this country would be missing and

any subsequent literary analysis incomplete.

Exactly how significant a factor the Literature Board has been can be illustrated

with an example:

This record of subsidies to publishers of Jolley’s early novels is ameasure of the larger impact of the new government patronage on thewriting life in Australia in the seventies. And, to the extent that therhetoric of regionalism of the early to mid-seventies was a strand of thenew nationalism of the Whitlam years that nurtured such a fundingpolicy, the existence of Fremantle Arts Centre Press can be seen to belinked to national developments not only institutionally through newlevels of arts funding, but also discursively through new sorts ofnationalism.289

Barbara H. Milech continues:

It was this conjunction of a new federal arts policy, a new rhetoric ofregionalism (related to a renewed nationalism), and a new institutionalbase for creative writing that took Jolley from the position of someonewho writes—a faculty wife, a mother, a grandmother—to the position ofa professional writer.290

Elizabeth Jolley had submitted manuscripts to many Australian publishing houses and

been rejected on every account. It is no coincidence that it was Fremantle Arts Centre

Press, a publishing house in receipt of new government arts funding, which felt it could

take a risk on just such a writer. Jolley, of course, went on to become one of the most

highly acclaimed writers (both within Australia and internationally) in Australian

literary history.

Jolley’s example is particularly compelling, since she had met with such

dismaying results under the previous federal arts policy. However, changes in

governmental arts policy beginning in the early 1970s were not limited to the federal

level, as many state governments launched new initiatives in the 1970s and ‘80s

289Barbara H. Milech, ‘Becoming “Elizabeth Jolley”: The First Twenty Years in Australia’, in Australian

Literature and the Public Sphere, ed. Alison Bartlett, Robert Dixon, and Christopher Lee (Canberra:

Association for the Study of Australian Literature, 1999), 137–38.290Ibid., 138.

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designed to encourage artistic production. After all, the majority of the money used to

establish Fremantle Arts Centre Press came from the Western Australian Government,

and it was only publishing subsidies that later came from the Literature Board of the

Australia Council. The ‘new nationalism’ of the 1970s (encouraged by changes in

federal arts funding) gave rise to an Australian audience increasingly interested in

reading literature written by Australians and concerned with Australian themes;

however, as was mentioned above, there also existed a ‘new rhetoric of regionalism

(related to a renewed nationalism)’. The latter phenomenon was, of course, especially

encouraged by state government initiatives.

This particular development will be discussed in-depth in Chapter 4, with

specific reference to Western Australia’s three major publishing houses and how state

and federal government initiatives variously affect them. Yet, it is important to note

now that literary regionalism in Australia was encouraged by the injection of further

government funding around the time of Western Australia’s sesquicentenary celebration

in 1979. Clearly, this was a Western Australia-specific event, but as has been

demonstrated countless times in this thesis, Western Australia is a trendsetter in this

area. The aforementioned funding was awarded in spite of the fact that, as Western

Australian Bruce Bennett has noted, ‘one of the features of the “cultural cringe” in

Western Australia was a general ignorance about its literature’.291 However, this was

soon to change:

Under the influence of a new cultural nationalism fostered by theWhitlam Labor government (1972–75), and the build-up to WesternAustralia’s Sesquicentenary in 1979, three books on Western Australianliterature—two anthologies and a history—were published.292

A similar thing happened around the Australian bicentennial: in Western

Australia, four state-based literature anthologies were published in the year of the

291Bruce Bennett, ‘Literary Studies’, in A Press in Isolation: University of Western Australia Press 1935–

2004, by Criena Fitzgerald (Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 2005), 109.292Ibid.

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bicentennial, 1988, and the following year. All of these anthologies received Literature

Board funding; two of them received additional funds from the Australian Bicentennial

Authority. Clearly, the years leading up to and including 1988 (and perhaps also 1989)

marked a high point for nationalism in Australia, but also for interest in regionalism and

regional literature.

In the 1990s, however, internationalism emerged as a significant challenge to

literary regionalism. Aspects of this challenge were detailed in Chapter 1 in the section

titled ‘The region in the world’. Yet, internationalism was not a self-generating culture,

and the ways in which it was abetted by changes in the field of cultural production

(most of which involved the government as a major instrument of change) have not

been explained. Cerwonka details one of the most significant changes that occurred

during this period:

Although Australia’s economic relationship with Britain gave way toincreased trading arrangements with the United States and Asiancountries through the 1970s and 1980s, it was during Keating’sleadership [1991–1996] that significant political rhetoric was directedtoward ‘recognising’ Australia’s geography as part of Asia .... Hepromoted the idea of Australia as a multicultural nation located in Asiaby funding cultural and economic links between Australia and Asia,promulgating liberal immigration policies, and nurturing a betterrelationship with Indonesia .... Since the racial content and civilization ofAustralian identity were defined in part by its imagined distance fromAsia, the need and desire to allow more immigration from Asia and toincrease economic ties has functioned to deterritorialise the settlerAustralian nation. Imagining Australia as part of Asia was not merely achange in economics or immigration policy; it led Australians toreconceptualise ideas like race and civilisation central to Australianidentity.293

The effects of ‘“recognising” Australia’s geography as part of Asia’ are clearly far-

reaching.294 Japan (in particular) may have been a significant trading partner for many

years prior to this, but the ‘funding [of] cultural ... links between Australia and Asia’

293Cerwonka, 16.294Other valuable contributions to this discussion include: Laksiri Jayasuriya, David Walker, and JanGothard, eds., Legacies of White Australia: Race, Culture and Nation (Crawley: University of Western

Australia Press, 2003). David Robert Walker, Anxious Nation: Australia and the Rise of Asia 1850–1939(St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1999).

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(emphasis mine) contributed significantly to the rise of interest in internationalism

amongst Australian literary scholars in the 1990s. The federal government encouraged

these ‘cultural ... links’ largely through its arts funding and advisory body, the Australia

Council, which funds artist- and writer-in-residence programmes in Asia, joint exhibits

of Asian and Australian art, anthologies of Asian writing, and so forth. In the 1980s and

especially around the time of the Australian bicentennial, it was common for the

Australia Council to fund state-based literature anthologies, but this is no longer the

case.

The cultural identification of Australia with Asia is problematic for Australian

literary regionalism for a number of reasons:

The re-organisation of the international landscape from an East-Westsplit to economic regions has deterritorialised the Australian nation inprofound ways. Australia was left vulnerable as a result of thisreorganisation, in part because nationals had worked to secure theirposition as a part of the international hegemony in the past by beinghostile to the very Asian states from which they now soughtacceptance.295

One of the most remarkable outcomes of this sequence of events is that ‘senses of

difference within Australia are treated as secondary to the differences between Australia

and other places’.296 Clearly, Bennett was right to worry that internationalism could

‘obliterate local concerns and differences’.297

Nonetheless, a single event such as this cannot be said to be solely responsible

for ‘unsettling the territorialization of the Australian nation-state’.298 Indeed, Cerwonka

goes on to detail three issues that have contributed to this occasion: ‘Aboriginal land

rights, Australia’s redefined relationship with Asia, and multiculturalism’.299 He claims

that each issue ‘challenges the imagined connection between people, place, and culture

295Ibid., 229.296Tim Rowse and Albert Moran, ‘“Peculiarly Australian”—The Political Construction of CulturalIdentity’, in Australian Society: Sociological Essays, 4th ed., ed. S. Encel and L. Bryson (Melbourne:Longman Cheshire, 1984), 230.297Bruce Bennett, ‘Home and Away’, 236.298Cerwonka, 8.299Ibid.

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upon which the settler nation-state has been premised’.300 Furthermore, he urges

cautiousness in the application of his theory:

By sketching these political contexts I am not positing a neat causalrelationship or suggesting that people always self-consciously respondedto these issues in their everyday practices. My point is that people wereprompted to renarrate and reshape the nation’s geography and the linkbetween white Australians, the hegemonic culture, and the territory ofAustralia because that connection has been under significanttransformation in the past thirty years.301

As a result (either directly or indirectly) of the challenges presented by these events and

the corresponding actions taken by governments and individual organisations,

Australian literary scholars in the 1990s began to look outwards from the nation and,

thus, also from the region within the nation. It should by now be clear how the

government functions as an instrument in the literary field of cultural production, which

abetted first the rise of literary regionalism and later its fall from favour, as well as

continuing to contribute to the production of a regional literature in Western Australia.

ii. Publishing as an instrument in the field of cultural production

Of course, governmental policies and special occasions are not the only features

that comprise the literary field of cultural production, thus contributing to the

production and reception of a regional literature in Western Australia. Indeed, some

instruments of cultural production transcend state and even national borders. The

publishing industry, for example, is subject to a set of circumstances that are unique in

both the business world and the arts and culture industries. Some of these

circumstances are limited to the specific geographical or other situation of the

publishing house (for example, the aforementioned governmental policies), but most

apply equally to publishing houses around the globe. Of the latter set of circumstances,

the most pervasive is the number of people and organisations involved in the process of

300Ibid.301Ibid., 9.

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book publication, which dramatically impacts on the net profit for any one player.

Average figures for the distribution of profits are as follows: ‘The price of a book sold

for $10.00 over the counter breaks down this way: bookshop/retailer $4.25; author

$1.00; printer $2.00; distributor/wholesaler $2.00; publisher $0.75.’302 While the

publishing house assumes the greatest risk associated with the publication of a book,

this risk is poorly compensated.

A publishing house needs to sell many copies of an individual title before it

begins to make a profit on that title. However, this is complicated by yet another factor

—this time with Australia-specific connotations:

The most common explanation for the low incomes of Australian writersis the smallness of the Australian market for books and its openness tobooks from both Britain and America. This keeps the print runs low,with consequent low royalty payments for authors and little profit forpublishers. The Australian Bookseller and Publisher gives figures for1983 showing that the average print run of a new hardback fiction titlewas 3000, of poetry and drama 1000, of new non-fiction 4000.303

While this excerpt addresses the ‘low incomes of Australian authors’, it could equally

well be applied to the modest incomes of Australian publishing houses. After all, they

are also affected by the ‘smallness of the Australian market for books and its openness

to books from both Britain and America’. Using the figures given above, a publishing

house that sells an average run of 3000 copies of ‘a new hardback fiction title’ at a

Recommended Retail Price of $25.00 stands to make about $5,625. The author will

make $7,500. Considering the author may have spent several years writing this book,

and a publishing house typically devotes between six and twelve months to its

publication, neither party is being generously compensated for its labour.

A smaller potential readership, as might be the case for a book concerned with

regional themes or published by a regional publishing house unable to obtain reliable

302Judith Brett, ‘Publishing, Censorship and Writers’ Incomes, 1965–1988’, in The Penguin New Literary

History of Australia, ed. Laurie Hergenhan et al. (Ringwood: Penguin, 1988), 460.303Ibid.

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national distribution, has obvious implications for potential profit. Such implications

may cause a publishing house to reconsider its publishing programme in order to

minimise risk. This is an example of how the structure of the publishing industry

affects the production and reception of literature, thereby necessitating its inclusion in

the field of cultural production. Clearly, it is particularly important to address this issue

with respect to the production and reception of regional literature.

Yet, literary scholarship has traditionally overlooked such concerns. Janice

Radway, discussing the wilful ignorance of so many literary scholars of the various

forces comprising the literary field of cultural production, notes that, ‘because literary

critics tend to move immediately from textual interpretation to sociological explanation,

they conclude easily that changes in textual features or generic popularity must be the

simple and direct result of ideological shifts in the surrounding culture’.304 However

(she continues),

like all other commercial commodities in our industrial culture, literarytexts are the result of a complicated and lengthy process of productionthat is itself controlled by a host of material and social factors. Indeed,the modern mass-market paperback was made possible by suchtechnological innovations as the rotary magazine press and synthetic glueas well as by organisational changes in the publishing and booksellingindustries.305

Clearly, these ‘technological innovations’ are an important part of the field of cultural

production. Ironically, many literary scholars recognise the significance of this

particular example involving mass-market paperbacks, and yet remain resolutely

ignorant of other influential features of the literary field of cultural production.

One reason for this may be that these other features are not so self-apparent as

the aforementioned ‘technological innovations’. For example, another of the ‘host of

material and social factors’ that significantly impact on literary production and reception

304Janice Radway, ‘The Institutional Matrix of Romance’, in The Cultural Studies Reader, ed. Simon

During (London: Routledge, 1993), 438–39.305Ibid.

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is the unique problem of marketing books. In many respects, publishing is not as

Radway claimed it to be—‘like all other commercial commodities’—since books cannot

be marketed in the same fashion as these commodities:

Publishers have argued for years that books cannot be marketed oradvertised as are other commodities. Because every book is individualand unique, the industry has maintained, all publishers must ‘start fromscratch’ in the effort to build an audience for them. Assuming, therefore,that the discreteness of books necessitated that each be advertisedindividually, publishers concluded that the enormous expense ofadvertising an entire month’s offering ruled out the process entirely.Furthermore, they believed that the variety of books offered by each firmmade the creation of a single image of the house impossible; they alsoconcluded that potentially less expensive national advertising of thehouse imprint would do nothing for the sales of individual books.306

Instead, publishers rely on word-of-mouth for book sales, as well as the free publicity

that accompanies book reviews and the announcement of literary prizes in the pages of

newspapers and magazines.

Clearly, ‘book buying ... cannot be reduced to a simple interaction between a

book and a reader. It is an event that is affected and at least partially controlled by the

material nature of book publishing as a socially organised technology of production and

distribution.’307 In other words, the literary field of cultural production is much larger

than formalist literary critics would have one believe, and publishing is one of the most

important instruments within this field. After all, literary reception is not a function

‘only of the content of a given text and of the needs of readers’, but rather it is ‘affected

by a book’s appearance and availability as well as by potential readers’ awareness and

expectations’.308 However, since publishing houses generally cannot afford to

individually advertise their books, they cannot directly control ‘potential readers’

awareness and expectations’. This results in a highly precarious business model,

306Ibid., 445.307Ibid., 439.308Ibid.

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whereby important decisions are based on such notoriously unreliable justifications as

‘instinct’.

This precariousness has a trickle-down effect on all parties involved in the

process of literary production and reception, not least of all the writer. Judith Brett

perhaps expressed it best: ‘Financial pressures will always cause writers to look over

their shoulders, be it to the market or a funding body, and just how these backward

glances affect their writing is hard to know.’309 They could affect, for example, the type

of stories an author decides to write, including the subject matter and the forms in which

they are written. If a writer is dependent on her writing as a source of income, then it

should come as no surprise that she could be influenced by market factors and the

popularity of certain genres or styles of writing. The following excerpt provides a

practical example of one way in which the vagaries of publishing can affect a writer:

The conditions under which weekly magazines are produced ... andunder which poems are printed in them, do have a very direct bearing onpoetic forms, favouring certain kinds (sonnets, villanelles and haikus, forinstance ...), and discouraging others (anything over thirty lines becomeproblematic).310

Clearly, if a poet wants to have her work published in a weekly magazine (a format for

which the compensation is unusually generous), then it is in her best interests to write in

the favoured forms. Publishing, or indeed any feature that can be shown to have this

sort of effect, merits special notice as an instrument in the literary field of cultural

production.

iii. Paratext as an instrument in the field of cultural production

Discussion of the field of cultural production has thus far been primarily

concerned with the production of literature. And while the production of literature

309Brett, 458.310Blake Morrison, ‘Poetry and the Poetry Business’, in Granta 4: Beyond the Crisis, ed. Bill Buford

(London: Granta Publications, 1981), 106.

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necessarily impacts on its reception, this has not been explicit in the analysis of the

ways in which governments and publishing operate as instruments in the field of

cultural production. ‘Paratext’, although it has clearly undergone a process of

production involving the contributions of many and various individuals, has greater

relevance when examined with reference to literary reception. Therefore, any

respectable definition of the term ‘paratext’ begins by acknowledging that

a good deal of a book’s meaning is produced by what the French criticGérard Genette calls paratext: that is, the ‘heterogenous group ofpractices and devices’ that mediate a book to its readers, ensuring its‘presence in the world’, its ‘reception’ and ‘consumption’. Thesecomprise both peritext (the devices located inside the book, such aschapter titles, prefaces and epigraphs) and epitext (the devices located inthe physical and social space outside the book, generally with the help ofthe media and the web, such as interviews, promotional dossiers, andweblogs).311

Dixon emphasises that paratext is concerned with a book’s ‘reception’ or ‘consumption’,

and also that it is responsible for ‘a good deal of a book’s meaning’. Clearly, he

endorses the reader-response theory of literary criticism. He also acknowledges that

this response is influenced by a host of factors external (but oftentimes closely related)

to the text, which is a feature of a contextualist approach.

Of these contextual factors,

certain paratextual elements are actually addressed to (which does notmean they reach) the public in general—that is, every Tom, Dick, andHarry. This is the case ... of the title or of an interview. Otherparatextual elements are addressed (with the same reservation) morespecifically or more restrictively only to readers of the text. This istypically the case of the preface. Still others, such as the early forms ofthe please-insert [jacket copy], were addressed exclusively to critics; andothers, to booksellers.312

Clearly, those ‘paratextual elements’ that are addressed to ‘the public in general’ are

going to have a greater impact on the reception of a book than those that are addressed

‘more restrictively’. An interview published in a newspaper or magazine might, for

311Dixon, ‘Tim Winton’, 246.312Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. Jane E. Lewin (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1997), 9.

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example, inspire someone who would have otherwise been disinclined or entirely

ignorant of its existence to purchase a specific title. However, the impact of those

‘paratextual elements’ that are addressed ‘more restrictively’ should not be

underestimated. After all, a paratext addressed specifically to a reviewer might inspire a

positive book review, and a paratext addressed specifically to a bookseller might inspire

a prominent display of the book in question—both of which are examples of a more

restrictive paratext giving rise to a paratext addressed to ‘the public in general’. The

potential result of these paratexts is an increase in book sales, which translates to a

larger and possibly more diverse readership. Thus, the reception of the book has

changed.

It has been previously demonstrated that the particular combination of cultural

studies and contextualist literary theory exists on the fringe of academia. Yet, perhaps

the most potent challenge to the superiority of academic influence in the literary field of

production is the media in its role as sometimes-collaborator in the creation and

publication of paratexts such as author interviews, book reviews, paid advertisements,

and so forth:

The academy has lost control of the formation and establishment ofliterary reputations. They are now the concern of newspaper features andeditorials, photo profiles in glossy magazines, lifestyle interviews in thepress, on television, on Radio National’s Life Matters.313

Since taking over ‘control of the formation and establishment of literary reputations’,

the media has become the greatest proponent of a literary conversation emphasising the

role of the author.

The ‘author as celebrity’ formulation, which holds so much appeal in modern

media, as well as (apparently) among those who consume this media, is especially

313Graeme Turner, ‘Australian Literature and the Public Sphere’, in Australian Literature and the Public

Sphere, ed. Alison Bartlett, Robert Dixon, and Christopher Lee (Canberra: Association for the Study ofAustralian Literature, 1999), 9.

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important in the case of regional literature. However, many literary scholars take issue

with this formulation:

As public celebrations of Australian literary culture, literary awards andwriters’ festivals provide a regular mechanism which focuses largeamounts of media space and public attention on Australian writers andAustralian books. However, the marketing insistence on evoking theimage of the author as celebrity can impose an artificial frameworkwhich distorts the book market, interfering with the production andreception cycle within the literary ecosystem. It threatens to influenceboth a writer’s approach to their work and a publisher’s perception ofwhat should be published and who should be promoted. There is agrowing concern that these factors are also influencing genuine criticalappraisal—what is chosen for awards, for review and criticalexamination.314

Anne Galligan’s understanding of what constitutes a distorted book market is flawed,

since there is no definition of a ‘regular’ or ‘normal’ book market. It is not that Galligan

has forgotten to include such a definition; a ‘normal’ book market is little more than a

fantasy about a time when writers’ ideas flowed uninhibited from their minds directly

into the minds of readers. There is no room for paratext in this equation.

Similarly, there is little room in this thesis for such a ‘blinkered view of the

processes involved in the production of a literary work’. The ‘literary ecosystem’ is

already full of mechanisms which ‘influence both a writer’s approach to their work and

a publisher’s perception of what should be published and who should be promoted’;

indeed, these have been dubbed the field of cultural production and discussed in great

detail above. There is no way for the processes of literary production and reception to

avoid these mechanisms, and no reason to eliminate the ‘marketing insistence on

evoking the image of the author as celebrity’ from equal critical consideration.

In fact, perhaps this phenomenon of the ‘author as celebrity’ should be given

more attention. It is imperative the literary critical community recognise that the

‘author as celebrity’ is not some fad bent on the perversion of traditional literary value,

314Anne Galligan, ‘Build the Author, Sell the Book: Marketing the Australian Author in the 1990s’, in

Australian Literature and the Public Sphere, ed. Alison Bartlett, Robert Dixon, and Christopher Lee(Canberra: Association for the Study of Australian Literature, 1999), 156–7.

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but rather a paratext in the field of cultural production, just as they are. After all, the

‘author as celebrity’ formulation is unlikely to disappear anytime soon:

It is important to recognise that this is not simply a cyclical shift inpatterns of media consumption, a change in fashion affecting what mediaaudiences want to read in the newspapers or hear on the radio or watchon television. It is also a change in the systems of production: this meansthat we may need to reassess our assumptions about how stories get intothe media, and about how those stories which do ‘get a run’ arerepresented by the media.

A fundamental factor in this redefinition has been the importanceof stories about celebrities—and, increasingly, about Australiancelebrities.315

Clearly, if this is ‘not simply a cyclical shift in patterns of media consumption’, but

rather signals a larger ‘change in the systems of production’, then it is particularly

important for the literary critical community to address this change. Just as Gutenberg’s

invention of the first printing press using movable type increased the speed and flow of

information, thereby altering the way in which literature was conceived, so too has the

‘importance of stories about celebrities’ altered the production of literature in important

(albeit lesser) ways.

As a consequence of altering the production of literature, the ‘author as

celebrity’ formulation has also altered its reception. For example,

a survey of academic articles would indicate that [Peter] Carey’s formalattributes, the processes through which his novels make their meaning,are of paramount interest .... The characteristic interest expressed withinthe mainstream press is both personal and nationalistic .... Since this isthe way in which the engagement of Australian writers with their socialcontext will most easily be represented within the mass media, thenincreasingly this is the way in which writers will be understood.316

Turner establishes a dichotomy: the way in which ‘academic articles’ represent what is

of interest in Carey’s writing (his ‘formal attributes’), is placed in opposition to the way

in which the ‘mainstream press’ represents Carey (his ‘personal and nationalistic’

315Graeme Turner, Frances Bonner, and P. David Marshall, Fame Games: The Production of Celebrity in

Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 2.316Graeme Turner, ‘Nationalising the Author: The Celebrity of Peter Carey’, Australian Literary Studies

16, no. 2 (Oct. 1993): 137–38.

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attributes). He also makes the astute observation that most people engage with

Australian writers in the context of their representations within the mass media:

The successful writer within Australia is, at least from time to time, asmuch a product of the promotional world of celebrity as of the reviewpages or of academic journals. In April 1988, Elle magazine, forinstance, gave more space to an interview with Peter Carey (promotingOscar and Lucinda) than did the Australian Book Review.317

Consequently, contextualist literary theory and reader-response criticism would demand

that the effects of this phenomenon be examined in any literary critical response to

Oscar and Lucinda. Or, for that matter, to any work of literature, the publication of

which has catapulted the author into the public eye.

As was noted earlier, this technique sells books, which is why it has been

encouraged by publishers. However, just because it is sales-driven does not mean this

technique of marketing the author should be dismissed by the academics:

In the maintenance of national television, film, popular music and printmedia, there has been an effort through celebrities to increase theeconomic and cultural value of productions that have emerged from thesevarious industries. It is not logical to applaud the success of thesenational industries without accepting the part played in that success bythe local production of celebrity.318

Clearly, Turner is an advocate of the acceptance and recognition of celebrity as

contributing to the success of Australian industries such as ‘television, film, popular

music and print media’. This ‘success’ Turner alludes to, and to which the creation of

celebrity in Australian literature is meant to have contributed, is evidenced in the sales

figures:

The last eighteen years have seen a massive increase in the production ofAustralian fiction; they have also seen a new efficiency in the packaging,promotion and circulation of that fiction, all of which can affect areader’s response even before the text itself has been read. The benefithere is that the profile of Australian fiction, in all its manifestations, hasbeen considerably raised—so have the profiles of Australian writers.

317Ibid., 131–32.318Turner, Bonner, and Marshall, 176.

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More than ever, the Australian writer can become (indeed, is asked tobecome) a ‘personality’, as much on display as his or her text.319

It seems it is not only Turner who believes the ‘celebritisation’ of the Australian author

has helped create ‘success’ in the field. In fact, ‘celebritisation’ is credited with

accomplishing what no amount of academic encouragement was capable of—raising the

profile of Australian fiction. ‘Celebritisation’ has perhaps not done much to raise the

profile of some other types of writing in Australia, including poetry and drama, but it

has certainly raised that of fiction and non-fiction (though the latter is not mentioned by

Gelder and Salzman because their book is concerned exclusively with fiction).

Furthermore, there are no indications the influence wielded by the media via its creation

of paratexts is on the wane.

However, it is important to discriminate (if only for the sake of clarity in future

discussion) between paratexts that affect the reception of a book and all the other factors

that do the same. For example, the manner in which governments and publishing affect

literary production was discussed above, but these instruments of cultural production

can also, through a series of cause and effect, be shown to impact on literary reception.

Nonetheless, they are not paratext, since

inasmuch as the paratext is a transitional zone between text and beyond-text, one must resist the temptation to enlarge this zone by whittlingaway in both directions. However indeterminable its boundaries, theparatext remains at its center a distinctive and undisputed territory whereits ‘properties’ are clearly manifest and which is constituted by the typesof elements I have explored in this book, plus some others. Outside ofthat, we will be wary of rashly proclaiming that ‘all is paratext’.320

It seems a more exacting definition of paratext is necessary, which explains why

governmental arts policies and the structure of the publishing industry are not

considered paratextual elements:

Almost all the paratexts I consider will themselves be of a textual, or atleast verbal, kind: titles, prefaces, interviews, all of them utterances that,

319Gelder and Salzman, 1.320Genette, 407.

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varying greatly in scope, nonetheless share the linguistic status of thetext. Most often, then, the paratext is itself a text: if it is still not the text,it is already some text. But we must at least bear in mind the paratextualvalue that may be vested in other types of manifestation: these may beiconic (illustrations), material (for example, everything that originates inthe sometimes very significant typographical choices that go into themaking of a book), or purely factual. By factual I mean the paratext thatconsists not of an explicit message (verbal or other) but of a fact whoseexistence alone, if known to the public, provides some commentary onthe text and influences how the text is received. Two examples are theage or sex of the author.321

Clearly, governments and publishing do not fit the bill of ‘utterances that ... share the

linguistic status of the text’. Nor do they belong to the ‘other types of manifestation’ the

author mentions, because they are not primarily concerned with a book’s ‘reception’ or

‘consumption’, but rather with its production.

Of course, even if ‘all is not paratext’, it can be difficult to determine what is:

The epitext is a whole whose paratextual function has no precise limitsand in which comment on the work is endlessly diffused in abiographical, critical, or other discourse whose relation to the work maybe at best indirect and at worst indiscernible. Everything a writer says orwrites about his life, about the world around him, about the works ofothers, may have paratextual relevance .... The epitext, a fringe of thefringe, gradually disappears into, among other things, the totality of theauthorial discourse.322

It is important to keep in mind the endless diffusion of the limits of the paratext, even as

it is maintained that ‘the paratext remains at its center a distinctive and undisputed

territory’. These two statements balance each other nicely, while also reflecting the

difficulties inherent in identifying the exact cause within the field of cultural production

and its effect on the production and reception of literature.

C. Minority literature and its importance in a new definition of regional literature

It is my contention that if regional literature were accorded its due attention in

academic and literary critical circles, it would assume a place alongside other literary

321Ibid., 7.322Ibid., 346.

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categories such as Aboriginal literature, women’s literature, queer literature, migrant

literature, and so forth. After all, the ‘sense of “identification” or “consciousness of

kind”’ that is the common ground for people across these diverse categories, is equally

relevant to regional literature. It can also be subjected to the same sorts of analysis. In

short, regional literature is a ‘minority literature’.

Of course, regional literature arguably benefits from a greater sense of

integration with Australian literature than other, more conventional minority literatures.

For example, the sense of Western Australian literature as part of the Australian literary

tradition is perhaps greater than that of queer or migrant literature. However, women’s

literature—a ‘more conventional’ minority literature—seem to enjoy approximately this

same sense of integration with traditional notions of Australian literature; therefore, this

is no reason to dismiss the following proposition.

Before proceeding any further with this examination of the implications of

considering regional literature as a minority literature, it is first necessary to better

understand the term ‘minority literature’. My use of the term finds its origins in Sneja

Gunew’s book on the subject of multicultural literature, Framing Marginality:

Multicultural Literary Studies: ‘The term favoured throughout this study as a way of

negotiating the local and global contradictions set up by established terms such as

“migrant”, “ethnic” or “multicultural” writers is “ethnic minority writers”.’323 Gunew

chooses the term ‘ethnic minority writers’ to describe Australian writers of non-Anglo-

Celtic extraction. Other terms ‘used to designate writing by Australians from

backgrounds other than the English and Irish mainstream’ include ‘non-Anglo-Celtic

writing’, ‘NESB (Non-English Speaking Background) writing’, and ‘diasporic

writing’.324 However, since I am not interested in dividing Australian writers into a

323Gunew, Framing Marginality, xiii.

324Wenche Ommundsen, ‘Multicultural Writing in Australia’, in A Companion to Australian Literaturesince 1900, ed. Nicholas Birns and Rebecca McNeer (Rochester: Camden House, 2007), 75.

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catalogue of various ethnicities, but rather in discriminating between ‘regional writers’

and ‘writers from the cultural centres’, the ‘ethnic’ piece of Gunew’s ‘ethnic minority

writers’ is of little use to me. If this is removed, the chosen term emerges—‘minority

writers’—from which ‘minority literature’ is a natural derivative.

By comparing the features of ethnic minority literature (as identified by Gunew

and others) with those of regional literature, it is possible to confirm the validity of

simply adapting Gunew’s system of identifying non-Anglo-Celtic Australian writers as

‘ethnic minority writers’, to the instance of regional writers in Australia. In order to

proceed, regional literature must be shown to possess a majority of the features of ethnic

minority literature, excepting those with particular reference to ethnicity; this will

establish it as a minority literature, akin to Aboriginal literature, women’s literature,

queer literature, migrant literature, and so forth.

Gunew is a useful place to start this discussion, since she has already been used

as a reference point, and also because she asks herself similar questions to those implicit

in the above statement:

When does one start/stop being part of a minority? One is notnecessarily born into a minority. Instead, it is a question of being alert tothe positionings involved, particularly one’s own as a reader. We returnnecessarily to the issue of ‘experience’ and how it serves materialism, thedaily construction of subjectivity. And we return also to Jardine’sstatement that ‘feminism, while infinite in its variations, is finally rootedin the belief that women’s truth-in-experience-and-reality is and hasalways been different from men’s’.325

Just as ‘one is not necessarily born into a minority’, one is also not necessarily born into

a region. Rather, as was discussed earlier in this chapter, the region is defined by all the

residents of the region in question, as well as by their shared ‘sense of “identification”’;

thus, it is necessarily a product of a collective of individuals ‘alert to the positionings

325Gunew, Framing Marginality, 59, quoting Alice A. Jardine, Gynesis: Configurations of Woman and

Modernity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 147.

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involved’. After all, it would not be possible to define the region or share a sense of

identification related to that region without such alertness.

Gunew closes the above excerpt by quoting a passage about feminism from

Alice A. Jardine’s Gynesis: Configurations of Woman and Modernity, which Gunew

uses to illustrate a larger truth about minorities: ‘Feminism ... is finally rooted in the

belief that women’s truth-in-experience-and-reality is and has always been different

from men’s.’ The implication here is that, similar to the experiences of women, all

minority people’s ‘truth-in-experience-and-reality is and has always been different from’

that of non-minority people. As was pointed out earlier in this chapter in a section titled

‘Field of cultural production’, the different circumstances of, for example, Western

Australia (minority) and New South Wales (cultural centre) affect ‘the amount, quality

and type of artistic and intellectual products of any particular community’. Clearly, the

‘truth-in-experience-and-reality’ of Western Australians is different from that of people

from New South Wales, who in this example represent a regional non-minority.

This raises a related issue: ‘One of the marks of a minority position is that it is

always under pressure to define itself against an imagined, though invisible, “universal”

one.’326 As the previous paragraph illustrates, the region is often pressured to define

itself against the cultural centres. In fact, the ‘sense of “identification” or

“consciousness of kind” which the inhabitants of a particular regional area feel for that

region and/or for their fellow inhabitants of that region’ often manifests itself as a

comparison between the region and the cultural centres. The terms ‘t’othersiders’ and

‘the eastern states’ used by Western Australians set up a dichotomy between ‘this side’

and ‘t’otherside’, as well as between a single ‘Western state’ and ‘the eastern states’.

These are but two examples of the aforementioned trend of ‘a minority position ... under

326Sneja Gunew, ‘PMT (Post Modernist Tensions): Reading for (Multi)cultural Difference’, in Striking

Chords: Multicultural Literary Interpretations, ed. Sneja Gunew and Kateryna O. Longley (NorthSydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992), 37.

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pressure to define itself against an ... “universal” one’, thereby suggesting regional

literature has the requisite characteristics of a minority literature.

The similarities do not stop here, however, as regional literature and minority

literature also share a similar history with reference to Australian literature and literary

scholarship: ‘Looking back over the last twenty years, the shifts in the construction of

Australia and its regions parallel the historical development of many social groups

defined against the mainstream.’327 Ken Gelder and Paul Salzman use the phrase ‘social

groups defined against the mainstream’ in much the same way I employ the term

‘minority writers’, expanding upon Gunew’s use of ‘ethnic minority writers’ to include

categories such as women’s literature, queer literature and experimental literature. It

seems the development of these minority literatures in the 1970s was paralleled by

‘shifts in the construction of Australia and its regions’—in other words, the growth of

interest in literary regionalism.

In addition to regional literature appearing on the Australian scene at the same

time as the ‘new diversity’ of minority literatures, it also faced many of the same

challenges. For example, ‘At a minimum we can say that the term “postmodernism”

usually conjures up the spectres of decentred subjects and of the non- or self-

referentiality of language. Both have serious implications for promoting the claims or

the writing of any particular marginal group.’328 Of course, minority literatures

(including regional literature) belong to a ‘marginal group’. The spectre of

postmodernism poses a challenge to all such groups:

Those who are committed to emancipatory movements such as feminismor postcolonialism may have problems with postmodernist emphases ondiscursive as distinct from material reality and on the decentred subject,which apparently precludes notions of identity and agency. How can oneargue for a political change when there is no concept of material realityor of agency?329

327Gelder and Salzman, 82.328Gunew, ‘PMT’, 36–37.329Ibid., 37.

164

While initially it may be difficult to recognise regionalism as an ‘emancipatory

movement’, I contend this is a valid portrayal of the ‘sense of “identification”’ that, as

noted above, often manifests itself as a comparison between the region and the cultural

centres.

In terms of how regional literature, as well as other minority literatures, function

as an ‘emancipatory movement’,

the minority perspective involves ... not only the construction of a new orcounter-canon, but also the question of how the current ones function.Minority discourse is thus not simply an oppositional or counter-discourse: it also undoes the power of dominant discourses to representthemselves as universal.330

It is possible to understand regional literature as attempting to undo ‘the power of

dominant discourses’ as established by the cultural centres. One of these discourses

would be postmodernism, which is so often represented as ‘universal’. Clearly, then,

like the ‘emancipatory movements such as feminism or postcolonialism’ mentioned

above, regionalism has ‘problems with postmodernist emphases ... on the decentred

subject’, as well as with the lack of a concept of agency this entails and which makes

any ‘sense of “identification”’ impossible. In other words, regional literature faces the

same set of obstacles as other minority literatures in gaining access to the mainstream

for the purpose of ‘promoting the claims or the writing of any particular marginal

group’. Regionalism faces considerable obstacles in both intellectual discussions of

literature and the pragmatic world in which it is traded.

Unlike the so-called ‘mainstream’ or ‘dominant discourse’ that represents itself

as ‘universal’, regionalism and regional literature are not concerned with assigning

every person a definitive affiliation. In other words, not everyone is considered

‘regional’, just as not everyone is considered a ‘migrant’ or ‘queer’. Nor is it always

330Gunew, Framing Marginality, 42.

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perfectly clear with which region a given person is affiliated, as she may have multiple

affiliations, again like the migrant. This is because ‘regional group membership does

not logically preclude membership in [other] minorities, but obviously some

combinations are harder to maintain than others’.331 Regionalism does not attempt to

lump the entirety of the world’s population into a set of reductive categories, as

nationalism does via the construct of the nation (almost every living person is a citizen

of one nation or another) and internationalism does by simply sweeping everyone into

one giant, amorphous bundle.

Rather, regionalism is more particular in its approach. Regional literature is

written by those individuals located outside the cultural centres and is judged to be

regional by members of the same community. This is similar to how other minority

literatures are written and appraised by those individuals in their respective minority

group. In other words,

a regional group ordinarily enlists the identification of its members. Itserves them as a reference group, to which they feel like they belong, andis not just a classification that happens to include them. ... For ageographical category to serve as the base for a regional group (indeed,for any category to give rise to a group), its label must be meaningful tomost people, and they must be able to say with some reliability whobelongs and who does not.332

Gunew agrees: ‘It is now accepted that the value of a literary work can never be fixed

once and for all. It is agreed upon by a community of readers within a specific cultural

setting.’333 Consequently, residents of certain cities and states and, perhaps, even

nations, will never be granted full speaking status in the conversation regarding literary

regionalism.

Nonetheless, these individuals will often be appealed to as an audience for

regional literature, and their readings of this literature will impact on the judgements of

331John Shelton Reed, 14.332Ibid., 16.333Sneja Gunew and Kateryna O. Longley, eds., Striking Chords: Multicultural Literary Interpretations

(North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992), xix–xx.

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the regional community. Once again, this is similar to the construction of other minority

literatures. For example, ‘There is no doubt that the upsurge of interest in Aboriginal

writing is related to the belated recognition and respect being given to Aboriginal

cultures by the government and the media and therefore by the wider community.’334

Like a mirror, minority literatures are capable of reflecting an image of the community

in question back onto itself, as well as projecting that same image (or an ever-so-slightly

altered version of that image) out into the wider world.

This outgoing reflection is especially important but, in the past, has often been

overlooked, especially with regard to regional literature. Yet, ‘its value to the

community is immeasurable. As in the case of Aboriginal writing, we have to consider

not only the contribution of specific works but also the collective effect of the body of

multicultural writing on public awareness and national self-understanding.’335 So while

its pretence at universality is frustrated by minority literatures, the non-regional (or non-

minority) world still responds to the messages conveyed within regional literature when

it receives them; their response, in turn, influences future production of regional

literature. ‘Othering’ is impossible to avoid in these sorts of conversations and, anyway,

I believe it is not entirely desirable to avoid it when it privileges a traditionally

disempowered community.

It is for the many reasons identified above that I have chosen to exclude writers

from New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT from consideration as regional writers. In

addition to the fact that none of these regions has ever produced a regional anthology

comparable to those produced in the other Australian states and territories, residents

(including writers) of these two states and one territory do not as collectives fit the

description of a minority. In particular, they are not ‘alert to the positionings involved’

and the privileged status associated with residing in a cultural centre. Furthermore, they

334Ibid.335Ibid.

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are the ‘dominant discourse’ against which the regional areas of Australia compare

themselves and their cultural opportunities. Writers residing in these areas do not

produce regional literature, because they are not (again, as a collective) a minority, and

regional literature is a minority literature.

III. Defining ‘regional literature’ and ‘regional publishing’

For the purposes of this thesis, ‘regional literature’ is defined as writing

possessing cultural value that is specific to a region, although the writing may also have

national and international value. In order to better appreciate this new working

definition, it is necessary to unpack the terms that constitute it, drawing upon the

definitions of these terms as specified earlier in this chapter.

‘Literature’ is comprised of fiction, poetry, drama, and life-writing. Other forms

of writing, such as ‘essays, histories, literary criticism or other expository and analytical

prose’, will not be investigated within the framework of literature, except in those rare

instances when they can be shown to ‘participate in a broadly based, as distinct from a

narrowly specialist, cultural debate’. Distinctions of this sort between the ‘literary’ and

‘non-literary’ will be ‘based principally on an assessment of the social and cultural

effects of “the literary” rather than on any attempt to locate intrinsic aesthetic or

linguistic characteristics of “literariness”’.

‘The region’ is ‘formed out of the particular set of social relations which interact

at a particular location’. This ‘particular location’ is a geographical area that, at least in

Australia, is most often understood as circumscribed along state or territory lines. All

the residents of the region in question participate in the conversation about what exactly

defines ‘the region’, which means this definition is subject to change as both internal

and external circumstances result in shifts in popular attitudes.

168

‘Cultural value’, which has already been used to define both ‘literature’ and

(more implicitly) ‘the region’, clearly plays a significant role in the definition of

‘regional literature’. ‘Culture’ is defined as the ‘way of life and manner of living of a

people’. Factors as various as sport, the creative arts, ‘physical geography, regional

administration and functional land-use’ all contribute to the culture of a given people.

However, the catalogue of items that contribute to culture is virtually interminable. In

order to refine this catalogue, those items that are seen as making a positive

contribution to culture are said to have ‘cultural value’. Tim Winton’s books, for

example, are said to have cultural value in Western Australia, since they make a positive

contribution to Western Australians’ understanding and assessment of their native state

and its natural environments—in other words, a positive contribution to their ‘way of

life and manner of living’. Of course, this attribution of cultural value cannot itself be

proved correct or incorrect, but then that is the nature of ‘value’, which is an inherently

subjective thing. Nonetheless, a consensus can usually be determined and cultural value

assessed in a reasonably reliable fashion.

Now that the terms that constitute the definition of regional literature have been

reviewed and clarified, it should be apparent what the chosen definition represents

—‘regional literature’ is defined as writing possessing cultural value that is specific to a

region, although the writing may also have national and international value. Perhaps the

only item yet to be clarified is what exactly is meant by the phrase ‘although the writing

may also have national and international value’. Therefore, it is worth noting that many

of the works that are understood as part of Australia’s national literary canon (if such a

thing can be said to exist) are also arguably works of regional literature; these include

the works of Peter Cowan, A. B. Facey, Elizabeth Jolley, John Kinsella, Sally Morgan,

Randolph Stow, Tim Winton, and many others. The aforementioned Western Australian

writers have made positive contributions not only to the ‘way of life and manner of

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living’ of Western Australians, but also to Australians in general. A couple of these

writers have even made positive contributions to an international readership’s

understanding of Australia. That is to say, the cultural value of regional writers is not

limited to the bounds of the region in which they reside, and assessments of cultural

value can be made in multiple spaces simultaneously.

Furthermore, the cultural value of a book may be different in different contexts.

For example,

In Kinsella’s Syzygy poems, perhaps not always perceptible to UnitedStates and European readers, there are in fact myriad points of contactwith the raw landscapes of his Western Australian ‘wheatlands’. Butwhile the use of these references in the neo-pastoral poetry of his ‘other’and primary poetic trajectory, these Syzygy images and references aresecondary (if not incidental) to the methodology of the ‘languagepoetry’. Yet they are there and to those, like me, who share theintimacies of the same landscape they are a haunting presence.336

As a Western Australian, Glen Phillips finds very different significance in the ‘myriad

points of contact with the raw landscapes of [Kinsella’s] Western Australian

‘wheatlands”’, than would a non-Western Australian reader. In fact, Phillips suspects

these ‘points of contact’ might not even be ‘perceptible to United States and European

readers’. Clearly, these readers’ assessments of cultural value would necessarily differ

from Phillips’s assessment, even though they are consulting the same text. Phillips’s

reading is affected by his and the author’s shared residency in Western Australia; in

particular, the literature combined with his knowledge of this fact seem to have

positively influenced his assessment of the work.

In spite of this agreeable outcome, there are certain cautionary measures relevant

to this definition of regional literature that must be abided. The first of these is that

the assertion of identity inevitably requires the construction of an ‘other’,and political struggles over identity call for the reconstruction of outsidegroups as ‘others’. As suggested above, certain narratives of group

336Glen Phillips, ‘John Kinsella: A Phenomenon by Any Standard’, in Fairly Obsessive: Essays on the

Works of John Kinsella, ed. Rod Mengham and Glen Phillips (Nedlands: Centre for Studies in AustralianLiterature and Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2000), 22.

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identity, such as those of nationalist ideology, inevitably overstatecommonalities within a group and exaggerate differences with othersconsidered alien. The protagonists may tend towards ‘essentialism’.That is, they may invoke the essential and ineradicable cultural traits oftheir group, and denounce the culture and values of the outsiders asinherently evil or dangerous.337

Clearly, I do not intend to ‘denounce the culture and values’ of the cultural centres ‘as

inherently evil or dangerous’. Rather, as has been noted elsewhere, I believe that

‘othering’ is impossible to avoid in certain conversations, and it is not entirely desirable

to avoid it when it privileges a traditionally disempowered community. This in no way

means that it is always desirable, and all attempts will be made not to ‘exaggerate

differences with others considered alien’ and to avoid ‘essentialism’.

Another cautionary tale:

The question of ‘speaking as’ involves a distancing from oneself. Themoment I have to think of the ways in which I will speak as an Indian, oras a feminist, the ways in which I will speak as a woman, what I amdoing is trying to generalise myself, make myself representative, tryingto distance myself from some kind of inchoate speaking as such. Thereare many subject positions which one must inhabit; one is not just onething.338

In the same way that a woman or Aboriginal writer, for example, may choose to ‘speak

as’ a woman or an Aboriginal Australian in certain contexts, in order perhaps to make a

political statement, some regional writers may choose to speak as regionalists for the

same reason. However, this is not a requirement for inclusion in the categories of

women’s writing, Aboriginal writing, or regional writing. Nor does the affiliation of a

writer with any one of these categories preclude her from being affiliated with another;

indeed, there are several important regional Aboriginal women writers working in

Australia today. There are even writers, such as Robert Drewe, who have close

affiliations with both a regional area (he lived in Perth from the age of six until his early

337Geoffrey Stokes, ed., The Politics of Identity in Australia (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press,

1997), 9.338Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Sneja Gunew, ‘Questions of Multiculturalism’, in The Cultural

Studies Reader, ed. Simon During (London: Routledge, 1993), 194–95.

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twenties, and many of his works are set in Western Australia) and a cultural centre (he

currently lives on the north coast of New South Wales, and this location has increasingly

become a preoccupation of his fiction). Nonetheless, Drewe is still regarded in this

thesis as a regional writer, since he has an established relationship with a region and a

readership located outside the cultural centres.

As was argued earlier in this chapter, it is important, especially in the case of

regional literature, to revisit the question of authorship. Considering the enormous

appeal of representing the ‘author as celebrity’ both within the media and amongst

consumers of this media, it would be foolish to ignore this question. Related questions

are already being asked and answered on the radio with ABC Radio National’s ‘The

Book Show’, in the pages of Vanity Fair, and on television with First Tuesday Book

Club. To dismiss those who want answers to questions about authorship would be

equivalent to dismissing reader-response theory. Instead, by acknowledging the

significance of these questions, Drewe’s ‘established relationship with a region and a

readership located outside the cultural centres’ can be shown to contribute to an

assessment of his work as possessing cultural value that is specific to Western Australia.

In other words, he does not need to ‘speak as a regionalist’ or even set future stories in

Western Australia, since his association as a person and author with Western Australia

(not to mention the fact that he has, in the past, set many stories here) is sufficient to

inspire an assessment of his work as regional literature.

As was noted in Chapter 1, I disagree with Bennett’s statement that with the

emergence of ‘reader-power’ in the 1990s, ‘the role projected for writers has, regrettably

been diminished’. Indeed, it is under the auspices of ‘reader-power’ that the ‘author as

celebrity’ formulation has truly burgeoned. However, Bennett is not alone in his

opinion:

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I believe that the author, as Roland Barthes long ago said, is dead. Theauthor is irrelevant. What matters is the reader. When the text is written,when the text is published and presented to you, it belongs to you. It isnot the author’s. And in fact I would argue that it never actually was.339

John Kinsella overlooks the fact that, if the text truly belongs to the reader, and the

reader demands the involvement of the author (as happens in the ‘author as celebrity’

formulation), then the author is no longer irrelevant. In fact, the author is suddenly

more relevant than ever before, since she is now not only involved with the book’s

production through the act of writing, but she is also intimately involved with its

reception.

Of course, publishing houses are another entity involved in the production and

reception of a text. In the case of regional literature, it is often a regional publisher who

manages this process, though regional literature is also produced by publishing houses

located in the cultural centres and even by multinational publishing houses. For the

purposes of this thesis, ‘regional publishing’ is any publishing activity that takes place

outside the cultural centres. Not all regional publishers publish ‘regional literature’ as

defined above, but it is much less common for a regional publisher to publish work that

originated in a cultural centre, than it is for a publisher in a cultural centre to publish

work originating in a regional area. Therefore, regional publishing will continue to be

defined by the location of its activities, rather than by the type or place of origin of the

material it publishes.

IV. The importance of literary regionalism and a sense of regional identity

Of course, all this begs the question, ‘Why is creating an increased sense of

regional identity important?’ I will address the specifics of a Western Australian

identity, and how Western Australian publishing houses and writers have contributed to

339Maria Vidal and Núria Casado, ‘John Kinsella, through His Poetry’, Southerly 59, nos. 3–4

(Spring/Summer 1999): 161, quoting John Kinsella.

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the formation and growth of this identity, in Chapter 4. However, it is essential now to

address the importance of regionalism, regional literature and a sense of regional

identity in more general terms, outlining the relevance of these concerns and laying the

groundwork for future discussion.

Creating an increased sense of regional identity is important for many reasons,

though these can perhaps best be addressed in two categories. The first category

encompasses all the benefits enjoyed by the residents of that region, or what I call intra-

regional benefits. These include an increased sense of regional and local pride, which

often manifests itself in greater regional and local involvement; for example, an increase

in volunteerism and active debate in community forums. It is admittedly difficult to

identify a direct link between regional literature, an increased sense of regional identity,

and these sorts of positive outcomes, but certainly there are demonstrable links between

feelings of local and regional pride, and an involvement in local and regional activities

and organisations promoting the improvement of the local community.

The second category of reasons for the importance of creating an increased sense

of regional identity encompass what I call inter-regional benefits. In other words, these

benefits are enjoyed not only by the people inhabiting the community in question, but

also by people outside this community. An example of this is someone from outside

Western Australia who reads a book by a Western Australian author. If the reader is

sufficiently impressed with the book, the writer, or the place described, this may affect

her perception of the region. This is not a far-fetched notion; the promotion of Western

Australian literature by Fremantle Arts Centre Press has been instrumental in changing

eastern state perceptions of the arts in Western Australia from a sort of provincial

backwater, to a literary and cultural hub.

Perhaps the most famous example of regional literature contributing inter-

regional benefits is also perhaps the most famous example of regional literature—the

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works of Thomas Hardy, the bulk of which are set in the semi-imaginary county of

Wessex in the English countryside. Hardy’s novels have contributed enormously to the

tourism industry in those real counties and towns on which his imaginary locations were

based. In fact, the county of Dorset still relies on the phrase ‘Hardy’s Wessex’ or

‘Hardy Country’ in much of its current tourism literature.

Literary scholar Michael Millgate analyses this phenomenon:

Public avidity for the reassurances of the actual was soon sufficient toturn Wessex into what might perhaps be called an apparent reality....Hardy at least seems in some of his novels to have taken satisfaction inhis enhancement of the local tourist industry. But there is also a sense—an altogether more serious sense—in which regionalism is forever tryingto free itself from the trivialisation of ‘local colour’ and from thewidespread view that regionalism itself is a limiting term.340

The tourism Hardy’s novels brought (and continue to bring) to the region was a boon for

the local economy. Nonetheless, this example fits the definition of inter-regional

benefits, since the benefits also extend to those outside the region by hopefully changing

their perceptions of the regional area as parochial or provincial, and also by altering the

‘widespread view that regionalism itself is a limiting term’. Clearly, creating an

increased sense of regional identity is important, not just in Western Australia but in

every regional area.

Furthermore, as the first two chapters of this thesis demonstrated, there is an

established interest in literary regionalism in Australia, even if, as Marthe Reed insists,

‘place, in the face of so many overwhelmingly obvious signs of its importance in so

many areas of study, has until the advent of eco-criticism and the “new geography”

(cultural geography), received limited attention in literary criticism in comparison to

other issues and concerns’.341 The relatively recent introduction of regionalism to the

attention of literary scholars should not, however, discourage individuals from further

340Michael Millgate, ‘Unreal Estate: Reflections on Wessex and Yoknapatawpha’, in The Literature of

Region and Nation, ed. R. P. Draper (London: Macmillan, 1989), 77–78.341Marthe Reed, ‘The Poem as Liminal Place-moment: John Kinsella, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge,Christopher Dewdney and Eavan Boland’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Western Australia, 2008), 52.

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study of this subject. Nor should the faltering of these attentions in the 1990s. The

intra- and inter-regional benefits associated with literary regionalism should be reason

enough to continue its advocacy.

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Chapter 4

Book publishing in Western Australia:

Fremantle Press, Magabala Books and University of Western Australia Press

I. Introduction to book publishing in Western Australia

The Australian Bureau of Statistics does not have statistics that are specific to

Western Australian book publishing, but it counts 234 businesses in Australia whose

main activity is book publishing.342 This number is very close to that found in The

Australian Writer’s Marketplace, which in its 2006 edition counted 201 publishing

houses.343 Therefore, it is reasonable to use the numbers The Australian Writer’s

Marketplace has for Western Australia: 12 publishing houses in Western Australia in

2006, which is approximately 6% of the total number of publishing houses operating in

Australia.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, as recently as 2004, nearly 94%

of all books sold in Australia that were published by an Australian publishing house,

came from publishing houses based in New South Wales or Victoria, two states which

are home to nearly 60% of the Australian population.344 Queensland-based publishing

houses produced a further 4.6% of Australian books sales, while South Australia yielded

0.86%. The remaining states and territories comprised 1.03% of Australian book sales;

the Australian Bureau of Statistics does not give a breakdown of this final number into

its constituent parts, namely Western Australia, Tasmania, the Northern Territory, and

the Australian Capital Territory. Nonetheless, even if Western Australia produced the

majority of this 1.03%, its publishing houses are selling fewer units on average than

their eastern states counterparts (since Western Australia has nearly 6% of the total

number of publishing houses operating in Australia, but produced less than 1% of

342Australian Bureau of Statistics, 3.343Queensland Writers Centre, ed., The Australian Writer’s Marketplace 2006 (Brisbane: Queensland

Writers Centre, 2006).344Australian Bureau of Statistics, 6.

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Australian book sales). Of course, this is largely due to the concentration in Sydney and

Melbourne of large, multinational publishing houses.

Not only are Western Australian publishing houses selling fewer units on

average than their eastern states counterparts, they are also producing fewer new titles

as a proportion of the number of publishing houses operating in the state. According to

the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 8,602 new Australian titles were published in 2003–

04.345 Publishing houses provide figures to The Australian Writer’s Marketplace of the

average number of new titles they publish annually, and according to these figures

Western Australian publishing houses produce between 233 and 260 new titles per year,

or approximately 3% of the total number of new Australian titles published during

2003–04.

To summarise: Western Australia represents 10% of the Australian population, is

home to approximately 6% of the total number of publishing houses operating in

Australia, publishes approximately 3% of the total number of new Australian titles, and

produced less than 1% of all book sales in Australia in which the book was produced by

an Australian publishing house. The mind boggles at the infinitesimally small

percentage Western Australian publishing houses occupy of total book sales in

Australia, including both Australian and imported titles.

Of course, the same statistics for any other Australian state or territory, excepting

New South Wales and Victoria—arguably the cultural centres of the nation and, without

a doubt, the traditional centres of book publishing in Australia—would not be all that

different. Therefore, the dire analysis found above is not a specific indictment of the

Western Australian publishing industry, but rather an indication of the difficulties

common to regional publishing houses.

345Ibid., 5.

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Nonetheless, there remain features distinctive to book publishing in Western

Australia:

In this state because of geographic and, it might be argued, psychicdistances, previous governments have made decisions to support WesternAustralian publishing. This remains a distinctive feature within culturalpolicy and planning in Western Australia, and virtually unique across thenation (certainly through its longevity and levels of support). Thisinvestment has, without question, paid off manyfold: by growing adistinctive publishing environment, developing writers who havereceived local, national and international acclaim, and supportingmanifold industries including retail bookshops, educational suppliers,printers, designers, print production houses, and the (usual) cottageindustry that writers conduct.346

In addition to the ‘longevity and levels of support’ that distinguish the Western

Australian Government’s support of book publishing, there are the Western Australian

Premier’s Book Awards. These are open only to writers who meet at least one of the

following criteria:

1. Born in Western Australia 2. Usual place of residence is Western Australia 3. Has been resident in Western Australia for a minimum of 10years at some stage, although not currently resident in WA. 4. Whose work has Western Australia as its primary focus.347

No other Australian state government has analogous criteria for its premier’s award.

This chapter examines the ‘distinctive publishing environment’ of Western

Australia and, in particular, its three best-known publishing houses—Fremantle Press,

Magabala Books and University of Western Australia Press. These three publishing

houses have been more successful in establishing a profile for Western Australian

writers and writing than any other publishing house in the state, and one of them, at

least, ‘is seen in other states as a model for a regional publisher which is achieving

national prominence’.348 For this reason, the largest part of Chapter 4 is devoted to the

346Terri-ann White, ‘An Independent Evaluation of State Funding to Publishing of Literary Works inWestern Australia’, Report for the Government of Western Australia, Aug. 2001, 4–5.347‘Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards—Guidelines’, in State Library of Western Australia (1

Nov. 2007, accessed 16 Apr. 2008); available from http://www.liswa.wa.gov.au/pbkgdlines.html.348Taylor, ‘Review’, 3.

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history and current work of Fremantle Press. This is followed by a close look at

Magabala Books, an Indigenous publishing house based in the small town of Broome in

the far north of Western Australia, including an analysis of its contribution to a regional

literature in Western Australia. Both publishing houses receive substantial subsidies

from the Western Australian Government, an important aspect of their history that has

been justified on the basis of ‘Western Australia’s relatively small population, its

distance from large markets and the attendant difficulties in marketing and promotion—

all of which contribute to high unit costs and difficulties in market penetration’.349

University of Western Australia Press, on the other hand, receives no government

subsidy but is supported in various ways by its namesake university. The analysis of

this third Western Australian publishing house is shorter than the others, since a book-

length history of University of Western Australia Press was published in 2005.

The final section of this chapter (‘Other Western Australian publishing houses’)

briefly surveys some of the other publishing houses currently operating in Western

Australia, in addition to explaining why these publishing houses are not the subject of

greater attention in this thesis. In short, they are mostly hobby or ‘vanity’ publishing

houses, or they publish titles that do not fit the definition of ‘literature’ employed in this

thesis.

Nonetheless, nearly all of the publishing houses mentioned in this chapter—and

certainly the three publishing houses that comprise its primary focus—share a common

concern: ‘It is as important a writer now feel free to conceive work in terms of a local

environment as it once was to feel able to conceive it in terms of an Australian

environment.’350 The author of this excerpt, Western Australian writer Peter Cowan,

goes on to say that ‘the day of orientation to English or American publishers has not

349Ibid., 5.350Peter Cowan, ‘“A Two Book Wonder”: A Decade of Publishing—Fremantle Arts Centre Press—1976–1986’, Westerly 31, no. 1 (Mar. 1986): 86.

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gone, but it has been lessened, and if it is passing for West Australians it is because of

the existence of the Fremantle Arts Centre Press’.351 And so, it is only natural that this

chapter continues with an in-depth exploration of this most significant Western

Australian publishing house.

II. Fremantle Press

In 1972, the Fremantle Arts Centre was established by Fremantle City Council,

and Ian Templeman was appointed its inaugural Director. The newly renovated

Fremantle Lunatic Asylum, a colonial gothic structure built using convict labour and

opened in July 1865, was chosen as the Centre’s home. This imposing historic

landmark building in the port city of Fremantle, Western Australia, had served many

different purposes in the intervening years between the closure of the Asylum in 1900

and the opening of Fremantle Arts Centre (in 1973, the year after it was established), but

it was particularly well-suited to the latter organisation’s needs; it is still the Centre’s

home after more than 35 years.

One of the earliest developments at the Fremantle Arts Centre was the

establishment of a Community Arts programme, through which it offered practical,

hands-on classes to the public in painting, sculpture and various crafts. The Centre also

offered creative writing and literature appreciation classes. In addition to the

Community Arts programme, the Fremantle Arts Centre exhibited the work of Western

Australian painters, sculptors and craftspeople in specially designed galleries on the

premises. The Centre did not, however, have an established means of ‘exhibiting’ the

work of the writers participating in its Community Arts programme, nor indeed the

‘wealth of writing activity in W.A.’ then perceived by staff at the Centre.352

351Ibid.352Phillip Winn, ‘The Fremantle Arts Centre Press: A Case Study of a Smaller West Australian Publishing

House’, i Mots Pluriels 5 (Jan. 1998, accessed 15 Aug. 2007), quoting Clive Newman; available fromhttp://motspluriels.arts.uwa.edu.au/MP598pwClive.html.

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The Fremantle Arts Centre began to publish Patterns, a poetry magazine, and

Pinup, which Templeman described as an ‘experimental project aimed at making more

widely known the work of Western Australian writers’; it was a poster ‘devoted to the

work of a single writer, either in poetry or prose’ and ‘designed with accompanying

graphics to ensure that the poster is attractive and could be pinned up on a school notice

board, kitchen door, or in a public place’.353 Perhaps unsurprisingly, Pinup was phased

out of existence, while Patterns, which had attracted ‘a small guarantee against loss for

the first three issues ... from the Literature Board of the Australia Council’, became a

regular feature of the Centre.354 Patterns was published quarterly and ‘distributed in a

limited way through retail outlets, mainly in Western Australia’.355 In 1981, the format

was changed to include short stories; this continued until the end of 1985, after which

Patterns ceased to be a separate publication and appeared as a section of Fremantle Arts

Review.

Even in the early days of Patterns, however, Templeman felt the magazine

presented insufficient opportunities to Western Australian writers. More generally, ‘in

Western Australia it was felt that there was limited publishing access for local writers,

with markets also concentrated in the eastern states’.356 Consequently, Templeman

‘seized on an election promise [in 1974] by [Western Australian Premier] Sir Charles

Court that, if re-elected, a West Australian Literary Fund would be established to help

local writers get published’.357 Indeed, Court was re-elected and just such a fund was

established, and it was an important early contributor to what would become known as

Fremantle Arts Centre Press.

353Ian Templeman, ‘The Fremantle Arts Centre’, Westerly 3 (Sept. 1975): 44.354Ibid.355Ian Templeman, ‘“A Two Book Wonder”: A Decade of Publishing—Fremantle Arts Centre Press—1976–1986’, Westerly 31, no. 1 (Mar. 1986): 78.356Ron Blaber, ‘Case-study: Fremantle Arts Centre Press’, in Paper Empires: A History of the Book inAustralia, 1946–2005, ed. Craig Munro and Robyn Sheahan-Bright (St. Lucia: University of Queensland

Press, 2006), 76.357Vickie Laurie, ‘The Story So Far ...’, Western Outlook 1, no. 2 (July–Sept. 1990): 24.

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Before any of this could happen, however, a feasibility study into the

establishment of a publishing unit within the Centre had to be conducted. Terry Owen

was commissioned for the job, and after she returned with positive results, she also

played an integral role in the drafting of a Constitution for the proposed press. This

included the following Mission Statement:

To publish and promote to the widest possible audience the works ofWestern Australian writers and artists who may otherwise not bepublished by commercial publishing houses, and to record the culturalheritage of the State in a form that is easily accessible to the widestpossible audience.358

The idea of a publishing house exclusively devoted to publishing and promoting the

works of writers from the region in which the publishing house was based was a novel

one, the first of its kind that anyone involved was aware of, certainly in Australia. The

Constitution ‘was put together and submitted to the Department of Corporate Affairs for

approval as a non-profit distributing organisation’.359 Owen had recommended that the

organisation be called Centre Press, and so this was what was submitted to the

Department of Corporate Affairs. However, the application was rejected as Centre

Press. Brian Raymond Coffey (also known as Ray Coffey, or B. R. Coffey), who would

be hired in 1978 as Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s Managing Editor, recalled in an

interview in 2001:

From memory ... it was too close to the name of something else that wasaround in Western Australia at the time and they rejected it. One of the ...problems was there was an expectation that it was going to go throughand some letterheads and materials were printed that had ‘Centre Press’written on it, and which had a little bit of life beyond that point, becausefinances were so short that the materials were used anyway.360

This confusion over the name of the press was reflected in the first newspaper article to

mention its formation:

358Taylor, ‘Review’, 22.359Templeman, ‘Two Book Wonder’, 79.360Brian Raymond Coffey, interview by Margaret McPherson, tape recording, 16 Oct. 2001, FremantleCity Library Oral History Project.

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The City of Fremantle through its Arts Centre is about to publish poetryand short stories. A publishing unit, called Centrepress, has been formed,a typesetting composer bought and a manager commissioned to producethe first book of poems by next March.361

This short article was printed on 26 October 1975 in Sunday Times, a Western

Australian newspaper. The press was not actually referred to in the media as Fremantle

Arts Centre Press until its first book (published in March 1976, as predicted above) was

reviewed in The West Australian on 24 April 1976.

In the meantime, the name on the application to the Department of Corporate

Affairs was changed from ‘Centre Press’ to ‘Fremantle Arts Centre Press’ and the

application subsequently accepted. Owen was named General Manager of the Press,

with Templeman, who was still the Director of the Fremantle Arts Centre, appointed to

the role of Chief Executive of the Press. The Fremantle Arts Centre functioned as a host

organisation and provided limited use of its staff, including Clive Newman, who was

Deputy Director of the Centre and offered accounting and financial support to the Press.

However, the vision was always for Fremantle Arts Centre Press to have as much

financial and managerial independence as possible, and so a Board of Management was

formed, consisting of ‘representation from the literary community of Western Australia,

the Fremantle City Council and people with publishing and business experience’.362 The

members of that first Board included Ian Templeman, Terry Owen, Clive Newman,

Bruce Bennett, Ronald Warren, Anthony Evans and John Birch.

The Western Australian Arts Council provided a grant (the Western Australian

Literary Fund would not start distributing funds until 1977) of $11,500 to cover Owen’s

initial salary, as well as to purchase a typesetting composer. They also promised a

further $3,500 in working capital. It was expected that the Literature Board of the

Australia Council would provide further funding in the form of publication subsidies for

361‘Fremantle Goes Into Publishing’, Sunday Times (Perth), 26 Oct. 1975.362Templeman, ‘Two Book Wonder’, 79.

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selected titles, as well as subsidise book production operations through the Book Bounty

scheme it operated with the Department of Customs. An important distinction between

funding received from the Literature Board of the Australia Council and state

government funding, is that ‘the states often provided general subsidies towards the

operations of ... publishers, as well as project grants offered towards a single title or a

group of titles’.363 Of course, all ‘state-subsidised presses were located outside Sydney,

Melbourne and Canberra’.364

Fremantle Arts Centre Press, established in 1975, published its first book in

March 1976. The book, Soundings, an anthology of Western Australian poetry edited by

Veronica Brady, literally fell apart as a result of poor binding and had to be returned to

the printers, where it was stapled through the cover and spine to hold it together.

Nonetheless, it was received positively by The West Australian:

For present trends in West Australian poetry Soundings, from theFremantle Arts Centre, provides a catholic selection (including full-pagephotos of the poets). ... In general, the book is one of the best offered tolovers of poetry for some time. Perhaps our isolation and our emptinessare spurs to poetic achievement.365

Its positive reception in the press did not, however, signal an end to Fremantle Arts

Centre Press’s trouble with Soundings. Lloyd Davies, solicitor and ex-husband of

writer Dorothy Hewett, whose poems were included in the volume, threatened to sue the

publishers for allegedly libellous material contained in one of Hewett’s poems.

Fremantle Arts Centre Press received a letter from a law firm citing action pending, and

Soundings was subsequently withdrawn from the trade. Happily for the fledgling

publishers, however, most copies of the book had already been sold.

Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s second publishing venture was a companion

volume to Soundings, an anthology of short fiction by Western Australian writers titled

363Stuart Glover, ‘Publishing and the State’, in Making Books: Contemporary Australian Publishing, ed.David Carter and Anne Galligan (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2007), 88.364Ibid.365‘No Ecstasy’, West Australian, 24 Apr. 1976.

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New Country. Local artist Guy Grey-Smith provided the woodcuts that adorned the

covers of both books, a feature of the Press’s commitment not only to Western

Australian writers, but also to Western Australian artists. However, unlike the poetry

anthology, which contained a few poems from each of a large number of Western

Australian poets, New Country presented the work of only six Western Australian short

story writers, with each writer contributing between two and four stories. Fremantle

Arts Centre Press went on to publish stand-alone collections of short stories by all but

two of the contributors (Iris Milutinovic and Hal Colebatch) to this early anthology, and

single-author books by all but Milutinovic.

New Country was fittingly edited by the single most vocal proponent of a

regional conception of Australia, University of Western Australia academic and

Fremantle Arts Centre Press Board member, Bruce Bennett. In his introduction to the

book, Bennett notes that ‘this is the first book devoted to short stories by Western

Australians since Henrietta Drake-Brockman’s anthology West Coast Stories was

published in 1959’.366

The two books that rounded out the first year of publishing at Fremantle Arts

Centre Press were Nicholas Hasluck’s Anchor and Other Poems and Elizabeth Jolley’s

Five Acre Virgin and Other Stories. These two titles marked the beginnings of the West

Coast Writing series, ‘a paperback series from Fremantle Arts Centre Press devoted to

the work of Western Australian writers whose work has appeared in journals and

anthologies but who have not yet had a collection of their work published. Each

volume in the series is devoted to the work of one writer.’ This passage appears on the

back covers of both volumes, where it also notes that the Press ‘receives financial

assistance from the Literature Committee of the Western Australian Arts Council and is

supported by the City of Fremantle’. The support the Press received from the City of

366Bruce Bennett, New Country, viii.

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Fremantle did not come in the form of a direct subsidy, but rather in access to some of

the resources (including staff) at the City-funded Fremantle Arts Centre. This same

acknowledgement appeared in Soundings and New Country.

Another point of similarity with Soundings and New Country is that the early

volumes in the West Coast Writing series all feature cover and interior illustrations or

photographs by Western Australian artists.

Hasluck’s Anchor and Other Poems was not a great sales success. Nonetheless,

it marked the beginning of a distinguished literary career. Hasluck had published

individual poems in leading Australian newspapers and journals, as well as had his

poems featured in Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s Soundings, but Anchor and Other

Poems was his first book. He would go on to publish four more books with Fremantle

Arts Centre Press, including a volume of short fiction and a novel. Eventually, he left

the Press’s ranks and took up with Penguin, who published his The Bellarmine Jug: A

Novel, which won The Age Book of the Year Award in 1984. Adding to Hasluck’s

remarkable literary career, he served as Deputy Chair of the Australia Council from

1978 until 1982, and Chair of the Literature Board from 1999 until 2002. Clearly,

Fremantle Arts Centre Press had backed—and, moreover, helped to create—a winner.

At the time Five Acre Virgin and Other Stories was published, Jolley had a much

more limited publishing record than Hasluck. Stories from this book had previously

appeared in Westerly and Sandgropers, and she had also, of course, been featured in the

Press’s second volume, New Country. Notably, all of these publications were produced

in Western Australia, so Jolley had had very little exposure in the eastern states of

Australia. In fact, Jolley had been writing for a long time and sending her manuscripts

to publishing houses in Melbourne and Sydney, but she had received rejection letters

from nearly every publisher in Australia prior to her first book being taken up by

Fremantle Arts Centre Press.

187

Clive Newman, Deputy Director of the Fremantle Arts Centre at the time Five

Acre Virgin and Other Stories was published, recalled the event on the occasion of the

Press’s 20th anniversary:

Elizabeth Jolley, in the mid-seventies, was not yet published in bookform. Her Five Acre Virgin and Other Stories, provided our first rush ofadrenaline when enthusiastic reviews prompted strong sales in Perth. Weboldly sent review copies of the book to literary editors around Australia,most of whom responded by running prompt and positive reviews, anddiscovered what was to be a major problem for the Press for many years—how to effectively and efficiently distribute our titles on a nationalbasis. Discerning readers outside WA had to demonstrate remarkablepersistence in order to acquire a copy of the book. Not many storesoutside WA responded to our telephone promotion of a new Australianwriter from an unheard of publisher, and those that did tended to order inminimum quantities. Many copies of Five Acre Virgin found their wayinterstate in single book parcels and we spent an inordinate amount oftime chasing up outstanding invoices for ridiculously small amounts ofmoney.367

As Newman says, distribution was a continual problem for the Press, as indeed it is for

most Australian publishers, but particularly for those located outside the traditional

centres of book publishing. As Ron Blaber notes in his ‘case-study’ of Fremantle Arts

Centre Press, ‘Western Australia provided good support, but in the eastern states the

press was limited to independent booksellers such as Gleebooks [in Sydney] and

Readings [in Melbourne].’368 The problem of distribution would be a recurring theme in

the Press’s early development. However, the sorts of distribution difficulties Newman

discusses here are symptomatic of a successful publishing endeavour, as they are a sign

of demand for a given title. Jolley’s first book, published in the latter half of 1976, had

to be reprinted the following year to meet this demand.

Another theme in the development of Fremantle Arts Centre Press—this theme,

unfortunately, not restricted only to the Press’s early years—is the loss of writers to

larger, mostly multinational publishing houses based in the eastern states. Jolley is a

367Clive Newman, ‘Fremantle Arts Centre Press ... Twenty Years On’, Australian Book Review, Feb./Mar.

1996, 53.368Blaber, 77.

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prominent example of this trend. In total, she published seven books with Fremantle

Arts Centre Press, including three collections of short stories, three novels, and a final

book—a slim volume of poetry and personal observation in diary form. This last book,

Diary of a Weekend Farmer, was published in 1993, but Jolley had long since moved

away from Fremantle Arts Centre Press, publishing her last work of prose fiction with

them (The Sugar Mother) in 1988. Diary of a Weekend Farmer is, likely, a book that a

publisher with more commercial concerns would have rejected as unviable, given its

enigmatic quality and brevity. In contrast, Fremantle Arts Centre Press published it as a

hardcover book with full-colour reproductions of paintings by Western Australian artist

Evelyn Kotai sprinkled throughout the text.

After publishing two collections of short stories and a novel with Fremantle Arts

Centre Press, Jolley placed a book with a different publisher for the first time in 1980.

The novel Palomino was published by Outback Press, a small Melbourne-based outfit.

The following year, Jolley published The Newspaper of Claremont Street with

Fremantle Arts Centre Press. Jolley then published three books in 1983: Mr. Scobie’s

Riddle (novel) and Woman in a Lampshade (short stories) with Penguin, and Miss

Peabody’s Inheritance (novel) with University of Queensland Press. Mr. Scobie’s

Riddle and Miss Peabody’s Inheritance are the two books that established Jolley’s

reputation as an Australian writer of extraordinary merit; the former won The Age Book

of the Year Award and the Western Australia Week Literary Award for Prose Fiction,

while the latter was shortlisted for the National Book Council Award for Australian

Literature.

Jolley would publish a novel and a collection of short stories with Fremantle

Arts Centre Press in 1984, the aforementioned The Sugar Mother in 1988, and Diary of

a Weekend Farmer in 1993, but from 1983 onwards, her star had been set to rise far

beyond the reach of the small Western Australian publishing house that had given her a

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start. Jolley published one more book with University of Queensland Press, but the

remainder of her books were issued by the multinational company Penguin or its sister

company Viking. When Jolley died in 2007, obituaries appeared in Australian and

international newspapers such as The New York Times and The Times (UK), capping a

career of high-profile reviews of her books in the most internationally acclaimed

magazines, journals and newspapers, including the lead story in an issue of The New

York Times Book Review. In these articles, ‘Penguin’ was mentioned with much greater

frequency than ‘Fremantle Arts Centre Press’.

Even allowing for the commercial success of Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s first

Jolley book, Five Acre Virgin, the Press recorded sales of only $3,058 in its first year of

publishing.369 This figure amounted to 17.6% of the Press’s costs in 1976, the remainder

of which was made up for by the aforementioned ‘financial assistance from the

Literature Committee of the Western Australian Arts Council’. The following year,

Fremantle Arts Centre Press improved on this figure: a recorded $8,985 in sales made

up 26.4% of costs.370 In this year, 1977, the Press published five new titles.

The Press’s publishing programme in this year resembled in many ways the

programme of the previous year. The first three books it produced in 1977 were single-

author volumes in the West Coast Writing series by writers featured in either Soundings

or New Country. These were presented in the same black-and-white format as earlier

Fremantle Arts Centre Press books, with artwork by local artists featured both on their

covers and in the interior. The most significant of these three books is a collection of

short stories by T. A. G. Hungerford, Wong Chu and the Queen’s Letterbox, since

Hungerford would go on to be a major author for the Press and in Australian literature,

more generally. Wong Chu and the Queen’s Letterbox was also the first book from

369Derrick Tomlinson, Chairman, Fremantle Arts Centre Press Board of Management, letter to HaydnWilliams, Chairman, Western Australian Arts Council, 29 Mar. 1983, State Records Office of Western

Australia.370Ibid.

190

Fremantle Arts Centre Press to receive its funding from the newly established Western

Australian Literary Fund, rather than from the Literature Committee of the Western

Australian Arts Council.

However, Fremantle Arts Centre Press in 1977 also published two books that

deviated noticeably from its previous publishing programme. The first of these, Other

Earth: Four Greek-Australian Stories by Vasso Kalamaras, is a bilingual edition in

Greek and English, which was translated from the original Greek by Reg Durack in

collaboration with the author. This was only the second book published by the Press

that was supported by a publication subsidy from the Literature Board of the Australia

Council (the first was Lee Knowles’s collection of poems, Cool Summer, published

earlier in 1977). More significantly, however, the publication of Other Earth should

finally discredit any assumptions leftover from the discussion in Chapter 1 about how

some critics accuse regional literature of only promoting the majority culture’s interests

—the white, Anglo-Celtic, male viewpoint.

The second, and perhaps more remarkable, development in the Press’s

publishing programme involved its decision to accept non-fiction manuscripts. This

move was initiated when Peter Cowan presented Fremantle Arts Centre Press with a

collection of his great-great-grandmother’s letters, which were eventually published as

A Faithful Picture: The Letters of Eliza and Thomas Brown at York in the Swan River

Colony 1841–1852, edited by Peter Cowan and with an introduction by Alexandra

Hasluck. Although it was not the case with A Faithful Picture in 1977, non-fiction

publishing would eventually prove to be one of Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s most

lucrative publishing areas.

In March of the following year, Fremantle Arts Centre Press effectively

announced its presence on the Australian publishing scene in a way that even Jolley’s

Five Acre Virgin and the attendant positive critical reception had been unable to. The

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Weekend Australian Magazine announced that Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s ‘public

“coming out” was really Writers’ Week in Adelaide earlier this year. They arrived

armed with their catalogue and their books ... both amazing and being amazed by the

interest they generated.’371 The Press still did not have an efficient mechanism in place

for national distribution of its titles, but at least its presence at the Adelaide Writers’

Week ensured that from 1978 onwards most Australian booksellers knew Fremantle

Arts Centre Press by name and, with increasing frequency, by reputation, as well.

By the time this article appeared in July 1978, Fremantle Arts Centre Press had

published ten books under its own imprint and ‘five more as “vanity jobs” merely using

the facilities of the Press without following up distribution’.372 The latter books

included titles such as, Woodline: Five Years with the Woodcutters of the Western

Australian Goldfields by L.R.M. Hunter, and Let Me Learn the Steps: Poems from a

Psychiatric Ward by Mary Morris and Bill Hart-Smith. These publications did not

contribute to the establishment of Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s reputation as a

publisher of fine books, but the income they generated through the hiring of the Press

machines and on-staff expertise provided a valuable, though modest, source of income

for the Press. This arrangement would continue for several more years before tapering

off (though it would be briefly reinvigorated following the 1995 ‘Review into the

Investment of Government in the Publishing of Literary Works’ as a way of reducing the

Press’s reliance on Government subsidy).

One arrangement that came to an end in 1978, however, was Terry Owen’s

appointment as General Manager of Fremantle Arts Centre Press. She was replaced by

Coffey, though the role’s title was changed to Managing Editor. At the time of his

appointment, Coffey was the only full-time employee of the Press, as Templeman

remained Director of the Fremantle Arts Centre in addition to his role as Chief

371Geraldine Doogue, ‘Literary View’, Weekend Australian Magazine, 1–2 July 1978.372Ibid.

192

Executive of the Press. Furthermore, the Press’s accounting and financial support

continued to come from Newman as Deputy Director of the Centre.

In 1978, the Press published five books: two more titles in its West Coast

Writing series (Alec Choate’s book of poetry, Gifts Upon the Water, and Nicholas

Hasluck’s short story collection, The Hat on the Letter O and Other Stories), an

anthology of autobiographical writing about childhood by Western Australian writers

(Memories of Childhood: A Collection of Reminiscences, edited by Lee White and

featuring drawings by children of White Gum Valley Primary School), the Press’s first

natural history book (Grasstrees of Western Australia, by Hal Missingham), and

Westerly 21: An Anniversary Selection (edited by Westerly’s long-standing editors,

Bruce Bennett and Peter Cowan).

However, Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s most significant achievement of 1978

was not a book, but rather a seminar it organised. In October, the Press convened a

three-day gathering of Australia’s literary stars and interested locals to explore the

theme of ‘Time, Place and People: Regionalism in Contemporary Australian Literature’.

As was mentioned in Chapter 1 of this thesis, the seminar featured speeches by well-

known writers such as Frank Moorhouse, Thomas Shapcott, Elizabeth Jolley, Peter

Cowan, and T. A. G. Hungerford. These speeches were later reprinted in an edition of

the literary journal Westerly, which gave them greater circulation and cultural currency.

The conversation about literary regionalism in Australia did not begin to take

shape until the late 1970s and into the 1980s, and Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s first

seminar was of unparalleled importance in this development. The Press would host

further seminars in 1980 (‘Writers and their Audience’), 1982 (concerning biography

and autobiography), and 1984 (‘The Writer’s Voice’), but none would replicate the

influence of this first seminar.

193

After publishing four books in its first year in operation, and five books in its

second and third years, Fremantle Arts Centre Press took the large step of publishing ten

new titles in 1979. Most notable among these publications were the Press’s first book

by Peter Cowan (although he had edited A Faithful Picture in 1977), a collection of

short stories titled Mobiles and Other Stories, as well as The Travelling Entertainer and

Other Stories by Elizabeth Jolley. Both writers had published collections of short

stories on previous occasions (Jolley with Fremantle Arts Centre Press, and Cowan with

several different publishers); therefore, the publication of these particular titles by

Fremantle Arts Centre Press marks a shift in the emphasis of the West Coast Writing

series. The series was originally conceived as ‘a paperback series devoted primarily to

the work of Western Australian writers whose work has appeared in journals and

anthologies but who have not yet had a collection published’. In fact, this statement still

appears on the back covers of Cowan’s and Jolley’s books, though it would be removed

from books in the series beginning with those published the following year. This event,

coupled with a new cover design for books in the West Coast Writing series (trading the

old black-and-white format for a four-colour, full-bleed image), seems to signal a shift

in the Press’s self-understanding: it clearly no longer sees itself as merely an amateur

outfit servicing new writers and a small local readership, but rather a publishing house

with significant commercial concerns, providing a service that is valuable to a broader

community of both writers and readers.

Several more important publishing events happened at Fremantle Arts Centre

Press in 1979. First, the Press published Dorothy Hewett’s play The Man from

Mukinupin in conjunction with Currency Press, the Sydney-based publisher of play and

film scripts. The script had been commissioned by Perth’s National Theatre at the

Playhouse to mark Western Australia’s sesquicentennial celebrations, and the first

edition of the book was published to coincide with the premiere of the play. (A second

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edition of the book was published in 1980, again by Fremantle Arts Centre Press in

conjunction with Currency Press, incorporating the revisions Hewett made to the script

during the rehearsal process for the first season.) In the foreword to this first edition,

Katharine Brisbane of Currency Press writes that ‘this book ... is the first fruit of what

we hope will be a rewarding partnership between Fremantle Arts Centre Press and

Currency Press in the publication of West Australian playwrights’.373 While the two

presses would publish a few more books together, including Rod Ansell’s and Rachel

Percy’s To Fight the Wild in 1980 (published to coincide with the release of a film by

the same name), this venture never gained traction. Whether this failure resulted in, or

was the result of, a lack of play and film scripts being written in Western Australia, it is

difficult to say.

Another important publishing event at Fremantle Arts Centre Press in 1979 was

the publication of Fremantle: Landscapes and People, a photography book with text by

T. A. G. Hungerford and photographs by Roger Garwood. This black-and-white

production is the first of many photography books published by the Press, undertaken in

many cases for their potential commercial appeal; the profits from these books were

typically intended to subsidise other, less commercial projects.

The final book in Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s 1979 publishing programme was

Out of Water into Light, a collection of poems by Wendy Jenkins. This title was the first

in the short-lived Shoreline Poetry series, which the back cover of the book describes as

‘a paperback series devoted primarily to the work of new Western Australian poets

whose work has appeared in journals and anthologies but who have not yet had a

collection published’. Clearly, this series was taking over from the West Coast Writing

series, which (as mentioned above) in 1980 switched its focus from Western Australian

writers ‘who have not yet had a collection published’, to simply ‘poetry and short

373Katharine Brisbane, foreword to The Man from Mukinupin, by Dorothy Hewett (Fremantle: FremantleArts Centre Press and Currency Press, 1979), iii.

195

stories by Western Australian writers’. Furthermore, the design of the Shoreline Poetry

series is simpler and, therefore, less costly; the books are so short they resemble

chapbooks, and the bindings consist of staples through the spine, rather than the

‘perfect’ binding used for books in the West Coast Writing series. It is clear that even in

this early chapter of its history, the Press was taking actions expressly designed to

maintain the delicate balance between commercial sustainability and ‘publishing those

titles which they believed needed to be produced’.374 It is worth noting that titles in the

Shoreline Poetry series were nonetheless attractively produced and could be purchased

for a small sum, all of which accorded with Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s hopes for the

series—‘to bring new poets to a wider audience’.375

The following year, 1980, saw the publication of a further three titles in the

Shoreline Poetry series. However, a collection of poems by Philip Salom, The Silent

Piano, was also published in the West Coast Writing series. Salom had not previously

published a book of poetry, and his work had not been anthologised in any collection of

Western Australian poetry, such as Soundings and Sandgropers; in fact, prior to the

publication of The Silent Piano, Salom had only ever had two poems published, both of

which appeared in the Press’s Patterns magazine. Nonetheless, the book went on to win

the prestigious 1981 Commonwealth Poetry Prize for the Best First Collection of Poetry

—arguably the Press’s biggest critical success up to this point.

In addition to expanding its programme of poetry publishing, Fremantle Arts

Centre Press published its first novel in 1980. Reflecting on this event in a 1996

magazine interview, Clive Newman had this to say:

‘There seemed to be a certain novelty value in short stories by newAustralian writers. It was not for some years that a novel came alongdeemed strong enough to publish’ [said Newman]. That novel wasSouthfalia, a complex satire by Antonio Casella, chosen, said Mr.Newman, because it suited the sort of publisher Fremantle Arts Centre

374Templeman, ‘Two Book Wonder’, 81.375Ibid.

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then wanted to become, producing quality books that wouldn’t have got asecond glance from mainstream publishers. Southfalia seemed aworthwhile challenge and all copies were sold—eventually.376

The publication of Southfalia is exemplary of something Newman discussed in a 1998

interview:

There’s no question that in our early career we were seen as elitist insome quarters because we were doing works of literature, not commercialworks. That comes from the charter that said ‘books that mightn’t bepublished by commercial publishers’. We didn’t ever see it quite likethat, we certainly didn’t consider ourselves elitist, although we did somespecialist books along the way. We published Elizabeth Jolley forinstance and she is undoubtedly a literary writer, but she has a widereadership.377

From the way all the copies of Southfalia are described as selling ‘eventually’, it is clear

this was not a book that enjoyed the ‘wide readership’ of, for example, Elizabeth

Jolley’s The Newspaper of Claremont Street, which after its 1981 publication became

‘one of the Press’s five all time best-sellers’.378 The description of Southfalia on the flap

inside its front cover perhaps sheds some light on why this might be, as well as giving

credence to the observation that Fremantle Arts Centre Press was ‘seen as elitist in some

quarters’:

Southfalia is a burlesque novel in the manner of Voltaire’s Candide,Johnson’s Rasselas and Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels that concerns itselfwith Australia’s contemporary social, political and intellectual life. Andin the larger context it is a satiric parable which examines what the authorsees as the social and spiritual dilemma in modern western civilization.

Clearly, the book is couched in high literary terms, as were many of the Press’s early

publications. This would change with time, both as the Press grew more savvy about

the way in which it presented its books to a reading public, and as the Press’s publishing

programme shifted to include more ‘popular’ titles.

Though certainly not ‘commercial’, titles in Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s

Community Publishing Project were not ‘literary’, either. The first of these titles

376Graham Nowland, ‘Fremantle Arts Centre Press’, Western Review 30 (Aug. 1996): 9.377Winn, quoting Newman.378Nowland, 9.

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published under the Fremantle Arts Centre Press imprint, Yeera-muk-a-doo by Nancy E.

Withnell Taylor, was a social history of northwestern Australia examined through the

lens of the author’s ancestors in the late 19th century. In fact, this was the fourth book

published under the auspices of the Community Publishing Project, a special funding

initiative of the Western Australian Literary Fund; the first three titles, however, had

been handled by the production unit of Fremantle Arts Centre Press, without ascribing

the Press’s imprint to the books. The Project produced its first title in 1979, and

proceeded to produce a further ten titles before the Western Australian Literary Fund

was dissolved in 1982, putting an end to the Fund’s Community Publishing Project.

Following the dissolution of the Western Australian Literary Fund, Fremantle

Arts Centre Press (which had continued to ascribe its imprint to each of the titles in the

Community Publishing Project following on from Yeera-muk-a-doo) attempted to

perpetuate the legacy of local and social histories, usually with a very limited

geographical or industry-based scope, first made possible under the auspices of the

Project. In 1983, the Press published Selected Lives, ‘a collection of reminiscences by

four Western Australians’, which it explicitly linked (by way of an introduction written

by Coffey) to the Community Publishing Project and its ‘aim ... to make available, to

both the general public and historians, books of local and family history, written from

first-hand experience, which contributed to the understanding and recording of the

social history of Western Australia’.379 Coffey also notes in the introduction that ‘from

its inception, the Project aroused considerable interest and support, both in terms of the

number and variety of manuscripts submitted for consideration for publication and the

reception the books enjoyed as they appeared’.380 (It has been noted elsewhere,

however, that titles in the Community Publishing Project had a ‘smaller print run’ than

379B. R. Coffey, introduction to Selected Lives (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1983), 3.380Ibid.

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other Fremantle Arts Centre Press titles, and that ‘the best biographies or social histories

are promoted into the FAC[P] lists’.)381

The new format of Selected Lives was meant to allow more writers to be

published than was previously possible, as gathering together multiple writers in a

single volume reduced the costs associated with publication. The Press would publish

another book in this format, Working Lives in 1984, before abandoning the project.

While there may be an element of truth to Coffey’s observation that ‘these “selected

lives” are living, personal reminiscences which are an important contribution to the life

story of Western Australia’, the books were too poorly written and their scope too

narrow to attract an audience large enough to justify their publication based on

economic or even social terms. In fact, Coffey says in a 2006 interview, speaking of the

Community Publishing Project, that ‘we perhaps wouldn’t now publish some of those

early things simply because the quality of work in that area has improved markedly’.382

Several important events occurred at Fremantle Arts Centre Press in 1981,

including the publication of Quarry: A Selection of Contemporary Western Australian

Poetry, which was mentioned in Chapter 2 of this thesis, as well as Elizabeth Jolley’s

The Newspaper of Claremont Street. Publication of the former led David Brooks to

write in The Canberra Times, ‘the range and quality of the work being done is

impressive. The book [Quarry] throws out a challenge to other states that I, for one,

would be glad to see them take up.’383 Furthermore, Thomas Shapcott wrote in a 1981

issue of Australian Book Review, ‘The phenomenon of the Fremantle Arts Centre Press

in Western Australia is one of the instructive publishing success stories of the last

decade.’384 Clearly, even at this early stage in its history, the Press was seen as playing

381Miranda Sadka, ‘An Increasing Band with an Urge to Write’, West Australian, 5 Oct. 1982, 66.382Brian Raymond Coffey, ‘“I Can’t Go On ... I’ll Go On”: Interview with Ray Coffey, Fremantle ArtsCentre Press, 22 December 2004; 24 May 2006’, interview by Noel King, Westerly 51 (2006): 32.383Cited in Templeman, ‘Two Book Wonder’, 80.384Ibid.

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an important role in the cultivation of a regional literature in Australia, as well as being

a good model for experiments in book and journal publishing outside the traditional

publishing centres of Sydney and Melbourne. Fremantle Arts Centre Press benefited

from these mentions in the national media, since it brought the Press and its publications

to the attention of an audience outside Western Australia.

Fremantle Arts Centre Press would soon be in a position to better capitalise on

this growing interest with its first successful national distribution arrangement, but

before this could happen, the Press published A. B. Facey’s A Fortunate Life. This

memoir of the classic ‘Aussie battler’ growing up in the early part of the 20th century

was published in April 1981, but this was the result of a long period of collaboration

between the author and staff at the Press. As Templeman notes regarding this process,

‘In many cases a staff member works closely with a writer over several years with the

hope that the final result will be a published manuscript. This is a high risk way to

operate as in some cases publication has not resulted from such consultative process.’385

In the case of A Fortunate Life, the humble ‘partly typed, partly handwritten’,386

unpunctuated manuscript was first presented to them by Facey’s daughter, requesting

that the Press print a small number of copies for friends and family. Wendy Jenkins

began work on the manuscript, as well beginning her employment at the Press, in 1979

—the same year her book of poetry was published by the Press. She collaborated with

Facey to substantially revise the original manuscript leading up to its 1981 publication.

Due to ‘the limited financial resources of the Press the initial print run of the

book was only 2,000 copies. The profit on the sale of this first printing, after production

costs and the author’s royalty were met, was little and certainly went nowhere towards

the cost of reprinting.’387 Consequently, the Press was forced to take out a low-interest

385Templeman, ‘Two Book Wonder’, 80.386Brian Raymond Coffey, interview by King, 32.387Tomlinson.

200

loan to meet the cost of a reprint, after the first print run sold out within days of its

release.388 The Literature Board of the Australia Council also contributed money

towards the cost of the first reprint, which is unusual for them, but they took into

account Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s status as a regional publishing house when

making this decision.389 However, ‘within weeks of those copies arriving from the

printer we had to reprint again’.390

A Fortunate Life is a close relation of the less commercially successful

Community Publishing Project titles and shares many of the same characteristics (for

example, first-person narrative, focus on social history and the life of ‘ordinary’

Australians), and yet Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s handling of A Fortunate Life was

markedly different from its treatment of these earlier publications. The Press had no

marketing budget for the book, so they approached well-known figures such as former

Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, and renowned historians Humphrey McQueen and

Geoffrey Dutton.391 These endorsements, as well as a particularly strong endorsement

from the host of a books segment on a high-rating Sydney radio station, drove a national

demand for A Fortunate Life.392 Furthermore, the Press had ‘negotiated extract rights

for Perth’s morning newspaper and a national paper’.393 Newman notes in a

retrospective article that ‘Facey’s personality was instrumental in capturing the media’s

attention’, presumably including this newspaper coverage.394

Such initiatives intensified an interest that the people at Fremantle Arts Centre

Press associated with Western Australia’s recent sesquicentenary and the impending

Australian bicentenary—‘in the lead-up to that there was, quite properly, an increased

388Brian Raymond Coffey, interview by King, 33.389Ian Templeman, interview by author, 10 June 2008.390Brian Raymond Coffey, interview by King, 33.391Ibid., 32.392Newman, ‘Twenty Years On’, 54.393Ibid.394Ibid.

201

interest in our own narratives, our own stories’.395 In fact, in an interview with Coffey

in 2001, he speculates that ‘we would have substantially more difficulty with something

like A Fortunate Life, in finding a market for it, if it didn’t come out around the year of

sesquicentenary, building into the bicentenary, that kind of upsurge of interest in the

national and so forth and those sorts of stories’.396

Apprehension accompanied the excitement of a successful publication in equal

measure, as Fremantle Arts Centre Press only had three full-time employees in 1981,

and all of these (in addition to a few employees of the Fremantle Arts Centre) were soon

occupied by the demands of packing and shipping copies of A Fortune Life to fill

incoming orders. After the second reprint, with no signs of interest in the book abating,

the multinational publisher Penguin approached Fremantle Arts Centre Press and

inquired if it would be interested in selling the rights to A Fortunate Life. Reprints of

the book by the Press had been in small quantities, since ‘to cover the cost of printing

larger runs the Press would have had to suspend the publication of a number of other

titles’.397 As the Chairman of the Fremantle Arts Centre Press Board of Management

later explained to the Chairman of the Western Australian Arts Council, ‘It was partly

for this reason that the Fremantle Arts Centre Press Board of Management made the

decision ... to sell the licence in the paperback edition to Penguin for an eight-year

period.’398 Penguin had asked for a sale, rather than a lease of the rights to A Fortunate

Life, but they accepted the Press’s offer near the end of 1981.399

Penguin has renewed its lease of the title three times, in addition to leasing the

hardcover rights, which were not part of the original lease agreement.400 As a condition

of these agreements, Fremantle Arts Centre Press is ‘on a percentage of earnings, with

395Brian Raymond Coffey, interview by King, 32.396Brian Raymond Coffey, interview by McPherson.397Tomlinson.398Ibid.399Newman, ‘Twenty Years On’, 54.400Brian Raymond Coffey, interview by King, 33.

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the author-estate, for every copy sold’.401 A Fortunate Life has now sold ‘around a

million’ copies, and yet it was not from book sales that the Press saw the most

memorable return on its investment.402 Instead, it was from the sale of the television

rights (which the Press did not share with Penguin, but rather maintained with the

author) to A Fortunate Life, which netted the Press $54,073.403 This sum was used to

purchase a warehouse near Fremantle and ‘give to the Press for the first time in its

existence a capital asset’,404 ‘against which the Press has been able to negotiate

overdrafts with their bankers from time to time’.405 A Fortunate Life was eventually

produced as a television miniseries on Channel 9. The success of this series, and even

more so the choice of A Fortunate Life as a set text in many Australian high schools and

universities, has ensured the continued sales success of the print version of the title.406

The book has also appeared in audio book, illustrated, condensed and large-print

editions. Some sources report that the only Australian-originated books to have sold

more copies than A Fortunate Life are Murray Ball’s Footrot Flats and the BP Touring

Guide.407

The success of A Fortunate Life is largely responsible for the significant

improvement in sales figures at Fremantle Arts Centre Press in 1981; it also contributed

to an improvement in the percentage sales represent of the total annual operating costs

of the Press (see Table 1).

401Ibid.402Ibid., 35.403Clive Newman, Deputy Director, Fremantle Arts Centre, letter to Frank Wee, Finance Officer, WesternAustralian Arts Council, 17 May 1985, State Records Office of Western Australia.404Ibid.405Templeman, ‘Two Book Wonder’, 81.406Blaber, 77.407Vickie Laurie, 24.

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Table 1: Comparison of Annual Sales Values with Total Annual Operating Costs408

Year Sales Costs % Sales to Costs

1976 $3,058 $17,339 17.6

1977 $8,985 $34,037 26.4

1978 $17,988 $44,510 40.4

1979 $26,618 $78,064 34.1

1980 $45,576 $120,037 38.0

1981 $60,095 $127,344 47.2

1982 $117,470 $182,995 64.2

However, the Press saw an even greater improvement in sales figures in 1982, after it

had already leased the rights to the Facey book. The cause of this increase was largely

due to the ‘reciprocal distribution arrangements the Press [had] with Sydney publisher

Hale & Iremonger’.409 According to the terms of this arrangement established in late

1981, Hale & Iremonger represented Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s books in all

Australian states and territories except Western Australia, where the Press distributed its

own titles, in addition to representing Hale & Iremonger’s books.

In 1983, ‘Melbourne University Press [MUP, since renamed Melbourne

University Publishing], believing that the [University of Western Australia] Press would

close, transferred its agency to Fremantle Arts Centre Press ... causing a further loss of

revenue, for the [University of Western Australia] Press had previously distributed

MUP’s books in Western Australia’.410 The former arrangement (with Hale &

Iremonger) vastly improved Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s national distribution, while

the latter (with Melbourne University Press) was a modest source of income for the

Press. Furthermore, the movement of responsibility for Melbourne University Press’s

distribution in Western Australia from University of Western Australia Press to

408Tomlinson.409Templeman, ‘Two Book Wonder’, 80.410Criena Fitzgerald, A Press in Isolation: University of Western Australia Press 1935–2004 (Crawley:University of Western Australia Press, 2005), 66–67.

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Fremantle Arts Centre Press, foreshadowed an increasing encroachment by Fremantle

Arts Centre Press into publishing areas formerly the exclusive domain of the university

press. As Criena Fitzgerald notes in her history of University of Western Australia

Press, ‘Fremantle Arts Centre Press ... gained in strength as the [University of Western

Australia] Press was besieged by financial and staffing cuts.’411

In 1982, one of the earliest examples of this phenomenon, Fremantle Arts Centre

Press published Lords of Death: A People, a Place, a Legend, which was a joint winner

in the non-fiction category of the 1983 Western Australia Week Literary Awards (since

renamed the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards). This book by Suzanne

Welborn examines the relationship between the pioneer and Anzac experiences; it is

based on a thesis for a Masters degree undertaken at The University of Western

Australia, and with its extended footnotes, appendices, indexes, and bibliography, could

have been comfortably placed on the publishing list of a university press. And yet it

was the trade publisher Fremantle Arts Centre Press that published Lords of Death,

rather than the more obvious choice of University of Western Australia Press, since the

latter publisher was weathering a particularly difficult period in its history. In fact,

Templeman maintains that as early as 1975, when Fremantle Arts Centre Press first

entered the Western Australian publishing scene, the Press profited from a gap left by a

university that ‘kept a lid on publishing’ and a university press that was under siege

following the resignation of its Executive Officer in 1972.412

The 1982/83 financial year saw the Western Australian Arts Council inherit

responsibility for literature from the Western Australian Literary Fund, after the latter

organisation was disbanded. This shift was accompanied by a restructuring of policies

and financial arrangements, including most significantly the introduction of a new

source of Government funding for the arts and culture—the Lotteries Commission of

411Ibid., 67.412Ibid., 51, quoting Ian Templeman.

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Western Australia, which donates a percentage of its proceeds to Western Australian

charities and community groups, including arts organisations like the Western

Australian Arts Council. Fremantle Arts Centre Press changed the acknowledgements

in its books to reflect the new source of funding beginning with titles published in 1983.

Aside from this small amendment, however, very little changed for Fremantle Arts

Centre Press as a result of the new financial arrangements. The Press received $62,315

in funding from the Western Australian Arts Council in the 1982/83 financial year, and

while the Lotteries Commission contributed $37,000 to literature in this period, the

Press did not see any of these new funds.413 (In fact, the Lotteries Commission did not

contribute any funding to Fremantle Arts Centre Press until 1998.) In total, including

funding from both the Western Australian Arts Council and the Lotteries Commission,

the Western Australian Government spent $112,000 on literature in the 1982/83

financial year, ‘well ahead of the other States, especially when population differences

are taken into account’.414

Nonetheless, at a time when ‘the major theatre companies, the opera company,

ballet company, orchestra, and Fremantle Arts Centre received considerable funding

increases’, Fremantle Arts Centre Press was quickly ‘fall[ing] far behind the funding

ratio which existed between them prior to 1983’.415 The funding increases mentioned

above were part of

a dramatic change in the pattern of Federal and State arts funding over aperiod of seven years. In 1975/76, the States contributed only 29% ($8million) of arts grants, while the Australia Council’s contribution was71% ($19.6 million). In 1982/83 the percentage figures were 51 for theStates and 49 for the Federal body.416

413Michael E. Costigan, Director, Western Australian Arts Council,‘Government Support for Literature:

Policy and Practice in the Australian States’, Address at the first national Writing in the CommunityConference, Melbourne, 22–23 Sept. 1984, State Records Office of Western Australia.414Ibid.415John Hooper, Chairman, Fremantle Arts Centre Press Board of Management, letter to Harry Bluck,

Chairman, Western Australian Arts Council, 31 July 1985, State Records Office of Western Australia.416Costigan.

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This period saw ‘dramatic growth (almost a quadrupling in dollar terms) of support for

the arts at State level’, and yet ‘literature was not a significant beneficiary’.417

Fremantle Arts Centre Press published its first books on Aboriginal issues in

1983. Two of these titles were written by white observers of Aboriginal society: The

Last of the Nomads by W.J. Peasley and Desert School by Neville Green. The Last of

the Nomads tells the story of the author’s search, along with an Aboriginal elder,

Mudjon, for the last two members of the Mandildjara tribe to live in the traditional way

in the Gibson Desert of Western Australia. Mudjon asked Peasley in 1977 to assist him

in the search for the two individuals, who had decades earlier been exiled from

Mudjon’s tribe for flaunting tribal law and marrying outside their skin group, as Mudjon

feared for their wellbeing after the worst drought in memory. The book ‘went into a

second printing after only two months’ (and was again reprinted in 1990, 1997 and

2002), and it was subsequently used as the basis of a documentary that won the New

York Film Festival Gold Medal.418 Desert School is about the author’s experiences

teaching at an Aboriginal school in the central desert area of Western Australia.

The third and final book concerned with Aboriginal issues that Fremantle Arts

Centre Press published in 1983, was Gularabulu: Stories from the West Kimberley by

Aboriginal author Paddy Roe. This book was ‘edited’ by the white academic Stephen

Muecke, the dynamic of which process Muecke explains in his introduction to the book:

This book attempts to transcribe the stories, from tape recordings, asclosely as possible. Other aspects of the book’s organization obviouslybelong to Western culture: the way the storytelling event is represented inwriting, the organization of the book as object (editing which unifiesstories and gives them titles, notes, introductions), the modes ofpublishing and distribution which create a certain (largely non-Aboriginal) readership, and so on.419

417Ibid.418Ian Templeman, Chief Executive, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, letter to Bruce Lawson, MinisterialAdvisor, Office of the Minister for the Arts, 11 Jan. 1984, State Records Office of Western Australia.419Stephen Muecke, ed., Gularabulu: Stories from the West Kimberley, by Paddy Roe (Fremantle:Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1983), iii.

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Muecke elaborates on the role of the editor in assembling the book, as well as the

significance of this approach, later in the introduction:

The stories as they are presented here are word for word transcriptionsfrom tape recordings. Hesitations and the occasional intervention from alistener are included. I have edited the texts to the extent of normalizingspellings (the few variations that do exist represent variations in PaddyRoe’s pronunciation) and creating unitary texts by closing thetranscription at what I consider to be the appropriate point. I believe thatthis is the first time that Aboriginal texts intended as narrative art havebeen presented in this way. Most editions of Aboriginal stories(originally told orally) have been written by Europeans. The translationfrom speech to writing, especially writing considered suitable for publicconsumption, involved editing which is massive in its proportions andimplications. Presenting the stories as a narrative art is a way ofjustifying a writing which tries to imitate the spoken word.420

Clearly, the publication of Gularabulu represents a milestone in Indigenous publishing

in Australia, as well as being a significant event in the history of Fremantle Arts Centre

Press. Gularabulu was shortlisted for the National Book Council Book of the Year

Award, but perhaps even more significantly, it marks the beginning of the Press’s

substantial and continuing efforts to build a list of Aboriginal writers. Furthermore,

1983 represents the earliest stage of development in Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s

reputation as one of Australia’s foremost publishers on Indigenous issues, even though

this was not part of the original charter.

In this same year, two more significant publishing events occurred at the Press.

The first of these events was the publication of the phenomenally successful first book

in the T. A. G. Hungerford trilogy, Stories from Suburban Road. With this book,

Fremantle Arts Centre Press tried ‘to match up the title with the locale’ in which the

action of the book is set, and so succeeded in getting ‘a lot of sales ... from

newsagencies in South Perth who normally would not have taken FACP books’.421 The

second significant publishing event was the release of a book, A Place of Consequence:

420Ibid., v.421Fremantle Arts Centre Press, minutes for a meeting, 30 Mar. 1984, State Records Office of WesternAustralia.

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A Pictorial History of Fremantle by R. Reece and R. Pascoe, for which the Press was

successful in recruiting sponsors (including Fremantle Credit Union, John Cattalini of

the Fremantle Drive-In Pharmacy, the Town of East Fremantle, and a half-dozen others)

to contribute funds towards publication costs. The Press continues this sort of

arrangement today:

Occasionally, with a big art book or something like that, we’ll go to acorporation or institution because they have an established interest in thesubject. Sometimes we can attract outright sponsorship. Or sometimesthey’ll pre-buy presentation copies for clients. ... But opportunities arelimited.422

Nonetheless, the most remarkable development of 1983 remains the introduction

of Indigenous issues to Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s publishing programme; the impact

of this development would continue to be felt for many years to come. The year 1984

was not, however, marked by this legacy. Instead, the year is better known for the

publication of Elizabeth Jolley’s novel Milk and Honey, which won the New South

Wales Premier’s Prize for Fiction, as well as the reissue, in a single volume titled

Stories, of Jolley’s first two books of short stories (Five Acre Virgin and Other Stories

and The Travelling Entertainer and Other Stories). In spite of these two popular

publications, the year was a bust for Fremantle Arts Centre Press, as sales figures were

$47,201 or 31% short of their estimates.423 If it were not for the windfall the Press

received from the sale of the television rights to A Fortunate Life, 1984 could have

marked the end of Fremantle Arts Centre Press. With the proceeds from the sale of the

television rights, however, the Press’s self-generated income comprised 64% of its total

expenditure, much the same as the previous couple years.424

422Brian Raymond Coffey, interview by King, 42.423Francis A. Jones & Associates, Certified Practicing Accountants, Financial statements for FremantleArts Centre Press, 1982–1987, State Records Office of Western Australia.424Frank Wee, Finance Officer, Western Australian Arts Council, ‘Fremantle Arts Centre Press: 1985General Grant Application’, 15 Aug. 1984, State Records Office of Western Australia, 3.

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In 1985, the Press renewed its commitments to both books by Aboriginal writers

and on Indigenous issues, and its own financial security. Templeman reflects on the

initiative necessary to make the latter a reality:

A difficult 1984 had determined that a very tight timetable for publicationwould need to be adhered to and an increase in sales achieved if the Presswas going to have a long-term viability. Extra care in productionsupervision and financial monitoring resulted in a record sales year for1985.425

As a further cost-saving measure, the Press scrapped its Shoreline Poetry series, which

had proven incapable of breaking even, much less turning a profit. Phantoms by

Patricia Avery, published in 1984, was the eighth and last title in the series.

This ‘record sales year’ was helped in no small part by the publication of

Reading the Country, a groundbreaking work by the pair that produced Gularabulu only

two years earlier, Stephen Muecke and Paddy Roe, along with Morocco-born painter

Krim Benterrak. Muecke explains what the book is about:

What we are mainly interested in doing is bringing together words andimages—Paddy’s voice, my texts, Krim’s paintings, my photographs. Allthese things represent in different ways, from different positions, the oneconstant—Roebuck Plains—this is the country we will be ‘reading’.426

Muecke also explains the structure of the book:

The book became an attempt to repeat the experience of the Plains in itsown structure. This structure seeks to maintain the separate identities ofthe three authors; their three strands are woven together in a loose kind ofway but each remains forever partially ignorant of the purposes andeffects of the other’s work. We are all ‘foreigners’. Krim and I areforeign to the Plains, Paddy is foreign to the book as a European artifact,Paddy and I are foreign to painting, Krim and Paddy are foreign to thesort of writing and philosophy I have adopted to construct a unity orgeneral direction of the book.427

From Muecke’s explanations, it is clear that Reading the Country is much more than a

collection of traditional Aboriginal stories or a tourist brochure for a remote and

425Templeman, ‘Two Book Wonder’, 82.426Krim Benterrak, Stephen Muecke, and Paddy Roe, Reading the Country (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts

Centre Press, 1984), 24.427Ibid., 19.

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beautiful region, though it contains elements of both. In fact, Reading the Country

defies any attempt at categorisation; it is in many ways a ‘scholarly’ book, but the full-

colour reproductions of Benterrak’s paintings give it the functionality of a ‘coffee table’

book, while the transcriptions of Roe’s stories are both fascinating reading as well as

being valuable pieces of anthropological evidence.

Another ‘difficult’ book further contributed to Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s

financial success in 1985: the publication of Marion Campbell’s first novel, Lines of

Flight. The reasons for the Press’s success with this type of book are explained in

greater detail later in this section of the thesis, but for now it is worth noting that much

of Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s early success was attributable to its decision to publish

books that other publishers would not consider. Also, it was publishing a type of book

that, when done well, had the potential to attract a lot of attention in the form of book

reviews, literary prizes, academic journal articles and conference papers, and being

chosen as a set text for secondary- and tertiary-level courses.

By the time the Press celebrated its tenth anniversary in 1986, it had published

nearly 100 titles. A review of this output reveals many well-established trends in its

publishing programme, as well as a few trends that were only just beginning to emerge

in 1986. Among the more well-established trends was the publication of short stories

and poetry (the latter would continue in spite of the closure of the Shoreline Poetry

series), especially in the Press’s West Coast Writing series. More generally, by 1986

Fremantle Arts Centre Press had established a reputation for publishing ‘literary’

writing, including the aforementioned forms, but also a growing number of ‘literary’

novels. Other long-standing trends at the Press included the publication of photography

books featuring Western Australian locations, and books about local history, including

both social and individual histories. The publication of natural history and art books

constituted a small but consistent part of Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s early publishing

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programme, while the publication of scholarly books and writing on Indigenous issues

(by both white and Aboriginal writers) represented a more recent segment of the Press’s

programme that would continue to grow in the coming years.

In order to celebrate a decade in the publishing business, Fremantle Arts Centre

Press planned ‘a week-long programme of activities’, including ‘the launching of a

specifically commissioned anthology of prose and poetry from Western Australia

[Portrait: A West Coast Collection, edited by members of the Press staff, B.R. Coffey

and Wendy Jenkins], a weekend literary seminar, a writers’ dinner, and the opening of

an exhibition covering the history, writers and artists of the Fremantle Arts Centre

Press’. The Australia Council and the Western Australian Arts Council both contributed

$8,000 towards the costs of creating the exhibition and an accompanying exhibition

catalogue.

The funds received from the Western Australian Arts Council for the purposes of

the Press’s tenth anniversary exhibition, supplemented an increase in the Press’s funding

for 1986. The Press had made its case to the Arts Council for just such an increase the

previous year:

We would suggest that an annual operating grant of $130,000 is modestindeed for the return it provides. The product assists the individual artistand author, is more readily exportable than the products of theatre, danceor opera companies, and gives a public face to Western Australian artswhich cannot be matched by any other state organisation. Its operationsand product are quite different from any other company the Arts Councilmay fund and, therefore, we believe Fremantle Arts Centre Press requiresa different approach to funding and a very special need for developmentfunds.428

The root of Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s complaint was really that, ‘as there was no

capital base on which to operate, income from sales of its titles early in the year had to

finance publications later the same year’; there is no analogous predicament for other

arts organisations.429 In 1986, the Western Australian Arts Council (renamed later that

428Hooper, 3.429Templeman, ‘Two Book Wonder’, 79.

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same year the Western Australian Department for the Arts) heard the Press’s concerns

and issued it with its first triennial funding agreement with an annual grant of $127,000

that was to be indexed annually in 1987 and 1988. The Arts Council believed that this

new funding arrangement would ‘allow the company to consolidate its programming

and management and pre-plan more effectively’.430

The Press’s strong financial result in 1985, ‘together with an increase of funds

for 1986 from the Western Australian Arts Council, enabled the employment of another

editor to ease the extraordinary workload of the present staff’.431 This brought staff

levels at the Press to ‘five full-time people: managing editor, assistant editor, designer,

secretary and salesperson’.432 The Press continued to share with the Arts Centre ‘the

services of people in the areas of finance and promotion, and Fremantle Arts Centre

staff also provide other support services from time to time’.433 In an article

commemorating the Press’s tenth anniversary, Templeman commented on staffing levels

at the Press:

There has been a deliberate policy to keep the Press a reasonably smallorganisation to enable maximum attention to be given to each title andauthor and to allow wide and extensive consultation between the staff asproduction proceeds. In 1986 the publication lists of new titles will totaleleven, with four reprints. A more ambitious list would have meantincreasing the staff and risking a breakdown in the homogenous mannerin which the Press and Arts Centre staff work together.434

While the small size of the Press may have prevented some problems, as Templeman

observes, it undoubtedly contributed to others. Templeman noted in the same article

that ‘the balance between sales interstate against those of local sales, has been reversed,

and now eighty percent of all sales are outside Western Australia. The opposite was true

430Harry Bluck, Chairman, Western Australian Arts Council, letter to John Hooper, Chairman, Fremantle

Arts Centre Press Board of Management, undated (ca. 1986), State Records Office of Western Australia,2.431Templeman, ‘Two Book Wonder’, 82.432Ibid.433Ibid.434Ibid., 79.

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in the 1970s.’435 Clearly, shifts of this nature would make it increasingly difficult for

Fremantle Arts Centre Press to function as a small publishing house in the years ahead.

Even after ten years in the business, Fremantle Arts Centre Press was still

sourcing 80% of its titles from unsolicited manuscripts; ‘each year the Press receive[d]

over two hundred unsolicited manuscripts’.436 One such manuscript came from the

young writer Joan London and was eventually published under the title Sister Ships and

Other Stories. This 1986 publication went on to win the overall prize in The Age Book

of the Year Awards, as well as the Western Australia Week Literary Award for Prose

Fiction.

At the awards ceremony for the former prize, ‘Brian Johns, publisher at Penguin

made an immediate offer for the title (gracefully declined) followed by an offer to enter

into a co-publishing agreement (also gracefully declined) and finally an offer to

negotiate a national distribution agreement’.437 Fremantle Arts Centre Press accepted

this final offer, since in their distribution arrangement with Hale & Iremonger they

‘struggled to match the results of NSW and WA in other states’.438 Thus, Penguin

represented the Fremantle Arts Centre Press list to the trade outside Western Australia

(where the Press would represent itself with a sales force of one full-time and one part-

time representative) from July 1987.439 Penguin would later sign other publishers to a

similar deal, but their agreement with Fremantle Arts Centre Press was the first time

Penguin agreed to distribute books for a publisher ‘outside their own stable of

imprints’.440

The first two titles to be distributed under the new agreement were Philip

Salom’s Sky Poems and Sally Morgan’s My Place. It was an auspicious start to the

435Ibid., 80.436Ibid., 79–80.437Newman, ‘Twenty Years On’, 54.438Ibid.439Winn.440Brian Raymond Coffey, interview by King, 34.

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association between the two publishing houses: Sky Poems won Salom his second

Commonwealth Poetry Prize, but whereas in 1981 he had won Best First Collection of

Poetry for The Silent Piano, this time he won Best Collection of Poetry. Furthermore,

My Place sold 35,000 copies before Christmas of that year, far exceeding the (already

much larger than usual) estimate that had spurred the Press to an initial printing of

20,000 copies.441 The title was reprinted three times in 1987 in its ‘pocket paperback’

form, before a mass-market paperback edition was issued in February 1988; the latter

edition has been reprinted more than 36 times. Fremantle Arts Centre Press released a

special edition of My Place in 1999 to celebrate the sale of one-half million copies. My

Place has sold more than 600,000 copies to date.442

When discussing book sales in Australia, it is important to bear in mind that

Australia’s population is only a little over 20 million, whereas the United States, for

example, has a population in excess of 300 million. Therefore, ‘in Australia, sales of

roughly 2,500+ in trade paperback are respectable and 5,000+ are good. In ... mass-

market paperback ... the approximate figures are 4,000+ and 10,000+. Less than 200

books (in all formats, non-fiction as well as fiction) would sell more than 20,000 copies

in a year. ... In the US ... for mass-market paperback, the approximate figures would be

15,000+ and 40,000+.’443 According to these figures, selling 600,000 copies in Australia

is comparable to selling 2.4 million copies of a book in the United States. In fact, in

terms of market penetration, the figure of 2.4 million does not even come close to

representing the ubiquity of this Fremantle Arts Centre Press title in Australia. Of

course, not all of those 600,000 copies were sold in Australia, but the vast majority

were, since even though My Place enjoyed international success, most international

sales were the result of the Press selling rights to overseas publishers and so are not

441Newman, ‘Twenty Years On’, 54.442Brian Raymond Coffey, interview by King, 35.443Ian Irvine, ‘The Truth About Publishing’, rev. and exp. ed., in Ian Irvine (Jan. 2005, accessed 30 Oct.2006); available from http://www.ian-irvine.com.

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included in this total. Thus, 600,000 copies sold to a population of 20 million means

that approximately one in every 33 people owns a copy of My Place. To have the same

level of saturation of the American market, a publisher would have to sell nine million

copies of a given title.

Sales of My Place are even more extraordinary in light of the average print runs

for Fremantle Arts Centre Press publications:

First-up literary fiction would be about 1,500. For a writer who’s startedto get an audience you’d do 3,000 and for someone you thought would doreally well, 5,000. With a general non-fiction book, especially if it haspictorial stuff in it, you’re looking at a minimum of 3,000. Anythingunder 1,500, unless it’s poetry, is not really viable.444

For other categories of books, ‘FACP would see a 500 print run for poetry as small and

1000 as large, with general non-fiction and adolescent fiction small at 3,000 and large at

5,000 copies. Children’s picture books however would be small at 5,000 and large at

10,000 copies.’445 Clearly, My Place is an exceptional title.

In addition to being a huge sales success, My Place, in which Morgan writes of

her quest to discover her hidden Aboriginal heritage, has become a milestone in

Indigenous writing in Australia. My Place ‘made publishers realise that there was a

mainstream domestic and overseas market for Indigenous writing’.446 Coffey comments

on its significance as an early work in a couple different fields:

People forget that, at that time, in terms of fiction, women’s experiencewas starting to be noticed, a market for it was developing, and to a lesserextent, it was the same with non-fiction. And there had been some workby Aboriginal writers, but not a great deal.

In fact, so great is the influence of My Place as an early example in the fields of

women’s writing, life writing and Aboriginal writing, that it has been criticised for

‘colonis[ing] the literary landscape’—in other words, for monopolising the conversation

444Brian Raymond Coffey, interview by King, 39.445Anita M. Heiss, Dhuuluu-Yala (To Talk Straight): Publishing Indigenous Literature (Canberra:Aboriginal Studies Press, 2003), 92.446Craig Munro, ‘In Black and White: Indigenous Australian Writers and their Publishers’, Logos 12, no. 2(2001): 105.

216

on these topics.447 Many Aboriginal writers object to ‘her construction (by the book-

reading public as much as by the media) as the archetypal Indigenous writer’.448 There

are also those, such as Anita M. Heiss in her study Dhuuluu-Yala (To Talk Straight):

Publishing Indigenous Literature, who speculate on the reasons ‘it was Morgan’s story

—and not some other, more hard-hitting Aboriginal life story—which achieved this

bestselling status: “My Place ... was not confrontational to the white-mainstream way of

perceiving Aboriginal Australia, [highlighting instead] one family’s denial of their

Aboriginal heritage”.’449

Some comparisons between My Place and A Fortunate Life are obvious: Brian

de Garis in the history of University of Western Australia Press remarked that

‘Fremantle Arts Centre Press were responsible for the two books bearing on Western

Australian history which have made the biggest national impact, Bert Facey’s A

Fortunate Life and Sally Morgan’s My Place’.450 However, there are other similarities

that are less obvious, such as that the two books were promoted in a similar fashion, by

getting ‘key people’ to endorse them.451 Furthermore,

as a number of commentators have observed, the narrative of My Place

has a generic relationship with certain other Australian texts such as A. B.Facey’s A Fortunate Life ... which ... was produced by the same editor,B.R. Coffey, and publisher, the Fremantle Arts Centre Press.452

Clearly, the author of this excerpt is alluding to the power of both the editor and

publishing house to influence the life and texture of a book, a concept discussed in

Chapter 3 of this thesis. As was quoted in that context,

447Gillian Whitlock, ‘Recent Australian Autobiography: A Review Essay’, Australian Literary Studies 15,no. 4 (Oct. 1992): 261.448Adam Shoemaker, ‘Tracking Black Australian Stories: Contemporary Indigenous Literature’, in The

Oxford Literary History of Australia, ed. Bruce Bennett and Jennifer Strauss (Melbourne: OxfordUniversity Press, 1998), 342.449Craig Munro, ‘Case-study: Indigenous Writers’, in Paper Empires: A History of the Book in Australia,1946–2005, ed. Craig Munro and Robyn Sheahan-Bright (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press,

2006), 152, quoting Anita M. Heiss, Dhuuluu-Yala (To Talk Straight): Publishing Indigenous Literature(Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2003), 102.450Brian de Garis, ‘History’, in A Press in Isolation: University of Western Australia Press 1935–2004, byCriena Fitzgerald (Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 2005), 127.451Brian Raymond Coffey, interview by King, 34.452Shoemaker, 342.

217

Literary activity is often perceived in terms of the lonely individualstruggling for self-expression. However, a more comprehensive andrealistic view includes writers, editors, publishers and readers in acontinual process of interaction—each adjusting to the demands of his orher chosen role in relation to the needs and requirements of others.453

Staff at Fremantle Arts Centre Press spent a considerable amount of time advising and

assisting Morgan with revisions of the manuscript that would eventually become My

Place, just as they had done with Facey and the manuscript for A Fortunate Life.

Even as the Press had another bestseller on its hands, it managed to keep up with

its regular publishing programme, releasing ten new titles in 1987. Among these was

Deep-Sea Diver, a collection of poetry by Shane McCauley, which was the 25th and final

title in the West Coast Writing series. The Press also published Collage, with prose

sections written by Nicholas Hasluck and photographs by Tania Young, to

commemorate The University of Western Australia’s 75th anniversary. The book was

produced with the financial assistance of the University, thereby signalling an even

more pronounced incursion by Fremantle Arts Centre Press into territory formerly the

exclusive domain of the ailing University of Western Australia Press. Other notable

titles fitting this description include the 1986 publication of A City and Its Setting by

renowned historian and environmentalist George Seddon (with David Ravine) and The

Factory Floor (1988) by Carolyn Polizzotto.

The year 1987 also marked the holding of the America’s Cup in Fremantle, after

Australia II defeated the American yacht in the 1983 race, thereby becoming the first

successful challenger in the competition’s 132-year history. The lead-up to the 1987

competition saw many changes in Fremantle, as the city prepared itself to be in the

world’s eye for the first time, but the event had only a minimal impact on Fremantle

Arts Centre Press. The Fremantle City Council asked the Press to ‘reproduce in

improved form printed material of proven usefulness’ pertaining to the city.454 The four

453Bruce Bennett, Cross Currents, ix.454D. A. Berry, Deputy Executive Director, America’s Cup Office, Government of Western Australia,

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titles proposed by the City Council for reprinting—including three originally published

by Fremantle Arts Centre Press, ‘whose limited financial resources prevent reprinting’,

and one by University of Western Australia Press, which ‘should be revised and

published by Fremantle Arts Centre Press’—were meant to be ‘popular with visitors and

local people’.455 The Fremantle City Council subsidised initial print runs of 3,000 for

each title being reprinted.456

A final noteworthy event in a busy year for Fremantle Arts Centre Press, was the

introduction in 1987 of the Fremantle Arts Centre Press logo featuring a black-and-

white line drawing of a three-story building (the Fremantle Arts Centre). Prior to this,

there had been no logo on the Press’s publications, just ‘Fremantle Arts Centre Press’

written in a single line in a rather plain font on the back of each book.

Following the Press’s poor financial performance in 1986—in which its total

income was more than $80,000 short of its expenditures, in spite of receiving an

approximately $60,000 boost in its funding from the state government under its new

triennial agreement—the strong performance of 1987 came as a relief.457 Back in 1986,

a relatively strong performance in 1985 was all that helped them weather the storm. In

1987, however, Fremantle Arts Centre Press attributed much of its new success to its

national distribution arrangement with Penguin (though of course the publication of My

Place helped in no small measure), and consequently revised upwards the estimated

sales figures for 1988.458 The fluctuating financial fortunes of Fremantle Arts Centre

Press—attributable to a combination of factors including shifts in state and federal

funding initiatives, the state of the economy, and in-house decisions about its publishing

programme—are a theme throughout the Press’s history, from its very earliest days as a

‘Federal Government Funding—City of Fremantle’, 5 Feb. 1985, State Records Office of Western

Australia.455Ibid.456Ibid.457Francis A. Jones & Associates.458Fremantle Arts Centre Press, ‘Discussions: Fremantle Arts Centre Press/Department for the Arts’, 19Oct. 1988, State Records Office of Western Australia, 1.

219

publisher of four titles per year, to its present programme, more than 30 years later, of

35 titles per year.

Fortunately, Fremantle Arts Centre Press was entering a run of a few good years

beginning in 1987. The occasion of the Australian bicentenary in 1988 did not hurt the

Press’s cause, and in fact probably contributed to its financial success in this period:

‘The Press successfully negotiated with both the National Office and the State Council

of the Australian Bicentennial Authority to obtain funding assistance towards a number

of projects specifically for this year.’459 These projects included the publication of

Margins: A West Coast Selection 1829–1988 edited by William Grono, The Sugar

Mother by Elizabeth Jolley, Maitland Brown: A View of Nineteenth Century Western

Australia by Peter Cowan, The Artist’s Rottnest by Ted Snell, and The Fields: The

Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie Goldfields, 1892–1912 by Ian Templeman and Bernadette

McDonald. The Press was also ‘successful in attracting a $5,000 award from B.P.

[British Petroleoum Australia, a mining company] towards specific research for The

Fields’.460 Overall, 1988 was a very lucrative year for Fremantle Arts Centre Press, as it

was for many Australian arts organisations.

The bicentenary year also marked the Press’s first foray into publishing for a

school-aged audience. A number of the Press’s publications had previously been used

as set texts for secondary and tertiary students—most notably A Fortunate Life and My

Place—but never before had Fremantle Arts Centre Press designed a text with the

specific intention of appealing to this audience. In 1988, the Press released

Autobiography: The Writer’s Story, ‘a student journal based on three autobiographies

published under the Press imprint: My Place, Stories from Suburban Road and The

Divided Kingdom’.461 The publication was the result of the collective efforts of ‘three

459Ibid.460Ibid., 3.461Ibid., 2.

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highly experienced educationalists from W.A.’, Derryn Hammond, Marnie O’Neill and

Jo-anne Reid.462 It was ‘designed in an attractive magazine style layout specifically

aimed at secondary school students’ and incorporated interviews with the authors of the

three autobiographies in question, suggested activities and discussion questions, and a

general introduction to the autobiographical form.463 The success of this publication laid

some of the necessary groundwork for Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s later venture, in

1991, into the world of children’s book publishing. The early 1990s also ‘saw

Aboriginal texts enter the education market’.464 For example, ‘in a striking red, black

and yellow pamphlet, Fremantle Arts Centre Press promoted “eight titles that should be

in your library”’, including My Place and Steve Hawke’s Noonkanbah (1989), which

was ‘perhaps the first “community text” in Australia, ... written collaboratively by a

non-Indigenous author and an Indigenous community’.465

In 1989, Ian Templeman resigned as Director of Fremantle Arts Centre and

Chief Executive of Fremantle Arts Centre Press. As the inaugural Director of the

former organisation and founder of the latter, Templeman had been instrumental in the

development of both organisations. Two long-standing Fremantle Arts Centre Press

employees were promoted to fill the absence created by his departure: Clive Newman,

who had some years previously formally relinquished his ties to Fremantle Arts Centre

in favour of a position as Business Manager at Fremantle Arts Centre Press, was now

appointed General Manager of the Press; and Brian Raymond Coffey, formerly Editorial

and Production Director, was appointed to the newly created position of Publisher.

The reasons behind Templeman’s resignation from Fremantle Arts Centre Press

are not a matter of the public record. The individuals most implicated in the events—

462Ibid.463Ibid.464Louise Poland, ‘An Enduring Record: Aboriginal Publishing in Australia 1988–1998’, Australian

Studies 16, no. 2 (Winter 2001): 91.465Ibid., 91, 97.

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Templeman, Newman and Coffey—are hesitant to discuss the matter. However, in an

interview for the Fremantle City Library Oral History Project, perhaps it was the

expectation that this particular conversation would not travel far, that prompted Coffey

to discuss Templeman’s departure in unusually candid terms:

Fremantle Arts Centre up to that point [1987, the year the America’s Cupwas held in Fremantle] had operated, although it was part of the city, hadalways had a great degree of independence from the city. And as Iunderstand it, in with those political changes, they were as a result ofsuccessful moves at a city level to bring the Arts Centre more under thedirect control of the city. This is my understanding. As a result of that,one of the things that influenced Ian Templeman, who was then Directorof the Arts Centre and our Chief Executive, to resign and subsequentlymove to Canberra, were those very changes.466

Coffey’s statement, while there is perhaps some truth behind it, is unconvincing as an

explanation of the reasons informing Templeman’s decision to resign from his role at

Fremantle Arts Centre Press. Certainly there is very little evidence to suggest that the

City of Fremantle was successful in asserting its control over Fremantle Arts Centre,

much less Fremantle Arts Centre Press, if it even attempted this. Furthermore,

Templeman’s resignation has been framed elsewhere—both in published interviews and

articles, as well as in my conversations with the individuals involved—as a reaction to

events at Fremantle Arts Centre Press rather than the Arts Centre.

Perhaps the closest thing to a published explanation of Templeman’s reasons for

leaving Fremantle Arts Centre Press appears almost incidentally in a 2005 newspaper

article celebrating Coffey’s and Newman’s receipt of the Order of Australia for services

to literature:

Templeman, who left FACP in 1989, believes the key to survival for thepress and other independents is to look to international readership andless parochial stories. ‘In the period when FACP grew up—at the sametime as McPhee Gribble—they were at the forefront of stimulating thebigger publishers [to promote Australian writers]’, he says. ‘But I thinkthe great days of Australian nationalism are over, the story of growing upin Kalgoorlie or as a teenage wonder in Carlton. I’m not saying those

466Brian Raymond Coffey, interview by McPherson.

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books shouldn’t happen but that Australian writers are looking globallyrather than just [to their] neighbourhood.’

Newman says 50 of its 400 titles are licensed to publishersoverseas. But he says FACP will stick to its regional mandate that, attimes, requires it to publish books with limited appeal. ‘I believe ourfuture is a mix of WA-oriented and national and international books’, hesays.467

Clearly, Templeman and Newman have different ideas about the direction Fremantle

Arts Centre Press (and other independent publishers, at least according to Templeman)

should take in the future. It is perhaps presumptuous to conclude that 16 years earlier

they might have disagreed on similar grounds, but then Templeman said much the same

thing to me in an interview in August 2005. Templeman claimed he left Fremantle Arts

Centre Press because Coffey and Newman wanted to take over operations after it had

been decided the Press would split from the Arts Centre (the Press moved out of the

Arts Centre into its own premises in 1990), leaving Templeman to manage the latter

organisation. Furthermore, Templeman said he had a different vision for the future of

the Press, which included new features such as a list of children’s books and an imprint

within Fremantle Arts Centre Press under which it could publish books by Australian

writers from outside Western Australia. In contrast, Templeman claimed Coffey and

Newman wanted only to keep the status quo at the Press. Templeman labelled himself a

‘risk-taker’, while he said neither Coffey nor Newman fit this description.468

When asked for his reaction to these statements, Newman responded in an e-

mail: ‘Ray and I have chosen since Ian’s departure from the Press to “keep our counsel”

because we saw no benefit in making a difficult issue public. As importantly, we were

specifically directed by our then Chairperson not to speak publicly about the matter.’469

Newman did, however, wish to make it known that he disagrees with the statement that

467Victoria Laurie, ‘Masters of the House’, Australian, 3 Sept. 2005.468Ian Templeman, interview by author, 22 Aug. 2005.469Clive Newman, e-mail to author, 11 June 2008.

223

Templeman ‘left Fremantle Arts Centre Press because Coffey and Newman wanted to

take over operations’.470

Whatever his reasons for resigning, Templeman left Fremantle Arts Centre Press

on a high note. In 1989, he was awarded the Order of Australia for services to art and

literature. In the same year, Fremantle Arts Centre Press exceeded one million dollars

in sales for the first time, achieved 75% of those sales outside Western Australia, and

reduced government funding to a new low of 12% as a proportion of total income.471

Much of this success was attributable to the release of a hardcover edition of My Place,

as well as Morgan’s new book, Wanamurraganya. The latter title had a first print run of

20,000 copies, nearly all of which were subscribed by bookstores prior to its release,

thus spurring a reprint.472 Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s gross profit from trading was

more than $200,000 over its budgeted amount; after increased production expenses had

been accounted for, the Press still turned a profit of $54,190 in 1989.473

While it did not have a particularly profound impact on Fremantle Arts Centre

Press’s bottom line in 1989, the release of John Kinsella’s first volume of poetry, Night

Parrots, would nonetheless prove significant, as it launched the career of a poet and

critic who would eventually achieve much international acclaim.

In July 1990, the separation occurred that Coffey credited as contributing to

Templeman’s decision to resign from his post at Fremantle Arts Centre Press—the Press

established its own premises outside the Arts Centre, ‘in an eight-room house in South

Terrace’, South Fremantle.474 At the same time, Fremantle Arts Centre Press increased

its output from publishing 15 new titles in 1989 to 20 new titles in 1990. The larger

number was composed primarily of titles fitting the publication trends described above

470Ibid.471David Britton, ‘The Press from the West’, Editions, Sept. 1989, 10.472Clive Newman, fax to Nick Mayman, Department for the Arts, 5 Sept. 1989, State Records Office ofWestern Australia.473Fremantle Arts Centre Press, Trading statement for the year ended 31 Dec. 1989, State Records Office

of Western Australia.474‘Arts Centre Press moves’, Fremantle Herald, 28 June 1990.

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—for example, both short and novel-length literary fiction, poetry, autobiography, local

history, photography, and so forth. However, there was one notable addition to the

Press’s 1990 publishing programme: the 1991 Sally Morgan Calendar.

Clearly, the Press was capitalising on the success of Morgan’s My Place, but this

was not a one-off undertaking. In every subsequent year, with the exception of 1991,

Fremantle Arts Centre Press released a publication meant to claim a market share

similar to that claimed by the Sally Morgan Calendar. For example, in 1992 the Press

published a Wildflower Diary, while the following year it was a Native Bird Diary.

Beginning in 1994, Fremantle Arts Centre Press released a string of Wildflower Diaries

that lasted five years. More recently, the Press has begun publishing cookbooks,

gardening books and other titles meant to ‘improve our earnings whilst at the same time,

not dropping the quality of the book, but finding that general audience’.475 In a 2003

lecture, Coffey described the role of these publications in the context of Fremantle Arts

Centre Press’s overall publishing programme: ‘We do publish a number of more

“commercially” orientated titles—usually three or four annually—to help subsidise the

publication of those titles which are more risky sales-wise.’476 Clearly, by 2003 the

Press published an increased number of such titles over its 1990 figure, and yet it

persists in viewing them as separate from its main publishing programme and its

mandate as a regional publisher.

Coffey and Newman, speaking on behalf of Fremantle Arts Centre Press in

numerous interviews, have also been curiously insistent that it was only with the

introduction of such publications as the Wildflower Diary and later the cookbooks and

gardening books that the Press engaged in such ‘commercial’ pursuits. They imply that

an idyllic environment for literary publishing existed at some point prior to the arrival

475Winn, quoting Newman.476Ray Coffey, ‘Some Thoughts on the Cultural and Political Power of Literature’, New Norcia Studies 12(2004): 55.

225

of these publications—one in which the forces of the marketplace and commercial

interests had no place. This environment is typically located ‘in the lead up to the

State’s Sesquicentenary, and Australia’s Centenary which followed soon after’, when

‘we were encouraged as individuals and as a community to begin to think more

seriously than we had before about the kinds of stories we wished to tell about

ourselves, and what it is that we should value in these stories’.477 In contrast to Coffey’s

and Newman’s representations of the period from 1976 until 1990, the history of

Fremantle Arts Centre Press as outlined in this thesis has demonstrated just how much

commercial interests have dictated Press decisions to this point. For example, the Press

decided to anthologise works that formerly appeared in stand-alone volumes as part of

the Community Publishing Project as a way of saving money, and the short-lived

Shoreline Poetry series was an attempt at reducing the costs associated with producing

poetry books. Rather than a sharp break from past traditions at the Press, the decision in

1990 to publish the Sally Morgan Calendar was an outgrowth of perhaps the most well-

established tradition of all: the desire to keep the publishing house afloat.

Even as in 1990 Fremantle Arts Centre Press seemed to be wavering in its

commitment to the publication of works that might not be considered by a more

commercial publishing house, the Press affirmed other aspects of its mandate. This was

the year the Press announced the inaugural winner of its T. A. G. Hungerford Award.

The Award, established in 1988 (but without a winner being selected from amongst the

first year’s entrants in 1989), recognises an unpublished work of fiction by a Western

Australian writer. The writer must not have previously been published in book form;

thus, a fitting reward is a publishing contract with Fremantle Arts Centre Press along

with a cash prize. The winning manuscript, Crush by Brenda Walker, was published in

1991 and subsequently shortlisted for the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards.

477Ibid.

226

The next two winners of the T. A. G. Hungerford Award were Gail Jones for The

House of Breathing in 1991 (published in 1992) and Simone Lazaroo for The World

Waiting to Be Made in 1993 (published in 1994). All three of the writers mentioned—

Walker, Jones and Lazaroo—have gone on to considerable reputations as writers both in

Australia and overseas. The prizes awarded to this trio are too many to name, as are the

countries into which publication and translation rights for their books have been sold.

In addition to the aforementioned similarities, Walker, Jones and Lazaroo also share the

experience of having produced their most acclaimed, highest selling titles since leaving

the ranks of Fremantle Arts Centre Press and signing contracts with multinational

publishers based on Australia’s east coast.

This is not necessarily an indictment of those responsible for marketing and

sales at Fremantle Arts Centre Press, nor does it necessarily reflect a failure on the part

of Penguin’s distribution efforts on behalf of the Press. It is nigh impossible to attain

accurate sales figures for any given title, but Coffey insists that

based on trade figures for the kinds of literary, historical, art,autobiographical works we publish, there really is, on average, nodifference between the actual sales we achieve and those the largerpublishers archive on these titles. It is towards the blockbuster and mass-market end of the trade that huge differences can occur.478

What Coffey says makes sense, and yet one suspects there is a slightly larger

discrepancy than he is willing to admit. Nonetheless, it is doubtful that such a

discrepancy could solely account for the radically different receptions of, for example,

Brenda Walker’s One More River (her second book, which was published by Fremantle

Arts Centre Press in 1993) and the 2005 publication of The Wing of Night by

multinational Viking. A likely explanation for the more enthusiastic reception of The

Wing of Night is that Walker had established a reputation for herself as a writer over

several books, and Fremantle Arts Centre Press was instrumental in constructing that

478Ibid., 54.

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reputation. It would have been impossible for any publisher, multinational publishers

notwithstanding, to achieve the same sales results from One More River in 1993 as

Viking achieved from The Wing of Night in 2005; Walker simply did not have the name

recognition in 1993. Also, in this particular example, at least, there is the issue of

Walker writing an arguably more ‘popular’ book in 2005, a novel about the Gallipoli

experience and the lives of the women left behind when their men went to war.

In 1983, the Chairman of the Fremantle Arts Centre Press Board of

Management, Derrick Tomlinson, wrote a letter to the Chairman of the Western

Australian Arts Council, Haydn Williams, reflecting on the decisions of some of the

Press’s earliest authors to sign contracts with other publishing houses: ‘The Press is

delighted when authors it has introduced to the Australian public are taken up by other

publishers with international contacts, greater financial resources, more sophisticated

marketing operations and a wide distribution network.’479 Clearly, Coffey was of a

different mind in his 2003 New Norcia Library Lecture, quoted above, as well as in a

2005 newspaper article: ‘Publishing new local writers is risky .... We nurture and

develop but cannot hold onto authors who attract large advances .... We understand

that.’480 The movement is from feelings of ‘delight’ in 1983 when an author decides to

sign with another publisher, to ‘acceptance’ in 2005. This change is understandable, as

in the interim the Press’s marketing, sales and distribution strategies and arrangements

improved considerably, and the Press became a much more professional operation.

One aspect of the Press’s operations that did not change in all this time, however,

was the typical book contract: ‘We do one-book deals. It’s never really been part of our

thinking to try to do anything other than that.’481 At a time when many, if not most,

publishers sign authors to multiple-book deals—or, at the very least, request first option

479Tomlinson.480Victoria Laurie, quoting Coffey.481Brian Raymond Coffey, interview by King, 49.

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on the author’s next book—Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s commitment to ‘one-book

deals’ might seem naive. Considering the financial risks undertaken by the Press each

time it decides to publish a new writer, multiple-book contracts should not be a

particularly difficult measure to sell to prospective authors.

In 1991, Fremantle Arts Centre Press embarked on yet another initiative spurred

on by the hope of commercial success: the Press ‘began building a list of titles for

younger readers’.482 The first two titles to appear under the Press’s new children’s books

imprint, Sandcastle Books, were Little Piggies by Paul Morgan and Sally Morgan, and

A Sausage Went for a Walk by Ellisha Majid and Peter Kendall. Ashton Scholastic

ordered a substantial number of copies for their children’s book club prior to printing,

enabling the Press to keep costs down, and both titles sold extremely well.483 When the

‘interest in Australian literature within the secondary and tertiary education sectors’,

which had ‘underpinned’ Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s success in the 1980s, began to

evaporate later in the 1990s as high schools and universities moved from set to

recommended texts, the Press’s list of children’s books would enable it to continue

placing titles in schools.484 One of the most successful examples in this genre is Tim

Winton’s The Deep (1998), illustrated by Karen Louise.

The inclusion of children’s and young adult books in its regular publishing

programme from 1991 onwards would not, however, insulate Fremantle Arts Centre

Press from further financial troubles. In fact, the Press failed to return a profit in that

very first year, in spite of the commercial success of Little Piggies and A Sausage Went

for a Walk.485 Clearly, children’s books were no magic cure for the wide variety of

factors that impacted on the Press’s fortunes, including rising interest rates in 1991, but

482Brian Raymond Coffey, ‘Interview with Ray Coffey’, interview by Andrew Burke, Western Word 22,no. 7 (Aug. 1998): 4.483Fremantle Arts Centre Press, Press release, undated (ca. 28 June 1991), Fremantle City Library.484Blaber, 77.485Mick Paskos, ‘A Fortunate Story’, West Australian, 27 Apr. 1996.

229

they have on more than one occasion been responsible for slowing the bleeding, as

demonstrated by these first two titles.

Fremantle Arts Centre Press published seven children’s books in the following

year, nearly one-third of its 22-book output. Four of these titles were written by a single

author, May O’Brien; these titles re-worked traditional Aboriginal oral stories in a

picture book form, complete with a Pronunciation Guide for the Aboriginal words

sprinkled throughout the text. In 1993, the Press published 12 children’s books, five of

which were by the team of Anne Evans, Alwyn Davis and Joanna Capelle, with a further

five titles by Evans and Davis. From a total of 33 titles published by Fremantle Arts

Centre Press in 1993—a 50% increase on the previous year’s output, which was already

greater than any year previous to it—more than one-third were children’s books.

Also in 1993, Fremantle Arts Centre Press published the first novel, True

Country, by Aboriginal writer Kim Scott, who has since published two more books with

the Press. Benang: From the Heart, the second of these titles, was the joint winner of

the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2000, making Scott the first Indigenous writer

(and Benang the first Fremantle Arts Centre Press publication) to win this award. The

publication in 1993 of True Country marked the beginning of a distinguished literary

career, in the same way that the aforementioned publication of Simone Lazaroo’s The

World Waiting to Be Made in 1994 signalled the appearance of an important Australian

writer.

A confluence of events, many of which have been noted in the last few pages, begat a

distinctly new phase in Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s development beginning in the

early to mid-1990s. Among the most significant of these events were the following: the

1990 publication of the Sally Morgan Calendar, which gave rise in the following year to

a decision to publish diaries; the introduction of children’s literature to the publishing

230

programme in 1991, and then young adult fiction three years later; and, perhaps most

significantly, an exponential increase in the number of titles published each year (from

15 titles in 1989 to 33 in 1993) by Fremantle Arts Centre Press. These few events

inaugurated a change of direction for the Press that would define the latter half of its

history. Nearly all of the most important developments witnessed during this period at

Fremantle Arts Centre Press—for example, the introduction of lifestyle titles to the

publishing programme, or the inclusion of non-Western Australian writers in the Press’s

anthologies—are symptoms of this new direction.

Kim Scott’s True Country and Simone Lazaroo’s The World Waiting to Be Made

—published in 1993 and 1994 respectively—act as convenient markers, for the

purposes of this thesis, of the end of the first half of Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s

history. These two novels inaugurated highly acclaimed writing careers, while

coincidentally marking the beginning of a sharp decline in such careers at Fremantle

Arts Centre Press. Starting a few years after the introduction of children’s books and

Wildflower Diaries and their ilk, there are noticeably fewer writers whose early

publications with Fremantle Arts Centre Press herald the beginning of a writing career

in which they will establish reputations comparable to those enjoyed by some of the

writers to emerge from the Press in its first 15 or 20 years.

The shift at Fremantle Arts Centre Press away from publishing writers and titles

whose singular importance is clearly evident a decade or more on from the publication

date, means that a chronological, ‘best of’ 1993, 1994, et cetera, approach is no longer

appropriate. The Press up until this time was characterised by rapid change and

development, innovation and experimentation that lent itself to a chronological timeline

as the only manageable way to contain this activity. From the early to mid-1990s

onwards, however, the Press entered a new phase that is more readily characterised in

thematic terms, since there are very few larger developments across this span of time.

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Instead, a single development defines this period: an increasing concern for the bottom

line.

Of course, it is natural for a publishing house to be concerned with the bottom

line; a publishing house is a business, after all, and attending to the bottom line is

essential for the survival of any business—even one responsible for the production and

dissemination of culture, and supported in these efforts by various governmental

agencies. Furthermore, financial concerns dictated many of Fremantle Arts Centre

Press’s decisions in the first half of its history, so this is not a wholly new development.

Rather, it is the intensity of the Press’s focus on the bottom line, and the sometimes

startling implications of this focus for the publishing programme, that is notable in the

latter half of its history. This description of the latter half of Fremantle Arts Centre

Press’s history focuses on these implications, rather than the financial specifics, as the

latter is not half so remarkable as the former.

One of the most notable effects of the Press’s increasing concern for the bottom

line, was the emergence in the early to mid-1990s of a new attitude to the processes of

canon formation. Early examples of this trend include two of the most notable additions

to the Press’s stable of writers during this period, Dorothy Hewett and Randolph Stow,

both of whom already had well-established reputations when they published their first

books with Fremantle Arts Centre Press in 1991 and 1993 respectively. While this was

not typical of the period, Hewett’s and Stow’s books represent a second, even more

notable exception at Fremantle Arts Centre Press: they had been previously published

elsewhere. Hewett’s Selected Poems, published by Fremantle Arts Centre Press in

1991, was originally published by Bloodaxe Books in Great Britain in 1990. The Press

subsequently published an original volume of Hewett’s verse, Peninsula, in 1994, which

won the National Book Council Banjo Award for Poetry and the Western Australian

Premier’s Book Award, as well as her Collected Poems in 1995. (In the latter, editor

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William Grono notes that ‘most of [Hewett’s] books have been published by transient

publishing houses in small print runs. Apart from Peninsula, a recent Selected Poems

[1991] and representation in anthologies, her poems have been unavailable for too

long.’486) Randolph Stow’s The Suburbs of Hell, published by Fremantle Arts Centre

Press in 1993, was first published by Martin Secker & Warburg in London in 1984. So

not only did Fremantle Arts Centre Press not launch Hewett’s and Stow’s literary

careers, but it was not even the originating publisher of the earliest titles it released by

these writers.

Clearly, these are very different circumstances than the ones that gave rise to, for

example, T. A. G. Hungerford, A. B. Facey, Elizabeth Jolley, Sally Morgan, John

Kinsella, and Kim Scott. These six writers have been chosen to illustrate this point,

because these are the names Fremantle Press (the ‘Arts Centre’ was dropped from the

name in July 2007) lists in a paragraph on its website that states, ‘A number of

distinguished and award-winning authors ... have been published in the past thirty-one

years.’487 Of course, many more names could be added to this list: Nicholas Hasluck,

Peter Cowan, Philip Salom, Marion Campbell, Joan London, Brenda Walker, Gail

Jones, Simone Lazaroo, and so forth. Hewett and Stow are also ‘distinguished and

award-winning authors’—perhaps even more distinguished than a couple of the names

Fremantle Press has chosen for special mention—but it is no accident that they have not

been selected for inclusion on this list. After all, while Fremantle Arts Centre Press

arguably consolidated Hewett’s and Stow’s reputations, it was not responsible for

generating their reputations as it did for the aforementioned writers.

The writers Fremantle Press lists on its website represent a de facto Western

Australian literary canon. They also perhaps represent an incursion into the wider

486William Grono, ed., Collected Poems 1940–1995, by Dorothy Hewett (South Fremantle: FremantleArts Centre Press, 1995), 13.487Fremantle Press, ‘About Fremantle Press’, in Fremantle Press (accessed 17 Dec. 2007); available fromhttp://www.fremantlepress.com.au.

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Australian literary canon, prompting those with the authority to draft future versions of

it to be more inclusive of Western Australian writers and writing. In both of these

instances, the Press nominates for canonisation writers it perceives as valuable, as well

as responds to what it perceives the reading public perceives as valuable. These two

forces can be in conflict with each other, but most of the time they are mutually

reinforcing. Thus, the writers Fremantle Press selects for special mention on its website

can be understood to represent the way in which the Press wants to see itself, as well as

the image of its publishing activities it wants to project to the public; that is, as the

publisher of ‘a number of distinguished and award-winning authors’, including T. A. G.

Hungerford, A. B. Facey, Elizabeth Jolley, Sally Morgan, John Kinsella, and Kim Scott.

The absence of Hewett and Stow—two of the most widely acclaimed Western

Australian writers ever—from this list implies the Press is aware that the value

associated with these two writers is not theirs to claim. Prior to the publication of

Hewett’s and Stow’s books in 1991 and 1993 respectively, Fremantle Arts Centre

Press’s attitude to the processes involved in canon formation were much different, and a

situation such as this would have never arisen.

Of course, canons are notoriously problematic and subject to prejudices of all

sorts, which can result in extraordinary re-evaluations of the value of particular texts

and authors across time and place. Peter Kirkpatrick argues that ‘literary canons are

constantly renegotiated as part of an unfolding set of cultural dialogues and debates:

they have never been, and can never be, fixed in stone’.488 This has led some to entirely

dismiss canons as a useful tool for literary discussion.489 An example of some of the

problems associated with canonisation, as well as evidence of the Press’s new attitude to

canon formation, is the inclusion of Kate McCaffrey at the tail end of the list of writers

488Peter Kirkpatrick, ‘The Strange Death of Australian Literature’, Australian Author 39, no. 1 (Apr.2007): 23.489See, for example, John Guillory, Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).

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receiving special mention on Fremantle Press’s website—‘A number of distinguished

and award-winning authors, including T. A. G. Hungerford, A. B. Facey, Elizabeth

Jolley, Sally Morgan, John Kinsella, Kim Scott and Kate McCaffrey, have been

published in the past thirty-one years.’490 McCaffrey is a writer whose first book (a

work of young adult fiction, Destroying Avalon) was published in 2006 and won the

Young Adult Fiction category of the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards. Her

second and most recent publication, In Ecstasy, is another work of young adult fiction

published in 2008. However, she seems decidedly anomalous in this company of

‘distinguished and award-winning authors’. The inclusion of McCaffrey in this list of

writers, the youngest of whom (Kim Scott) published his first book 13 years prior to

McCaffrey’s, would seem to be the result of marketing efforts, as well as another de

facto attempt at canon-making. By placing McCaffrey in the company of writers for

whom ‘distinguished and award-winning’ are commonplace descriptions, the Press

perhaps hopes this aura will rub off on her. Furthermore, since Facey and Jolley are

deceased, Hungerford is 93 years old, and Morgan is writing only the very occasional

children’s book, that leaves Kinsella, Scott and McCaffrey writing and publishing books

likely to enhance the reputations of both Western Australian literature and Fremantle

Press in 2008. It is probable McCaffrey has been included in the website listing

mentioned above, less for her accomplishments as a writer and more for what she

represents—a contemporary writer in a genre (young adult fiction) that has come to

occupy a large segment of the Press’s publishing programme. McCaffrey and her

literary prize seem intended to demonstrate that Fremantle Press continues its tradition

of launching the careers of noteworthy Australian writers.

Fremantle Press likely did not intend to propose a canon of its writers, much less

a canon of Western Australian literature—even a de facto one—when it listed ‘a number

490Fremantle Press, ‘About Fremantle Press’.

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of distinguished and award-winning authors’ on its website. Instead, it probably

envisioned this list as a simple marketing tool for the publishing house. Nonetheless,

the presentation of this list of writers on the Press’s website—as well as the frequent

references to many of these same writers in published interviews with Coffey and

Newman, journalistic reports on the Press’s activities, and reviews of its books—

effectively (even if not intentionally) creates a canon of, at the very least, Fremantle

Press writers.

Other individuals and institutions are more forthright about their participation in

the process of defining a canon of Western Australian writers. For example, in a chapter

devoted to the subject of ‘Tim Winton and West Australian Writing’ in Nicholas Birns

and Rebecca McNeer’s recently published A Companion to Australian Literature since

1900, Lyn Jacobs offers the following canon for consideration:

This brief introduction to his [Tim Winton’s] work, and to WesternAustralian writing, can only suggest the wealth of this state’s literaryheritage, with its varied foci, themes, and styles. The span of timecovered in writings by fellow Western Australians, Katharine SusannahPrichard (1883–1969), Henrietta Drake-Brockman (1901–68), T. A. G.Hungerford (b. 1915), E. L. Grant Watson (1885–1970), Randolph Stow(b. 1935), Peter Cowan (b. 1914 [– d. 2002]), Alec Choate (b. 1915),Nicholas Hasluck (b. 1942), Elizabeth Jolley (b. 1923 [– d. 2007]),Dorothy Hewett (1923–2002), Robert Drewe (b. 1943), Fay Zwicky (b.1933), Dennis Haskell (b. 1948), Joan London (b. 1948), Philip Salom (b.1950), Marion Campbell (b. 1948), Brenda Walker (b. 1957), JohnKinsella (b. 1963), Gail Jones (b. 1955), and Fotini Epanomitis (b. 1969),is relatively short—Western Australia, the Swan River settlement, wascolonized in 1829, while oral Indigenous traditions extend back over50,000 years. Today, this state’s diverse expertise includes a newgeneration of Indigenous writers of English, such as Jimmy Chi (b.1948), Glenyse Ward (b. 1949), Kim Scott (b. 1957), Stephen Kinnane(b. 1967), and Sally Morgan (b. 1951), who, following the pioneeringwork of Jack Davis (1917–2000), Alice Nannup (1911–95), ArchieWeller (b. 1957), and Mudrooroo (b. 1938) are telling stories once elidedby iniquitous social agendas.491

What is most remarkable about Jacobs’s canon is that, of the 29 writers comprising her

assessment of the ‘wealth of this state’s literary heritage’, only ten writers were not

491Lyn Jacobs, ‘Tim Winton and West Australian Writing’, in A Companion to Australian Literature since1900, ed. Nicholas Birns and Rebecca McNeer (Rochester: Camden House, 2007), 308.

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published at one time or another in a single-author volume by Fremantle Arts Centre

Press: Prichard, Drake-Brockman, Watson, Drewe, Epanomitis, Chi, Ward, Davis,

Weller, and Mudrooroo. The reasons for their absence from the Fremantle Arts Centre

Press publishing list are various: Prichard, Drake-Brockman and Watson all died before

the Press was founded; Drewe did not begin publishing books until after he left Western

Australia for New South Wales; Epanomitis has only published one book, the

unpublished manuscript of which was the recipient of The Australian/Vogel National

Literary Award and thus was published by Allen & Unwin, a condition of the award

(similar circumstances gave rise to Winton’s first novel, An Open Swimmer, and

subsequent association with Allen & Unwin, as well as Weller’s The Day of the Dog);

Chi is a songwriter and playwright whose only book publication was a cooperative

production of Currency Press and Magabala Books; Ward was published by Magabala

Books; Davis is best known as a playwright and thus, like most Australian playwrights,

saw much of his work published by Currency Press (although his memoir was published

by Magabala Books); and Mudrooroo’s first novel, Wild Cat Falling, was published as

early as 1965. Nonetheless, Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s enormous influence on a

canon of (especially contemporary) Western Australian literature should be apparent

from this list. This is particularly the case since the Press, by publishing their first

books, launched the writing careers of the majority of the 19 writers from Jacobs’s list

who published single-author volumes with the Press. It is also notable that, of the

writers from Jacobs’s list who were published by Fremantle Arts Centre Press, only one

of them made his writing debut in the period after the early to mid-1990s: Stephen

Kinnane published a biography, Shadow Lines, in 2003, while in 1992 he was one of

two editors of Alice Nannup’s autobiography When the Pelican Laughed. In fact, no

other writer on the list—published by Fremantle Arts Centre Press or elsewhere—made

his or her writing debut later than 1993 (when Scott and Epanomitis made their debuts).

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Rather than interpreting this as a decline in the quality of writing or writers coming out

of Western Australia, or simply Jacobs’s ignorance of newer Western Australian writers

who deserve a place in the canon, it is perhaps the result of a shift in Fremantle Arts

Centre Press’s publishing programme, which had up until this time been responsible for

the inclusion of so many new names on the list.

Disregarding the anomalous inclusion of McCaffrey in the list on Fremantle

Press’s website, and perhaps also Epanomitis in Jacobs’s list, the most remarkable

aspect of the canons proposed by both are their resistance to change. In fact, the shift

from a canon that is in the process of being defined to one that is static, is a hallmark of

the new attitude to the processes of canon formation that first emerges at the Press in the

early to mid-1990s. The literature anthologies discussed in Chapter 2 of this thesis play

an integral role in this shift. Anthologies can both suggest and confirm a literary canon;

specifically, the repeated inclusion of a single writer or literary work in different

anthologies has the effect of confirming the writer’s status as part of a given canon. The

static quality of Fremantle Press’s canon as evidenced by its anthologies preserves it

from the irrelevancy that threatens all canon formations as a result of constant re-

evaluations. However, in spite of a belief in the enduring power of canons, history

shows they are always being revised subject to changing literary tastes and priorities,

and so this particular canon’s resistance to change simultaneously renders it obsolete.

Consider, for example, the series of anthologies detailed in Chapter 2 of this thesis that

were published by Fremantle Arts Centre Press between 1996 and 2000 (with one

outlying anthology published in 2004): the writers whose names most often appear on

the covers of these anthologies, in order to lure potential book buyers, include Elizabeth

Jolley, Sally Morgan, A. B. Facey, and T. A. G. Hungerford—clearly locating Fremantle

Press’s publishing successes in the distant past.

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This new attitude at the Press towards canon-making activities is the outcome of

an increasing concern for the bottom line. In other words, the Press’s increasing

concern for the bottom line resulted in the more frequent publication of books

specifically designed to appeal to a so-called ‘popular’ audience, including lifestyle

titles, which then resulted in a new attitude at the Press towards canon-making

activities. This new attitude contributed to the aforementioned situation at the Press

from the early to mid-1990s onwards, in which fewer writers established reputations

comparable to those enjoyed by some of the writers to emerge from the Press in the first

half of its history. The anthologies published by Fremantle Press after 1989 are

particularly suggestive of this new attitude.

Around the same time as the publication of Kim Scott’s True Country and

Simone Lazaroo’s The World Waiting to Be Made, the Press published a series of

anthologies titled Summer Shorts. In addition to the fact that the three titles in this

series are nowhere identified as anthologies of Western Australian writing, the other

remarkable feature of these titles is that they are quite clearly designed as ‘a miscellany

of enjoyable, easily read material’; in other words, they are presented as ‘popular’

fiction.492 The usual established ‘literary’ writers are listed on the back cover of each

volume to entice knowing book buyers, but everything else about these books—from

the cover design with its lurid use of colour to the chatty, anecdotal introduction—

indicates that these books are intended to appeal to a ‘popular’ readership.

The three Summer Shorts anthologies do not represent Fremantle Arts Centre

Press’s first ever attempt to appeal to a ‘popular’ readership, nor do they represent the

first time the Press made a choice they believed would broaden the appeal of a title, for

example about cover design. These processes have been a normal part of the Press’s

operations from the time of its earliest publications. Instead, the Summer Shorts titles

492Peter Holland, 13.

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are significant because they are symptomatic of increasing pressures at the Press to

reach a ‘popular’ readership, which in the years ahead would inspire the Press to publish

in new areas, as well as to rethink their approach to old favourites like the literature

anthology.

In 1994, one year after the publication of the first title in the Summer Shorts

series of anthologies, Fremantle Arts Centre Press published Reading from the Left, an

anthology of prose by 18 writers from across Australia. The inside flap of the front

cover offers this explanation for the pan-Australia focus: ‘Edited and produced on the

West Coast, [Reading from the Left] offers that point of entry and engagement with the

strength and diversity of recent Australian fiction.’ The editor, Wendy Jenkins, expands

on this idea in her introduction:

At Fremantle Arts Centre Press there has been, from time to time,discussion about if, how and when the list of publications might beopened up to include the work of writers from other states. It seemed, inthose discussions, that what was important was that the editorial focusand commitment, informed by living and working in a specific place, bemaintained.493

In the spirit of this statement, Jenkins selected nine Western Australian writers, each of

whom contributed a piece of their own writing to the anthology. These same writers

were also asked to nominate a work for inclusion by a writer from another state, and

then to write an introduction for the two pieces. Even if it can be agreed that Jenkins is

successful in her stated aim of locating the ‘editorial focus and commitment’ of the

anthology in Western Australia, it does not render the inclusion of non-Western

Australian writers in a Fremantle Arts Centre Press publication any less significant.

Furthermore, the prominent placement of several of the interstate writers’ names on the

cover of the book—including Thomas Shapcott, Helen Garner and Thea Astley—

thereby relegating the majority of Western Australian names to the wrap-around colour

band on the back cover and spine, belies a commitment to the bottom line over any

493Wendy Jenkins, ed., Reading from the Left (South Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1994), 11.

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commitment ‘informed by living and working in a specific place’. The intensification

of the former commitment in the period from the early to mid-1990s onwards is, once

again, evident in the new attitude to the processes of canon formation. And while this

book, like Risks—another anthology containing non-Western Australian writers, which

was edited by Brenda Walker and published by Fremantle Arts Centre Press in 1996—is

still designed to appeal more to a ‘literary’ than a ‘popular’ audience, it most certainly

represents an attempt by the Press to attract a wider audience through the inclusion of

prominent, non-Western Australian writers.

Two later anthologies—Great Australian Bites edited by Dave Warner and

published in 1997, and School Days edited by John Kinsella and published in 2006—

more fully illustrate the direction Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s new focus on ‘popular’

publishing has taken their publishing programme. Both books include selections

written by non-Western Australian writers, though neither editor mentions this in the

introductions to their respective titles. The cover designs of the two titles, organising

themes, and the writers chosen for inclusion, all testify to the fact that they were also

designed to appeal to a ‘popular’ audience.

A reviewer of School Days notes that, ‘As selective compendiums of the arts,

anthologies occupy a distinguished segment of book publishing. And because they

perform an educational as well as general interest function, their compilers have a

particular responsibility.’494 This reviewer then criticises School Days for not being up

to the task, before making the following observation of Kinsella, the book’s editor: ‘For

an internationally recognised and self-confessed multi-talented intellect, this anthology

is no magnum opus.’495 It is hard to imagine any of the anthologies published by

Fremantle Arts Centre Press in the late 1970s and into the 1980s being criticised for a

lack of substance, as it seems this reviewer is criticising School Days. Indeed, the

494Lon Bram, ‘Barely a Pass Mark’, Weekend Australian, 11 Nov. 2006.495Ibid.

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former anthologies were roundly acclaimed for ‘throw[ing] out a challenge to other

states’. Of course, some were also simply ignored outside Western Australia.

However, the Press’s intensified focus on ‘popular’ publishing beginning in the

early to mid-1990s changed all this. Thereafter, the majority of Fremantle Arts Centre

Press’s publishing programme, and not least of all the anthologies it published, could be

characterised as falling outside the aforementioned ‘distinguished segment of book

publishing’. Newman was earlier quoted as saying in a 1998 interview, ‘There’s no

question that in our early career we were seen as elitist in some quarters because we

were doing works of literature, not commercial works.’496 The specificity of ‘in our

early career’ would seem to indicate Newman is aware the Press is no longer in the

business of ‘doing’ exclusively works of literature to the exception of ‘commercial

works’; in fact, this equation has been flipped on its head.

A balancing act between the traditional publishing categories at the Press, and its

search for more reliable sources of income in the form of ‘popular’ titles, typifies the

latter half of Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s history. Of course, the Press also published

many titles in, for example, 1994 that are typical of its first 20 years of publishing, such

as Peter Cowan’s novel The Tenants and John Mateer’s poetry collection Burning

Swans. These were nearly overwhelmed, however, by the large number (seven of a total

of 27 titles) of children’s picture books published in this year, as well as the first three

works of young adult fiction at the Press. The latter category included the first book,

Gaz, in a highly successful series by Warren Flynn. Just two years later, the Press

would again meet with success in the young adult genre with the publication of Killer

Boots, the first in Wendy Jenkins’s trilogy about Australian Rules Football, which

included The Big Game (1998) and Gunna Burn (2000).

496Winn, quoting Newman.

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Occasionally there emerges from the Press in this period a title that spans the

traditions of Fremantle Arts Centre Press and its recent, more vigorous pursuit of a

‘popular’ readership. The 1994 publication of Steve Hawke’s Polly Farmer, a

biography of the famous footballer, is one such title; Newman even nominated this title

in a 1996 article in Australian Book Review as one of his favourites from the past 20

years.497 Unfortunately, these titles are few and far between, and Coffey’s reaction in a

2006 interview—when asked about a title, City of Light by Dave Warner, that was

published the year after Polly Farmer—is more typical: he is quick to mention the

‘juggling act of cross-subsidisation’ that typifies the Press’s publishing programme.498

In other words, Coffey perceives the publication of this particular title as meant to

‘subsidise some of the more uneconomic things we do’, such as publishing poetry and

literary fiction, activities to which he clearly ascribes greater value.499 Contrast his

comments about City of Light with his statement about poetry earlier in the same

interview: ‘We publish three poetry titles a year when, yes, most presses don’t do any.

But it’s a commitment we have, a sense of supporting that form.’500

Herein lies a contradiction: Coffey is one minute speaking of the Press’s

cookbooks, gardening books and ‘popular’ titles more generally as ‘support[ing] some

of the more uneconomic things we do’, while in the very next insisting that ‘we are not

a leading title publisher, investing heavily in a “front list”, and crossing our fingers and

hoping for the best with the rest’.501 In spite of the conflicting rhetoric, it is clear

enough that City of Light, for example—a work of crime fiction featuring the image of a

woman’s naked, decapitated torso on the cover—was a ‘front list’ title for the Press,

expected to generate profits that could then be used to subsidise the publication of other,

497Newman, ‘Twenty Years On’, 54.498Brian Raymond Coffey, interview by King, 36.499Ibid., 37.500Ibid., 35.501Ibid., 41.

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less profitable titles. It is not possible to have these titles without relegating certain

other titles to ‘back list’ status, due simply to time and budgetary constraints.

Nonetheless, City of Light was perhaps the most notable publishing event at Fremantle

Arts Centre Press in 1995; its author’s previously established public profile as a

musician attracted media attention, its cover image provoked controversy, and it

represented the Press’s first significant foray into genre fiction.

Furthermore, in 1996, arguably the most significant publishing event at

Fremantle Arts Centre Press was the publication of the Press’s first cookbook, The

Grapevine Quick and Tasty Cookbook, edited by Peter Holland and Liz Byrski. The

following year, it was the publication of the Press’s first gardening book, Jeff

Dorrington’s In Your Garden. Coffey explained the Press’s approach to publishing

cookbooks and gardening books in an interview published in 2006: ‘The important

thing we’ve realised—and this is another reason we’ve survived, and why small

publishers who survive do survive—is that you’ve got to find the niche in the market

that the big mainstream publishers aren’t covering. You can’t compete head-to-head.’502

As an example of this approach, Coffey observes that ‘you wouldn’t call the books we

do “cookbooks”, but rather “food-based” books that include elements other than

recipes’.503 While the title Coffey mentions, Feasts and Friends by Lorraine McGinniss

(2005), is an excellent example of the publisher finding a niche in the notoriously

saturated market for ‘lifestyle’ books, not all of the Press’s ‘lifestyle’ titles follow this

prescription; indeed, neither The Grapevine Quick and Tasty nor In Your Garden fit this

description, nor do many of the Press’s more recent cookbooks and gardening books,

generally to the detriment of their sales figures.

Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s decision to venture into the world of cookbook

publishing in 1996, and then into the publishing of gardening books in 1997, was

502Ibid., 37.503Ibid.

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related to (if not actually the direct result of) the Press’s 1996 funding agreement with

the Western Australian Government, which reduced funding to the Press by 50% over a

period of three years and contained a new productivity clause. The terms of this

decision were the result of a recommendation from the ‘Review into the Investment of

Government in the Publishing of Literary Works’ commissioned by Western Australian

Arts Minister Peter Foss in 1994 and completed by Andrew Taylor in June 1995: ‘That

FACP review its publishing policy and draw up a business plan which will enable it to

reduce its dependency on direct Government annual subsidy by 50% of the 1994–95

level by the end of the next five years.’504 The following chart (see Table 2) shows a

pattern of slow, relatively consistent growth in the funding awarded to Fremantle Arts

Centre Press by the Department for the Arts up until the 1995–96 financial year, at

which point the funding drops dramatically (though it never quite reaches Taylor’s

recommended 50% reduction on the 1994–95 funding level).

504Taylor, ‘Review’, 25.

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Table 2: Western Australian Department for the Arts/ArtsWA Funding for

Fremantle Arts Centre Press (1986–2000)505

Year Funds received

1986–87 $144,300

1987–88 $136,750

1988–89 $153,500

1989–90 $193,500

1990–91 $168,054

1991–92 $173,500

1992–93 $177,000

1993–94 $232,250

1994–95 $241,000

1995–96 $186,118

1996–97 $166,500

1997–98 $148,500

1998–99 $129,500

1999–2000 $163,000

In meetings with Foss to challenge the funding cut, Fremantle Arts Centre Press was

informed by Foss that he believed they should cultivate a more ‘commercial’, as

opposed to ‘literary’, publishing programme.506 This language was not written into the

Press’s funding agreement, nor does it appear to have been the intention of Taylor’s

‘Review’, which instead makes the claim that ‘commercially viable writing ...

frequently has a very short shelf-life, while what might be called works of cultural

significance, once established in people’s awareness, can continue to sell for

generations’.507 The ‘Review’ nonetheless concludes that ‘benefits to the State’s writers

will accrue if FACP draw less heavily on Government funds, and that savings in this

area be made available to other publishers’; the Press is subsequently advised to

‘carefully scrutinise its publishing policy with an eye to reducing the number of non-

505Table 2 is a composite of two sources: Taylor, ‘Review’, 20; and White, ‘Independent Evaluation’, 10.506Brian Raymond Coffey, letter to author, 18 June 2007.507Taylor, ‘Review’, 25.

246

performing titles’.508 The Press felt that the dramatic reduction in their funding left them

no other option but to pursue the aforementioned more ‘commercial’ publishing

programme.

Adding to Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s difficulties, the reduction in state

funding to the Press (administered by ArtsWA, which inherited this responsibility in

1996 from the Department for the Arts) ‘combined scarily’ with ‘the publishing trade

recession [that] hit in 1996’.509 In the same 2005 newspaper interview in which Coffey

made this observation, Newman subsequently ‘reveals publicly for the first time that the

Press has a “very important but off-the-record guarantee” from a high-profile Perth

business figure who is a fan’ of the Press.510 This arrangement became necessary when

the Press was unable to locate alternative sources of funding, and the banks would not

loan them the money necessary to continue their publishing operations; Coffey says,

‘The only way we could convince the banks was if somebody with money could

guarantee us if we fell over.511 Newman is quick to add that, while the guarantee of the

‘high-profile Perth business figure’ remains in effect to this day, Fremantle Arts Centre

Press have never had to call on it.

University of Western Australia Press also diversified its list in the 1990s to

include titles with more ‘popular’ or ‘commercial’ appeal. Both publishing houses

arrived at the unique makeup of their current publishing programmes in response to

larger changes in the field of cultural production, including economic and political

changes. These changes included the ‘end of a period of government interventionist

nation-building, both in general terms and with respect to the book-publishing industry’;

this imperative is evident in Foss’s decision to significantly reduce the funding

508Ibid.509Victoria Laurie, quoting Coffey.510Ibid., quoting Newman.511Ibid., quoting Coffey.

247

Fremantle Arts Centre Press received from the Western Australian Government.512

University of Melbourne academic Mark Davis maintains that this shift of direction

‘tallied precisely’ with the ‘decline of the literary paradigm’.513

The much-discussed ‘decline of the literary paradigm’ in Australian (and, indeed,

international) literature—that is, the decline of interest in ‘high-brow’ or ‘literary’

fiction and non-fiction—also neatly parallels the decline of interest in regional literature

and issues of regionalism in Australia. Consequently, regional publishers and

commentators alike have been inclined to blame subsequent difficulties on this change

of fortunes, the fallout of ‘profound economic, technological, political and ... cultural

changes, since the late 1960s’, but which really gained momentum in the 1990s.514

Coffey said as much in a 2006 interview: ‘What is called “middlebrow fiction” is now

dominating shops, along with that crossover of a personal narrative or “life story”, in

fiction and non-fiction form. These have certainly taken over, or merged into, what was

the literary fiction market.’515

The focus in this section of the thesis on the aforementioned two notable effects

of Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s increasing concern for the bottom line—the emergence

of a new attitude to the processes of canon formation, and the increasingly frequent

publication of books specifically designed to appeal to a ‘popular’ audience, including

lifestyle titles—has thus far been based on a (nearly) implicit acceptance of the

distinction between ‘popular’ publishing and the ‘distinguished segment of book

publishing’, or ‘literary’ publishing. Earlier discussion of the problems associated with

literary canons and the canonisation process has gone some way to addressing this gap.

However, if it is to be maintained that the period from the early to mid-1990s onwards

at Fremantle Arts Centre Press is characterised by this balancing act between the

512Mark Davis, ‘The Decline of the Literary Paradigm in Australian Publishing’, Heat 12 (2006): 95.513Ibid.514Nathan Hollier, ‘Diagnosing the Death of Literature’, Wet Ink 6 (2007): 13.515Brian Raymond Coffey, interview by King, 37.

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traditional publishing categories at the Press including ‘literary’ fiction and non-fiction,

and its search for more reliable sources of income in the form of ‘popular’ titles, then

the matter deserves further explication. In particular, it should be noted why this

distinction is useful in the larger discussion of the production of a regional literature in

Western Australia.

It is important for the producers of regional literature to remember that regional

literature is first and foremost writing possessing cultural value that is specific to a

region, although the writing may also have national and international value. While

‘literary’ fiction and non-fiction are in many respects defined by their distance from

‘popular’ literature, regional literature is defined by its relationship to a different set of

factors, and it is these that must be considered if regional publishing houses are going to

continue to be viable in this age of increasing consolidation and globalisation of

publishing operations. Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s recent history signals only an

inconstant awareness of this fact.

As described above, the Press’s focus on ‘popular’ publishing over the last 15 or

so years has come at the expense of its ‘literary’ publishing traditions. While these

changes may have seemed unavoidable at the time, and they were the same sorts of

changes being undertaken by publishers in the traditional publishing centres of Sydney

and Melbourne, they are largely self-defeating for a regional publisher. After all, the

interests of the ‘literary paradigm’ do not exactly tally with those of regional publishers

and literature. Succumbing to the pressures to produce more ‘popular’ books, such as

cookbooks, gardening books and genre fiction, eliminates in many ways those aspects

that established these regional publishers as remarkable in the first place, in particular

their attention to regional developments. It is not enough for a regional publishing

house to publish books that are just as good as those published by the major

multinational publishers in the cultural centres of the country, because the latter

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publishers will be able to produce theirs more cheaply and provide them with better

distribution, marketing and promotion. Coffey is aware of this fact:

There is little prospect of publication if you write another readable novel,another competent biography or history, etc. It isn’t really enough. ... TheAustralian market is flooded with such works, particularly from the U.S.and U.K. And produced more cheaply than we could ever do. Apublisher like Fremantle [Arts Centre Press] can only succeed if it findsniches in the market, if it doesn’t try to do what everyone else is doing.516

Whether or not Fremantle Arts Centre Press can be said to have followed Coffey’s

prescription in the latter half of its history, it is clear that regional publishers must aspire

to produce work that is either of demonstrably higher quality, or that is distinctive and

can generate its own publicity.

This last point is particularly important, since the budget of a regional publisher

like Fremantle Arts Centre Press rarely extends to extensive print (much less television)

advertising campaigns. In fact, at the Press,

the total budgeted amount allocated for marketing, advertising andpromotion is less than the amount to cover freight and postage whichmay come as no surprise given the geographical distances of Australia.The total amount for ‘marketing’ represents, in the 2000 financialstatements, 5.89% of the year’s total sales.

Therefore, Fremantle Arts Centre Press (and other regional publishing houses) must be

attuned to opportunities for free publicity for the titles it publishes; these opportunities

are often the best sort of publicity a publisher can get, anyway. Terri-ann White notes in

a 2001 report on Western Australian publishing commissioned by ArtsWA, that

Fremantle Arts Centre Press ‘relies upon as much no-cost coverage as it can and does

extremely well within these constraints’.517 However, the ‘popular’ titles that have

consumed increasing amounts of the Press’s energies since the early to mid-1990s, in

addition to diluting the notion of cultural value that is specific to Western Australia, do

not often appeal to the individuals and institutions responsible for generating this sort of

516Brian Raymond Coffey, interview by Burke, 6.517White, ‘Independent Evaluation’, 20.

250

free publicity. Australian children’s literature, for example, constitutes only four percent

of book coverage in the mainstream Australian literary media, while comprising 14% of

total book sales in Australia; in contrast, the numbers for Australian fiction are ten

percent and 11%, respectively.518 So even though Australian fiction sells less than

Australian children’s literature, it receives more than twice as much media coverage.

These figures are derived from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and Media

Extra (MX), an online supplement to Bookseller+Publisher magazine that records

mentions of books in the media. Neither source, unfortunately, discriminates between

sales of ‘literary’ and ‘popular’ titles, so it is impossible to further demonstrate that, like

children’s literature, other types of ‘popular’ titles ‘do not often appeal to the individuals

and institutions responsible for generating this sort of free publicity’. It is worth noting,

however, that ‘the Literature Board of the Australia Council gives over $1 million in

grants each year, mostly for literary fiction’.519 In fact, all the available facts seem to

confirm this conclusion, including a particularly striking anecdote about the death of

‘one of Australia’s best-known romance writers’, Dorothy Sanders (pseudonymously

Lucy Walker), being registered by The West Australian ‘only in terms of the loss

experienced by her son’; the headline read ‘Yachtsman’s Mother Dies’, and only much

later in the article did it mention that her novels had sold more than a million copies.520

Similar to the publishing houses whose titles they read, discuss and review, these

individuals and institutions are participants in the activity of defining a literary canon.

And when it comes to defining literary canons,

the traditional constructors of canons are the universities, and thisremains the case, despite what you might have heard about literary theoryand ‘decanonisation’. Few people outside academe have the sort ofinstitutional clout and access to research funds required to bring

518Per Henningsgaard, ‘Media Neglects Its Responsibilities to Oz Lit’, Australian Author 39, no. 1 (Apr.2007): 16.519Susannah Bowen and Steve Carey, ‘The Bloom Report’, Bookseller+Publisher, September 2006, 21.

520Juliet Flesch, From Australia with Love: A History of Modern Australian Popular Romance Novels

(Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2004), 9.

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particular writers to notice and facilitate serious debate about their works.... Also at work is the Australia Council, which funds writers directly,keeping mainly the established old guard of local writing in the money,with a dash of token youth bias and state-sponsored ethnic egalitarianism.Somewhere in between are the journals and broadsheet dailies.521

Davis’s mode of expression is undoubtedly partisan, but this should not detract from the

sound basis of his argument. In other words, the aforementioned individuals and

institutions—academics, the Australia Council, journals, and so-called ‘broadsheet’

newspapers—are all the most potent activists of ‘literary’ writing. Davis merely

elaborates on this point more frequently than others: ‘Literary journals such as ABR and

Meanjin and the books pages of broadsheet newspapers have set themselves up as

nostalgic guardians of a (mid-list) literary culture .... Literary culture is supported, too,

by the academic formations that continue to study it.’522 It is notable that the library at

The University of Western Australia, for example, has copies of nearly every title

published in the first half of Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s history, while there are many

more titles published in the latter half of the Press’s history that are missing from the

library’s catalogue—mostly in the areas of children’s literature, cookbooks, gardening

and ‘lifestyle’ books, genre fiction, and so forth.

Most reasonable people would also agree that ‘talent may or may not be a

naturally occurring thing, but reputations are no more “natural” than eating with a knife

and fork. They are to do with accumulated cultural capital and commercial power, and

building them requires a lot of careful work by the writers and their advocates.’523 So

for the simple reason that Fremantle Arts Centre Press does not have the finances to

purchase its publicity, therefore making the aforementioned individuals and institutions

and their attendant free publicity invaluable, the distinction between ‘popular’ and

521Mark Davis, Gangland: Cultural Elites and the New Generationalism (St. Leonards: Allen & Unwin,1997), 118.522Mark Davis, ‘Decline’, 103.523Mark Davis, Gangland, 117–18.

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‘literary’ publishing is important and useful in this discussion of the production of a

regional literature.

Furthermore, most ‘popular’ books are rarely thought to possess any cultural

value that is identifiable as specific to a region; this includes the majority of cookbooks,

gardening books and genre fiction published by Fremantle Arts Centre Press, as well as

a significant proportion of its young adult and children’s literature. In describing the

community of individuals responsible for making the sort of assessment of cultural

value mentioned here, it is perhaps best to summarise a relevant passage from Chapter 3

of this thesis: Regional literature is written by those individuals located outside the

cultural centres and is judged to be regional by members of that same community, just

as other minority literatures are written and appraised by those individuals in their

respective minority group. There are many reasons why this community of individuals

might not ascribe any cultural value that is identifiable as specific to a region to the sorts

of ‘popular’ books mentioned above, but at least one of their reasons would likely be

related to the fact that these books do not regularly participate in the forms of free

publicity named above.

Books that engage with the aforementioned individuals and institutions—by

being reviewed in newspapers and journals, chosen as set texts for secondary- and

tertiary-level courses, and winning literary prizes—take on a life outside the bookstore.

At a time when titles that are not selling sufficient quantities disappear from bookstore

shelves in four to six weeks as part of increasingly rapid turnover cycles, books whose

publishers cannot afford expensive advertising and promotional campaigns must engage

with these individuals and institutions in order to have any hope of persisting beyond

this time. It is also the case that the individuals and institutions mentioned above are

often responsible for introducing not just individual titles to the public consciousness,

but the author as a public figure. As part of this public profile, the author’s

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identification or association with a particular region is oftentimes a strong trigger for

people to say, ‘This author’s works all have a cultural value that is identifiable as

specific to the region.’ Other factors that can inspire this same response include the use

of an identifiable regional setting in the text; literary titles are more likely to make use

of such a technique than, for example, genre or adolescent fiction, thereby increasing

their cultural value for residents in the region responsible for making such judgements.

In the first half of Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s history, it was able to find

‘niches in the market’—Coffey’s prescription for publishing success, and an ideal for

small, independent publishing houses (a category that includes almost all regional

publishers) upon which most informed observers of the publishing industry would

agree. It did so largely through its unique emphasis on Western Australia and its

commitment to ‘literary’ writing. As the Press’s increasing concern for the bottom line

in the early to mid-1990s gave rise to both the emergence of a new attitude to the

processes of canon formation, and the increasingly frequent publication of books

specifically designed to appeal to a ‘popular’ audience, the Press lost its ability to find

these same niches. For this reason, the distinction between ‘popular’ and ‘literary’

publishing is useful in understanding the Press’s history; publishing ‘literary’ writing

was one means by which Fremantle Arts Centre Press found a niche for its publishing

activities in the first half of its history, but the Press’s later focus on ‘popular’ publishing

came at the expense of these ‘literary’ publishing traditions, and so this niche was

relegated to the sidelines. The likelihood of titles published by Fremantle Arts Centre

Press being understood as ‘regional literature’ is relevant for similar reasons—in its

early history, the ‘Western Australian-ness’ of the Press, its writers and the titles it

published constituted a significant part of its appeal.

Clearly, in its search for more reliable sources of income in the form of ‘popular’

titles, Fremantle Arts Centre Press sacrificed many of the qualities that made it

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distinctive in the first half of its history. In fact, an assessment of the Press’s activities

conducted in 2001 noted that the Press had lost sight of one of its stated objectives: ‘To

identify, nurture and develop writing talent within the state to a standard necessary for

successful publication.’524 The author of this review observed that, in the past, the Press

had been consistently acclaimed for its role in nurturing new writing talent, and yet

concluded, ‘it is my opinion that this important role within FACP is being eroded’ and

that ‘there are few of those opportunities to take genuine risks by investing in new

writers that they have been renowned for over decades’.525 And since even if the Press

did discover the next Bryce Courtenay or Stephen King, it would undoubtedly soon lose

him or her to a publishing house that could provide a larger advance, the Press needs to

concentrate on alternative models for success. Perhaps Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s

early history—and instructive successes from the latter half of its history—might even

function as that model.

As the remainder of this section of the thesis canvasses some of the highlights of

this latter period, it is important to bear in mind what could perhaps be best described as

the third and final feature of Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s increased concern for

financial viability. In addition to the emergence of a new attitude to the processes of

canon formation, and the increasingly frequent publication of books specifically

designed to appeal to a ‘popular’ audience, the Press’s increased concern for the bottom

line in the period from the early to mid-1990s onwards, caused the Press to continue

publishing in many of the niches that had defined its early history. As was mentioned

above, by the time the Press celebrated its tenth anniversary in 1986, it had published

nearly 100 titles, and there were already many well-established trends in its publishing

programme. Among the trends mentioned (both up-and-coming and well-established)

were the publication of ‘literary’ novels, short stories and poetry; photography books

524White, ‘Independent Evaluation’, 15.525Ibid.

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featuring Western Australian locations; art books; local history, including both social

and individual histories, as well as natural history; scholarly books; and writing on

Indigenous issues (by both white and Aboriginal writers). In the period from the early

to mid-1990s onwards, Fremantle Arts Centre Press continued to publish in almost all of

these areas, even as the energy it could devote to any given area was diminished by the

demands of its ‘popular’ publishing programme.

This might sound like a good thing—that the Press continued to publish poetry

and Aboriginal writing, for example, in a period defined by its increasing concern for

the bottom line—but the problem resides less in what the Press did publish, and more so

in what it did not publish. In short, the Press did not break new ground with the books it

published in this period. Many of the trends noted from Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s

first ten years represented new developments in the Australian publishing industry at the

time the Press started publishing them, but they have since entered the mainstream. To

use short story publishing as an example:

Along with books of stories by Peter Cowan, T. A. G. Hungerford, andlater, younger writers such as Joan London and Gail Jones, FremantleArts Centre Press contributed strongly, as did the University ofQueensland Press, to an Australia-wide revival of short fictionpublishing. Jolley was a beneficiary, and a major contributor to thisdevelopment.526

Short stories, of course, experienced ‘an Australia-wide revival’ in the 1980s, only to

almost totally disappear again from the publishing programme of nearly every major

Australian publisher, including Fremantle Arts Centre Press. Since 1996, the Press has

published only five collections of short stories, and three of these were published in

1997. In this example, Fremantle Arts Centre Press is clearly responding to perceived

market demand, and like most publishers, it does not see a demand for short story

collections. Whether or not this impression is correct, it is worth noting that in its early

526Bruce Bennett, Australian Short Fiction: A History (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2002),214.

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history—as the above excerpt testifies—the Press was responsible for creating this sort

of demand, rather than simply responding to the ‘common knowledge’ of the market

that every publisher seems to share.

It is also instructive to note that, in 1997, when Fremantle Arts Centre Press

experienced its last burst of short story publishing, among the titles it released were the

second short story collection by Gail Jones, Fetish Lives, and the first book by Deborah

Robertson, Proudflesh. It has already been mentioned that Jones has achieved a

considerable reputation as a writer both in Australia and overseas, and that she has

produced her most acclaimed, highest selling titles since leaving Fremantle Arts Centre

Press and signing book deals with several different multinational publishers.

Nonetheless, she published two highly acclaimed and award-winning books with the

Press before departing its ranks. Robertson, on the other hand, published only

Proudflesh, which was highly acclaimed but did not win nearly as many awards as

Jones’s collections, before Pan Macmillan released her novel Careless in 2006.

Robertson’s novel was subsequently longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin

Literary Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction, and shortlisted for the South East Asia

and South Pacific Region Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book and the Miles

Franklin Literary Award, among others. While Careless did not win many prizes, it

clearly established Robertson as an important Australian writer; in fact, she is arguably

the last truly ‘big name’ to be introduced by Fremantle Arts Centre Press—and her only

book with the Press was published more than ten years ago.

In contrast to the sharp decline in the publication of short story collections at

Fremantle Arts Centre Press from the mid-1990s onwards, the publication of books of

poetry and novels have continued to occupy roughly the same percentage of the Press’s

annual publishing programme (see Table 3).

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Table 3: Number of Titles (Excluding Anthologies) Published by Fremantle Arts

Centre Press by Genre

Year Poetry Short Fiction Novel Total # of Titles Published

1976 1 1 0 4

1977 2 2 0 5

1978 1 1 0 5

1979 1 3 0 10

1980 4 0 1 10

1981 1 1 1 10

1982 2 1 1 11

1983 2 2 0 11

1984 3 3 1 11

1985 3 0 2 9

1986 2 1 1 12

1987 3 2* 0 11

1988 1 1 2 13

1989 2 2* 1 15

1990 3* 3 0 20

1991 4 2 2 17

1992 2 1 1 22

1993 5 1 3 33

1994 3 1 2 27

1995 4 1 3 28

1996 4 0 2 35

1997 5 3 2 33

1998 2 1 3 25

1999 5 0 5 30

2000 5* 0 5 26

2001 4 0 3 27

2002 4 1 5 29

2003 3 0 3 36

2004 2 0 3 33

*Brian Dibble’s Analogues (1987), Vasso Kalamaras’s The Same Light (1989), Griffith Watkins’s God inthe Afternoon (1990, ed. Peter Jeffery), and Dorothy Hewett and John Kinsella’s Wheatlands (2000),contain examples of the writers’ work in the genres of both Poetry and Short Fiction. Analogues and TheSame Light have been classified as Short Fiction for the purposes of Table 3, since the majority of the

material contained in these two titles fit this designation; God in the Afternoon and Wheatlands have beenclassified as Poetry for similar reasons.

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2005 3 0 1 34

2006 2 0 3 23

In the period from 1990 until 2006, Fremantle Arts Centre Press published the ninth-

highest number of Australian literary fiction titles by any publishing house.527

Nonetheless, it is worth remembering that ‘the top six publishers from 1990 to 2006

have averaged ten titles per year (ranging from Pan Macmillan’s 12 to UQP’s six); the

next ten average fewer than two’.528 Among the more noteworthy novels published after

the mid-1990s at Fremantle Arts Centre Press are Wayne Ashton’s Under a Tin-Grey

Sari (2002) and Craig Silvey’s Rhubarb (2004). Both are ‘literary’ fiction and yet were

also huge sales successes for the Press; sales of Rhubarb saw a boost after it was

selected for the 2005 Perth International Arts Festival’s inaugural ‘One Book’ project, a

series of events simulating a state-wide book club.

Poetry titles are almost never expected to achieve the same levels of commercial

success as novels, and yet they are expected to attract prestige to their publisher. And

while Fremantle Arts Centre Press continued in the period from the early to mid-1990s

onwards to publish works by nationally and internationally acclaimed poets such as

John Kinsella, Philip Salom, Dennis Haskell, Tracy Ryan, John Mateer, and Dorothy

Hewett, it has failed to introduce comparable new talent. All of the aforementioned

writers had their first books of poetry published prior to 1995; Mark Reid (Parochial

[2000] and A Difficult Faith [2006]) and Graeme Miles (Phosphorescence [2006]) are

just about the only possible successors to their legacy.

While the Press continued to publish in areas such as photography and art in the

period from the early to mid-1990s onwards, the majority of these titles were now

527David Carter, ‘Boom, Bust or Business as Usual?: Literary Fiction Publishing’, in Making Books:

Contemporary Australian Publishing, ed. David Carter and Anne Galligan (St. Lucia: University of

Queensland Press, 2007), 240.528Ibid., 242.

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designed as ‘gift’ or ‘coffee table’ books. This is not a criticism, as it generally means

the production value of these titles was improved. Whereas many of Fremantle Arts

Centre Press’s early photography and art books had the appearance of reference works,

later publications in these areas, such as Down to Earth: Australian Landscapes

(published in 1999, with photography by Richard Woldendorp and an introductory essay

by Tim Winton) and Perth (published in 2005, with photography by Frances Andrijich,

a foreword by Robert Drewe and text by Jeff Bell), have been produced with as much

care and attention to detail as their creators have clearly lavished on the content. One

consequence of this development is that many of the Press’s photography and art books

are published only in hardcover editions, in order to cover the high costs associated with

their production, as well as to meet the expectations of the ‘gift’ or ‘coffee table’ book

genre.

Some of Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s history publications, including social,

individual and natural histories, subscribed to a similar logic in the period from the early

to mid-1990s onwards. Many of these titles, including Beyond the Lattice: Broome’s

Early Years (published in 2003, and combining historical photography with a history of

the place written by Susan Sickert), The Last Anzacs: Lest We Forget (published in

2003, also combining historical photography with text by Tony Stephens and additional

photography by Steven Siewert), and Soul of the Desert (published in 2005, with

botanical illustrations by Philippa Nikulinsky and text by Stephen D. Hopper), have the

appearance of ‘gift’ or ‘coffee table’ books. Nonetheless, it would seem the Press

believes there is a smaller readership for these books than for the aforementioned

photography and art books, as history titles are rarely published in hardback.

Of course, Fremantle Arts Centre Press also continued in this period to publish a

list of history titles that could not be described as ‘gift’ or ‘coffee table’ books, but

rather draw substantially on the Press’s early commitments to social history and its

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innovative but short-lived Community Publishing Project. Books like Daphne Street by

Geoffrey Bolton (1997), False Economy by William J. Lines (1998), and Tom and Jack:

A Frontier Story by Geraldine Byrne (2003), continue the tradition at the Press of

publishing books that are seen as making a valuable contribution to the understanding of

Western Australian history, even if these titles are unlikely to attract a substantial

readership. Indeed, it is Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s commitment to this very notion

that there is a ‘strong cultural, literary, social, or political value’ to certain texts—

examples can be drawn from nearly every genre in which Fremantle Arts Centre Press

publishes, though poetry and history perhaps provide the greatest number—which has

driven the Press in the latter half of its history to ‘have some more commercial books to

support the less commercial’.529

Another area of the Press’s publishing programme in which this notion of ‘value’

continues to exert a strong influence, is the area of scholarly publishing. In contrast to

many of the genres discussed above, scholarly publishing at Fremantle Arts Centre

Press underwent its most innovative developments in the period after the early to

mid-1990s. In fact, very little changed in the Press’s approach to scholarly publishing

from its earliest forays into the genre, such as Lords of Death: A People, a Place, a

Legend (1982) and the more memorable A City and Its Setting (1986), until October

2002, when a new imprint dedicated to scholarly publishing was launched. Curtin

University Books, as the imprint was known, resulted from a partnership between

Curtin University of Technology and Fremantle Arts Centre Press. Curtin University

was interested in producing ‘new ideas-based titles ... written for a broader

readership’,530 but ‘the establishment of a new and separate publishing house [was]

beyond Curtin’s financial capacity’.531 In return for its cooperation, Fremantle Arts

529Brian Raymond Coffey, interview by King, 39, 37.530Rod Moran, ‘Curtin Books Venture Begins’, West Australian, 9 Oct. 2002, quoting Tom Stannage.531Moran, ‘Curtin Books’.

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Centre Press received from Curtin University an annual injection of funds sufficient to

pay the salary of one new, full-time staff member.

The first book published under the Curtin University Books imprint was

Verandah Music in 2003, a collection of interviews, historical photographs and two

compact discs containing Australian folk music, edited by Graham Seal and Rob Willis.

While an interesting publication, this approximately A4-sized book was a poor indicator

of what lay ahead for Curtin University Books, both in terms of its design and content.

Subsequent Curtin University Books titles had the appearance of more traditional trade

paperbacks, and their content was typically a single work of extended prose, rather than

the ‘collection’ that structured Verandah Music. A couple of these later publications

succeeded in reaching that ‘broader readership’ that Curtin University’s Executive Dean

of Humanities, Professor Tom Stannage, hoped they would reach; in particular, What,

No Baby? by Leslie Cannold, a book that addresses Australia’s falling fertility rate and

the various reasons women remain childless, had an impact outside the walls of the

academy amidst a flurry of positive newspaper reviews and feature articles. The

success of What, No Baby? was a case of a timely issue, written about in an accessible

(read: non-academic) style, which was then well-packaged by its publisher.

Other titles in the Curtin University Books imprint, such as The Gates of

Memory: Australian People’s Experiences and Memories of Loss and the Great War

(2004) by Tanja Luckins and Babes in the Bush: The Making of an Australian Image

(2005) by Kim Torney, are reminiscent of the doctoral dissertations from which they are

the offspring. They also share the quality of being perhaps too specific in their subject

matter to have any realistic chance of attracting a ‘broader readership’. In contrast,

titles such as From Australia with Love: A History of Modern Australian Popular

Romance Novels (2004) by Juliet Flesch and City Bushman: Henry Lawson and the

Australian Imagination (2004) by Christopher Lee, seem to strike a balance between the

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demands of the scholarly form and the expectations of a ‘broader readership’. At the

very least, it must be acknowledged that increasing pressure to appeal to a ‘popular’

readership has had perhaps its most positive effect on scholarly publishing and the

Curtin University Books imprint at Fremantle Arts Centre Press. Very few scholarly

books will ever reach a truly ‘popular’ audience, therefore denying their publisher any

chance of a significant financial reward; yet, Fremantle Arts Centre Press and its Curtin

University Books imprint not only improved its chances of at least breaking even on

scholarly publications it deems culturally valuable, but the very same innovations also

improved the quality of these titles.

That the imprint folded in May 2006 after publishing only 12 titles should not be

seen as a judgement on Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s management of individual titles

or the imprint as a whole. Rather, the reason the Curtin University Books imprint was

‘wound up’ was that ‘Curtin University was not able to continue its commitment to the

program’.532

The final publishing niche that defined Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s early

history, and in which the Press has continued to publish, is the area of Indigenous issues

as written about by both white and Aboriginal writers. Notable titles in this area include

Those Who Remain Will Always Remember: An Anthology of Aboriginal Writing (2000)

edited by Anne Brewster, Angeline O’Neill and Rosemary van den Berg, Broken Circles

(2000) by Anna Haebich, Under a Bilari Tree I Born (2002) by Alice Bilari Smith with

Anna Vitenbergs and Loreen Brehaut, Shadow Lines (2003) by Stephen Kinnane, and

Kayang & Me (2005) by Kim Scott and Hazel Brown. Similar to the publishing history

of short stories at Fremantle Arts Centre Press, Aboriginal writing represented a

relatively new development in the Australian publishing industry at the time the Press

started publishing in this area. Also, through the publication of Morgan’s My Place, the

532Brian Raymond Coffey, interview by King, 43.

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Press was largely responsible for popularising the genre of Indigenous autobiography.

Kim Scott later broke new ground in Indigenous fiction, making him the first

Indigenous writer to win the Miles Franklin Literary Award. While some successes

have resulted from Fremantle Arts Centre Press continuing in the latter half of its

history to publish in many of the same niches that defined its early history, including

Indigenous issues, it is nonetheless a regrettable development that this seems to have

come at the expense of opening up new areas for exploration.

The increasingly frequent publication of books specifically designed to appeal to

a ‘popular’ audience is a reaction to concerns at the Press that continuing in the latter

half of its history to publish in many of the same niches that defined its early history is

not a sustainable approach to publishing over the long term. Publishers must remain

flexible and innovative in order to cope with the changing demands of the marketplace

and, perhaps even more importantly, to anticipate what might appeal to the marketplace

of the future. Earlier discussion of books designed to appeal to a ‘popular’ audience

focussed mainly on ‘lifestyle’ titles such as cookbooks and gardening books. The

majority of titles of this type are commissioned by the Press; in other words, the Press

either has an idea for a book they want to see written, and they search out an author for

that book, or perhaps an individual approaches the Press with an idea for a book, and

the Press either commissions them or someone else to write that book. Either way, the

issue of anticipating what might appeal to future readers is particularly relevant, since

the Press is taking a risk by offering editorial support and perhaps also money before

there is even a manuscript, or perhaps only a short excerpt from a manuscript, under

consideration. When commissioning a book, ‘long-term relationships between the

publisher and the author often provide a foundation for the development of new

titles’.533

533Louise Poland, ‘Independent Australian Publishers and the Acquisition of Books’, Journal ofAustralian Studies 63 (1999): 113.

264

However, when it comes to attracting new writers—both of the sort that need

commissioning, and those that come with a complete manuscript in hand—then the

well-established niches in a publisher’s programme are eminently useful. One of the

most common (and sensible) pieces of advice given to writers aspiring to have their

work published, is to look for titles similar to their own and approach the publishers of

those titles. Thus, an aspiring writer with a poetry manuscript, or a work of social or

natural history that is concerned with a Western Australian topic, might approach

Fremantle Press before any other publishing house. In this instance, since very few

other publishers are publishing in these areas, the writer sees Fremantle Press as a likely

home for the manuscript. As was noted earlier, in order to remain competitive with the

larger, mostly multinational publishing houses, small, independent publishers—but

especially a regional publisher like Fremantle Press—must publish titles that are either

of demonstrably higher quality or that are distinctive. Poetry and Western Australian

history publishing are examples of Fremantle Press ensuring its competitiveness by

drawing on the strength of both of these approaches, but mostly because they are doing

something different from other publishing houses.

In the early to mid-1990s, however, when Fremantle Arts Centre Press began

pouring its energies into ‘lifestyle’ titles and other books designed to appeal to a

‘popular’ audience, it became impossible to differentiate a significant proportion of its

publishing programme from that of any number of larger, multinational publishing

houses. By choosing to work in areas that other publishing houses with deeper pockets

and larger marketing departments were already working, the Press practically ensured

the only manuscripts they received in these areas would have earlier been rejected from

these same publishers. Quite simply, if a writer believes their manuscript stands a good

chance—based on what is currently being published—of being accepted at a larger

publishing house, it is unlikely they will submit that manuscript to Fremantle Press.

265

Fremantle Press still receives approximately 500 unsolicited manuscripts in a year, and

while it is impossible to ascertain what percentage of these were earlier rejected by

another publisher, a significant proportion of them almost certainly were.534 If this

proportion has not changed in the life of the Press, then the reasoning behind these

initial rejections almost certainly has—from manuscripts being rejected by

multinational publishers by virtue of not publishing in that area, to rejected because the

manuscript is not up to the standard of publications in that area.

Fremantle Press’s decision to publish in areas in which it is unlikely to ever be

perceived as one of the most likely or desirable homes for a manuscript, means there is

little chance titles published in these areas will be the very best available on any given

subject. (Of course, sometimes the Press will be an author’s first port of call simply

because he or she wants to deal with a local publishing house, but these are the

exceptions that prove the rule.) For example, All the Troubles: Terrorism, War and the

World After 9/11 (2004) by Simon Adams, The Irreverent Commonwealth Games (2006)

by Ross Solly, and Caravanserai: Journey Among Australian Muslims (2003) by Hanifa

Deen, are all intended to engage with an Australian readership’s interest in specific

current affairs. Of course, if the issues are of great enough interest, many more books

concerned with the same topics will be published by publishing houses that can afford

better marketing and distribution, thereby overtaking Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s

efforts. Furthermore, since these sorts of titles have a notoriously short shelf life—only

as long as the ‘current affair’ remains current—even a title that is better written or more

engaging than its competitors can fail to attract an audience without a significant

marketing push, because the issue is no longer timely by the time a critical mass has

read the book and can recommend it to future readers. There is also the matter of a

534Heiss, 59.

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publishing house attracting the very best talent, and better books on all of these subjects

have been published by other Australian publishers.

In fact, the version of Caravanserai: Journey Among Australian Muslims

published by Fremantle Arts Centre Press is a revised edition based on a 1995

publication by the same name from Allen & Unwin. Clearly, Allen & Unwin did not

think enough of the book or its profit-making potential to publish a new edition.

Publishers often disagree on matters such as this, but in the case of Caravanserai it is

hard to understand why Fremantle Arts Centre Press went ahead with a revised edition;

it could hardly be expected to compete with a brand-new title on the subject of Islam

and Australia, of which there were many in the period after the 11 September 2001

attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C.

The collection of genres and subject matter for which Fremantle Press is

currently thought of as one of the most likely or desirable homes has in the latter half of

its history become increasingly marginal—poetry, Western Australian history,

Aboriginal issues, and so forth. However, the majority of the Press’s publishing

programme—including children’s and young adult books, ‘lifestyle’ titles, books on

current affairs—is in direct competition with the output of the major, multinational

publishing houses. Clearly, this is not a model for success for a regional publishing

house. Instead, it is instructive to look to Fremantle Arts Centre Press’s early history, in

which the Press established a reputation for producing innovative and important work,

in addition to enjoying several of its greatest commercial successes. The genres and

subject matter from which these early successes emerged were the almost exclusive

providence of Fremantle Arts Centre Press and a small number of mostly independent

publishers. The Press’s Community Publishing Project, for example, was inspired by

Coffey’s observation that British publishers such as the small, independent Centreprise

were only just ‘starting to look at what has now become known as “life stories” ...

267

stories that were away from the centre of what was then considered important and

valuable’.535 The successful publication of writers like Elizabeth Jolley, Sally Morgan

and A. B. Facey, helped popularise genres such as Australian literary fiction (and short

stories, in particular), women’s writing, books by Aboriginal writers and on Indigenous

issues, and life writing. Consequently, the formerly open field in which these genres

and subject matter are situated has become crowded.

Fremantle Press has failed to open up any comparable new areas of publication

in the latter half of its history. Instead, the Press has hung its hopes of financial security

on genres and subject matter in which it will always be at a disadvantage. These

developments have had the effect of reducing the Press’s cachet amongst individuals

whose business it is to notice these sorts of things—typically, the most knowledgeable

and often influential members of the literary establishment. Devoting its energies to

‘lifestyle’ titles and other forms of ‘popular’ writing, as well as the decline in innovative

publishing at the Press in the period from the early to mid-1990s onwards, has

negatively impacted on the Press’s reputation. A publishing house’s reputation is

important, because a good reputation can ensure the publisher attracts first-rate writers

and the attention of the literary establishment; the latter is often the necessary

predecessor to newspaper reviews, Australia Council funding, literary prizes, writers’

festival appearances, and so forth. Coffey is aware of this fact:

Because opinion-makers judge prizes and even if you don’t win, if youare attempting to draw attention to your list and key people are readingfor this poetry prize, or that fiction or history prize, then they’re seeingyour books regularly. And they talk to other people. And then when youwin one every now and then, it helps the editors of the literary pages ofjournals and newspapers, dailies, weeklies to start looking more closelyat your titles.536

In April 2001, Terri-ann White was commissioned by ArtsWA to conduct an

‘evaluation of the impact of the Review into the Investment of Government in the

535Brian Raymond Coffey, interview by King, 31–32.536Ibid., 52.

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Publishing of Literary Works dated June 1995 on the Fremantle Arts Centre Press’ and

to ‘provide recommendations for the future support and development of the Fremantle

Arts Centre Press’.537 White noted in her report, submitted in August 2001, that ‘there is

much more that could be done that could build upon the good name and track record of

FACP to consolidate their place in the market’.538 Qualifying this statement, she writes:

I am not suggesting here that FACP should participate fully in thecommercial field of publishing marketing—they cannot is the realisticresponse to that idea. An astute, and modest, campaign that is ongoing,can be built upon and involves as its outcomes attention to individualtitles and the branding of FACP as Australia’s finest small publisherwould be both timely and effective.539

Fremantle Arts Centre Press adopted ‘Australia’s finest small publisher’ as its byline in

2001, prior to the submission of the White report. White’s suggestion that the Press

brand itself is closely related to the concept of reputation discussed above.

The idea of a publishing house marketing itself as a brand is not new. The

‘publishing house as brand’ concept is commonly envisaged as a supplement to—rather

than a wholesale replacement of—the brand that is often already associated with the

author (in other words, the ‘author as celebrity’). Perhaps the most notorious recent

airing of this concept was at the hands of HarperCollins in 2005, when it announced its

intention to make the company as identifiable as the big-name writers it publishes; the

initiative was subject to considerable scepticism at the time, and nothing seems to have

come of it.540 A common criticism is that the majority of people do not walk into a

bookstore looking for a Penguin novel or the most recent Allen & Unwin title—‘unlike

with other manufactured consumer goods, branding rarely works in publishing, since

few readers buy a book based on familiarity with or regard for a publisher’.541 Rather,

537White, ‘Independent Evaluation’, 7.538Ibid., 20.539Ibid.540Edward Wyatt, ‘Michael Crichton? He’s Just the Author’, New York Times, 6 Feb. 2005.541Laura J. Miller, Reluctant Capitalists: Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 2006), 187.

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when they are not just browsing, readers are typically looking for a specific title or

perhaps a specific author. What this line of argument misses, however, is the benefit to

be gained from branding that appeals to the literary establishment, those active members

of the aforementioned field of cultural production. These individuals, by and large, do

care about the publisher of a given title, and Fremantle Press’s stock among such

individuals has been slipping since the early to mid-1990s. This is evidenced to some

extent by a decline (as a percentage of titles published) in the number of high-profile,

national literary awards for which Fremantle Press books are shortlisted. Furthermore,

a substantial number of individuals who could be classed as belonging to the literary

establishment (including writers, publishers, literary scholars, and so forth) have

confided to me their bewilderment and dismay about the change of direction at

Fremantle Press, though none of these individuals would ascribe their name to this

opinion.

White’s 2001 report effectively reversed the effects of the earlier report,

submitted to ArtsWA in 1995, by Taylor. Among the more significant proposals was

‘that additional support is provided to FACP in its general operating grant to assist in the

establishment and appointment of the position of Associate Publisher’, as well as ‘to

assist in the development of its marketing profile’.542 White felt that an increase in the

Press’s general operating grant was advisable, in part because the reduction of this grant

following Taylor’s ‘Review’ had a ‘detrimental effect on the business operations of the

Press’.543 Furthermore, Taylor had proposed that ‘savings accruing from this reduction

in subsidy ... be kept within the Literature budget and redirected so as to establish,

among other initiatives, a growing Earnback pool available to eligible literary

publishers, of which FACP be one’, and White noted that ‘there is no evidence to show

542White, ‘Independent Evaluation’, 26.543Ibid., 6.

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that there has been any growth in additional publishing activity in the State since

1996’.544 Clearly, White felt Fremantle Arts Centre Press was performing admirably in

its role as a regional publisher and deserved further government support.

Yet, as the Press’s reputation suffers in the minds of the literary establishment as

a result of its increased attention to the bottom line, it must also suffer in the minds of

bureaucrats. While White saw the Western Australian Government’s support of

Fremantle Arts Centre Press as ‘a direct investment into the cultural work of its

peoples’, there is almost surely a measure of self-interest involved in this decision.545

The Press’s constitution lists five ‘objects for which Fremantle Arts Centre Press is

established’, and one of these states that the Press is meant ‘to facilitate the publication

of the work of talented West Australian writers, artists and poets so as to encourage in

Western Australia the production of work of literary and/or artistic merit’; this ‘object’

closely resembles White’s understanding of the reasons for the Western Australian

Government’s support of Fremantle Arts Centre Press. However, another ‘object’ states

that the Press is meant ‘to encourage the growth of the appreciation and publication of

works of literary and/or artistic merit produced by West Australian writers, artists and

poets’ (emphasis mine).546 This mandate that the Press is meant ‘to encourage the

growth of the appreciation’ of Western Australian writers is exactly the sort of self-

interested reasoning mentioned earlier. In other words, the Press is meant to generate

positive publicity for the state’s writers and, by inference, the state more generally

including its government.

The changes that have been enacted at Fremantle Press since the early to

mid-1990s do not, however, work in the interests of the Western Australian

Government. The Press’s push into ‘popular’ writing has significantly reduced the

544Ibid.545Ibid., 25.546Fremantle Arts Centre Press, ‘Fremantle Arts Centre Press Constitution and Rules’, 2.

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number of titles it publishes possessing cultural value that is identifiable as specific to a

region; instead, ‘popular’ books and writers are commonly affiliated with the cultural

centre, if only because this is the default position. ‘Popular’ books are not as often

reviewed in the media, nor do their authors win literary prizes (oftentimes resulting in

even more media coverage), thereby reducing the free publicity afforded the Western

Australian Government through its support of Fremantle Press. In fact, the changes

enacted in the latter half of Fremantle Press’s history seemingly satisfy no one: they do

not serve the government that supports the publishing house; they are not enjoyed by

the publisher for their own sake, as testified by his comments about the Press’s ‘popular’

publishing programme ‘subsidis[ing] some of the more uneconomic things we do’, such

as publishing poetry and literary fiction, activities to which he clearly ascribes greater

value; and they do not seem to have ensured the Press’s financial security, which was

their original and overriding intention.

In May 2006, The West Australian reported that although Fremantle Arts Centre

Press’s ‘sales for the past quarter have been the strongest for some time, the previous

two years have seen a slump of 16 per cent’, and the Press expected to post a loss for the

financial year.547 Coffey attributed the Press’s difficulties to a diminished market for

literary fiction and non-fiction; ‘trade liberalisation measures introduced in the book

trade by the federal government’ that have resulted in ‘thirty percent of the sales of

small publishers ... lost to large publishers within the past decade’; an increase in

production costs in the past five years while income from book sales remained even;

and, finally, ‘the addition [in 2000] of the 10% GST [Goods and Services Tax] to the

cost of books’.548

Less than a year later, the Western Australian Government gave the Press a one-

off grant of $300,000, an interest-free loan in the amount of $265,000, and $255,692 in

547Rod Moran, ‘Fremantle Publisher’s Financial Books Run into the Red’, West Australian, 30 May 2006.548Brian Raymond Coffey, interview by King, 40–41.

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core funding for 2007, after the Press had trouble paying its creditors, including printers

and authors. The West Australian reported that ‘the funding is conditional on upgraded

financial reporting and the preparation of a sound business plan’.549 It later emerged that

‘part of the restructure was a search for a chief executive with experience in business

administration’.550 Mary Anne Paton, who has been CEO of other organisations, started

work with the publisher in July 2007.

That same month, Fremantle Arts Centre Press changed its name to Fremantle

Press. The Press has long had its premises outside the Fremantle Arts Centre—from

1990–99 in South Fremantle, and then from 1999 onwards in Quarry Street, North

Fremantle—so perhaps the name change was overdue. The name change was part of a

restructuring process mandated by the Western Australian Government, and Coffey

maintains that it is to be accompanied by a change of direction in the Press’s publishing

programme and a renewed ‘focus on its core business, at the literary end of the

publishing spectrum, where it had been most successful’.551 He said that because the

Press’s funding had been cut at the same time it was instructed to pursue a more

‘commercial’ publishing programme, ‘it really precluded us bringing in special

expertise in areas we were directed to publish in’, thereby losing the Press even more

money in the long run.552 Along with its change of name, Fremantle Press changed its

byline from ‘Australia’s finest small publisher’ to the more modest ‘fine independent

publishing’.

Furthermore, Coffey and Newman have recently begun to publicly discuss the

matter of succession planning—‘over the next five to ten years we’re likely to be

moving on, so we need to be thinking very seriously about succession, and that’s what

549Rod Moran, ‘Troubled Fremantle Press Given Grant, Loan in $565,000 Bailout’, West Australian, 13Mar. 2007.550Rod Moran, ‘New Name Comes Hot Off the Press’, West Australian, 16 July 2007.551Moran, ‘Troubled’.552Ibid., quoting Coffey.

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our Board is doing and what we are doing’—but it is unclear where that successor might

come from.553 Fremantle Press pays ‘the equivalent of seven or eight full-time wages’,

and even though ‘that involves a lot more than seven or eight people’, this is an

undeniably small pool that has, until recently, seen very limited potential for upward

mobility at the Press.554 Consequently, similar to the flow of Western Australian writing

talent—many of them given their start by Fremantle Press—to publishing houses

located in Melbourne and Sydney, there has been a flow of talented editors, designers,

and so forth, out of Western Australia. It may be that Fremantle Press needs to look east

to source replacements for Coffey and Newman, although this is a move that has the

potential to further endanger the production of a regional literature in Western Australia.

In an e-mail to Anita Heiss, author of Dhuuluu-Yala (To Talk Straight): Publishing

Indigenous Literature, Coffey writes of the publishing house that he has led for nearly

20 years:

It is part of our commitment since inception to encourage, support andpublish work by people who have had limited access to publication.Historically this has included women, and, for example, it continues tovarying degrees to include people from a non-English speakingbackground, and working class backgrounds.555

He adds, presumably to clarify the connection between his comment and Heiss’s

research, ‘certainly in this area we do consider Aboriginality as a criteria [sic], as one of

our particular concerns is to identify gaps in the record and disadvantage with respect to

the artform’.556 Of course, in addition to supporting and publishing work by Indigenous

people, women, ‘people from a non-English speaking background’, and the working

class, Fremantle Press has a mandate to privilege Western Australian material,

contributors and subject matter as part of its raison d’etre as a regional publisher.

553Brian Raymond Coffey, interview by King, 43.554Ibid., 50.555Heiss, 62, quoting Coffey.556Ibid.

274

Indeed, the Press was founded on the basis of an appreciation that Western Australian

writers belong to the category of ‘people who have had limited access to publication’

and ‘disadvantage with respect to the artform’. Delys Bird noted as much in the chapter

she wrote for the 2000 publication of The Cambridge Companion to Australian

Literature: ‘A contemporary interest in regions as locations of literary difference is

matched by regional identification arising from the shared socio-economic problem of

publishing from marginal locations.’557

From the outset, Fremantle Arts Centre Press adopted a defiantly regionalist

perspective in response to the limitations imposed by a dominant cultural centre that

resides elsewhere. In other words, it responded to the prospect of national exclusionism

favouring Sydney- and Melbourne-centric cultural production by establishing

regionalist ‘gatekeeping’ mechanisms of its own. From the early days, the Press

attempted to make a virtue and a defining feature of regionalism in the development of

its list, its profile and its role in national literary and intellectual culture. The promotion

of Western Australian writers as a readily identifiable quantity, gathered under the

masthead of a Western Australian publisher, increased the Press’s chances of penetrating

a national market.

In spite of its overtly regional policies and perspectives, Fremantle Press has had

a disproportionate impact on the national literary and cultural scene. It has published, in

just over 30 years in the industry, more than 400 titles, a number of which have changed

the way in which Australians and others have come to know and think about ‘Australia’.

Fremantle Press has been a demonstrably national player as a publisher, at least in the

sense of re-routing public consciousness and the ‘national imagination’. However, in

the latter half of its history, the Press has gone from being an active agent in attempting

to redefine cultural traffic, to struggling to penetrate the centre and present itself as a

557Delys Bird, ‘New Narrations: Contemporary Fiction’, in The Cambridge Companion to AustralianLiterature, ed. Elizabeth Webby (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 194.

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national player that just happens to be located on the far edge of the world—a nearly

impossible task given the odds stacked against them, including lack of access to the

gatekeeping mechanisms of cultural production and high distribution costs.

Considering the central role Fremantle Press played in the cultivation of a regional

literature in Australia, its current publishing practices raise questions about the future of

Australian literary regionalism.

III. Magabala Books

Established in 1987, Magabala Books refers to itself as ‘Australia’s oldest

independent Indigenous publishing house’.558 Many scholars of Aboriginal literature

concur with this assessment: ‘Another W.A. publisher is usually credited with being the

country’s first Indigenous publishing company. Magabala Books opened for business in

Broome in the remote Kimberley region of Western Australia in 1987.’559 However,

there remains some debate about what constitutes an ‘Indigenous publishing house’; the

definition of this term has changed shape and provoked contestation over the years. It is

worth noting that ‘there [are] no all-Black publishing houses in Australia’, in the sense

that ‘publishing houses that identified as Indigenous entities still tended to have

disproportionate non-Indigenous inhouse influence’.560

Nonetheless, the publication of Indigenous writing prior to 1987 was

undoubtedly a very different exercise to its publication following the establishment of

Magabala Books. For example,

as far as is known, the first Aboriginal writer to have a book published inAustralia was David Unaipon, whose Native Legends appeared inAdelaide in 1929. ... After David Unaipon, it was several decades beforethe next book by an Indigenous writer appeared. We Are Going, a

558Magabala Books, ‘Home’, in Magabala Books (accessed 6 Mar. 2008); available fromhttp://www.magabala.com.559Munro, ‘Case-study’, 153.560Heiss, 51.

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collection of poems by Kath Walker, later known as OodgerooNoonuccal, was published by Jacaranda Press in 1964.561

Both of these significant early titles by Indigenous writers were published by publishing

houses that did not have any special commitment to the publication of Indigenous

writing. The year after the publication of We Are Going, however, Aboriginal Studies

Press was established in Canberra ‘as the publishing arm of the Australian Institute of

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies’.562 Furthermore, in 1972, Institute of

Aboriginal Development (IAD) Press was established in Alice Springs as ‘the

publishing arm of the educational college, the Institute of Aboriginal Development’.563

In their early years, however, neither publishing house was exclusively devoted to

publishing works by Aboriginal creators, but rather also considered works by non-

Indigenous writers on Indigenous issues. Aboriginal Studies Press has maintained this

policy to the present day, which has likely contributed to its status as ‘Australia’s

leading publisher of works in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander studies’,564 while

IAD Press now publishes only work by Indigenous writers, ‘or else there is at least a

50% collaboration between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal writers’.565 IAD Press is

particularly well-known for its publication of language dictionaries, though like

Aboriginal Studies Press it has moved (in the period since the early 1990s) ‘to expand

beyond the academic market’, especially into the area of creative writing.566

Craig Munro notes in his ‘case-study’ of Indigenous writers that ‘it was not until

the 1980s that Aboriginal publishing began with the formation of Blackbooks, a Sydney

Aboriginal cooperative which later specialised in distribution’.567 Of course, what

Munro is referring to in this instance as ‘Aboriginal publishing’ is a publishing policy

561Munro, ‘Case-study’, 150–51.562Poland, ‘Enduring Record’, 84.563Heiss, 51.564Poland, ‘Enduring Record’, 93.565Heiss, 52.566Poland, ‘Enduring Record’, 93.567Munro, ‘Case-study’, 152.

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that specifies only works by Aboriginal writers will be considered for publication.

Blackbooks had this policy, but its existence as a publishing house was so short-lived

and, presumably, under-financed that it published only one title, Windradyne, a

Wiradjuri Koorie by Mary Coe, with paintings by Isabell Coe. Though the organisation

was established in 1982 by the Tranby Co-operative for Aborigines, this book was not

published until 1986, after which time Blackbooks abandoned publishing in favour of

its current role as the only book distributor and retail outlet owned and controlled by

Aboriginal people and specialising in books by and about Aboriginal people.568

Therefore, when Magabala Books was established in 1987, its publishing policy

was still quite radical:

We publish work by Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander or South SeaIslander creators, including authors, storytellers, illustrators and editors.Although we do consider collaborative works with non-Indigenousauthors, there must be at least a fifty per cent contribution orcollaboration with an Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander or South SeaIslander creator.569

Magabala Books and this policy were born of a desire to ‘provid[e] protection to

traditional storytellers and artists in matters of copyright and publication’,570 as well as

‘to record, promote and pass on Aboriginal traditions and cultures in book form’.571

These priorities were decided upon at a 1984 ‘festival of Indigenous song and dance at

Ngumpan, near Fitzroy Crossing in Western Australia’s north’, when ‘those attending

voted to establish the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre’.572 Wendy Albert,

an employee of the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture Centre, wrote the original

submission. The Centre provided an establishment grant of $287,000,573 while

568Poland, ‘Enduring Record’, 101.569Magabala Books, ‘Publishing Policy’, in Magabala Books (accessed 6 Mar. 2008); available fromhttp://www.magabala.com.570Magabala Books, ‘About Us’, in Magabala Books (accessed 6 Mar. 2008); available from

http://www.magabala.com.571Diana Giese, ‘Case-study: Magabala Books’, in Paper Empires: A History of the Book in Australia,1946–2005, ed. Craig Munro and Robyn Sheahan-Bright (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press,2006), 111.572Ibid.573Rosemary Rule, ‘Publishing in Broome’, Editions 1, no. 1 (Aug. 1989): 7.

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Magabala Books received a further grant from the Australian Bicentennial Authority’s

National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Program.574

The combination of these funds enabled the fledgling organisation to embark on

its first book publishing project. A young Aboriginal woman, Merrilee Lands, who was

working on the Dampierland Oral History Project, compiled materials gathered over the

course of this project to form Magabala Books’s first title, Mayi: Some Bush Fruits of

Dampierland (re-issued in 1997 as Mayi: Some Bush Fruits of the West Kimberley).

This small book, for which Lands also did the illustrations, contains traditional

Aboriginal knowledge pertaining to ‘bush tucker’ plants of the Dampierland region in

the West Kimberley. The copyright to the book is in Lands’s name, but the information

contained in the book is attributed to a group of Aboriginal elders representing five

different language groups; the book provides the names of bush fruits in each of these

five languages.

Lands soon after joined the staff at Magabala Books, which up until this point

had numbered only two (non-Indigenous) individuals, Robyn Slarke and Peter Bibby.

However, the publishing house has always operated with an Aboriginal Management

Committee composed of Indigenous people from the community; before joining the

Magabala Books staff, for example, Lands was a member of the original Aboriginal

Management Committee. Unlike Fremantle Press’s Board of Management, which

restricts itself to financial matters and does not interfere in editorial decisions, one of the

roles of the committee at Magabala Books is to advise the publishing house on editorial

matters. The Aboriginal Management Committee reviews ‘all incoming submissions ...

[and] has sole discretionary power to accept or reject manuscripts and to influence the

direction of commissioned projects’.575 Thus, the (largely non-Indigenous) editorial

staff must pitch any new titles they are interested in acquiring to the Aboriginal

574Heiss, 53.575Poland, ‘Independent’, 114.

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Management Committee, and this committee makes the final decision to acquire based

on a variety of factors, including the manuscript’s prospective contribution to Magabala

Books’s stated objectives.

In spite of differences in the roles of their respective management committees,

this balancing act—which Magabala Books captures in the sometimes conflicting

imperatives of two of its assessment criteria, ‘the quality and/or importance of the

manuscript’ and ‘the perceived market and sales potential’—is common to both

Magabala Books and Fremantle Press.576 The reason for this similarity is, of course, that

both publishing houses have a mandate capturing aspects of the business beyond

commercial imperatives. More specifically, both publishing houses are seen as

providing a service to under-served segments of the community; it is this mandate that

is used to justify any financial assistance the two publishing houses receive from the

state or federal governments. Thus, Magabala Books provides a service to Aboriginal

writers and illustrators from around the nation, while Fremantle Press provides a similar

service to Western Australian writers and illustrators, both Indigenous and non-

Indigenous.

The publication of Mayi: Some Bush Fruits of Dampierland by Magabala Books

is perhaps analogous to Fremantle Press publishing a work of natural history about

Western Australia, or even one of the titles from its Community Publishing Project; in

both instances, the publishing houses appear to have come down on the side of ‘the

quality and/or importance of the manuscript’, as opposed to ‘the perceived market and

sales potential’, which is clearly quite small. Nonetheless, it is Magabala Books and

Aboriginal writing, more generally, that feature most prominently in discussions of the

dynamic that occurs when these two assessment criteria conflict:

Because the Aboriginal writer must make his or her works amenable instyle (and often in content) to the standards of publishers who have their

576Magabala Books, ‘Publishing Policy’.

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eye on the marketplace, this censors out Aboriginality of style andcontent. A problem here is that the Aboriginal population is too smallwith little economic clout, and so books for and by Aboriginal writers aregoods of little profit, or if they are to be profitable must be written toconform to the dictates of the marketplace.577

The success of Sally Morgan’s My Place, for example, has often been attributed to it

‘being written to conform to the dictates of the marketplace’. Or, as Heiss was earlier

quoted, ‘My Place’s success arguably lay in the fact that it was not confrontational to

the white-mainstream way of perceiving Australia’. Both of these statements question

—if not actually find fault in—the appearance of a member of a marginalised

community writing for ‘the marketplace’ or, in other words, the ‘majority’.

These ideas about Aboriginal literature exist in a slightly altered (and perhaps

also diluted) form with regard to regional literature. It was mentioned in Part II

(‘Fremantle Press’) of this chapter that there are many reasons why a community of

individuals might not ascribe to a given title any cultural value that is identifiable as

specific to a region. For example, the title might not participate in the aforementioned

forms of free publicity that are so often responsible for introducing not just individual

titles to the public consciousness, but the author as a public figure who is (sometimes)

associated with a particular region. The use of an identifiable regional setting in the text

is also liable to increase its cultural value for residents in the region responsible for

making such judgements. This last point is akin to something Mudrooroo Narogin

(formerly Colin Johnson) said about Aboriginal writing: ‘The Aboriginal writer does not

exist in isolation, but as a member of the community who see, or attach certain values to

his or her literary production. ... Often a criterion of value is the degree of Aboriginality

in the work.’578 The ‘degree of Aboriginality in the work’ is in many ways analogous to

577Mudrooroo Narogin, Writing from the Fringe: A Study of Modern Aboriginal Literature (Melbourne:

Hyland House, 1990), 26.578Narogin, 37.

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the degree of ‘regionality’ sometimes expected of regional writers—that is, descriptions

of specific places, local customs, regional dialects, and so forth.

These expectations can come both from within and from outside the

communities under investigation—the Western Australian or regional community, and

the Aboriginal community. This is, of course, similar to the way in which a definition

of the region is formulated. Producers of both regional literature and Aboriginal

literature must be attentive to the dynamics of this exchange, as the communities from

which they are publishing are generally held to be of insufficient size to support the

commercial necessities of a book publishing operation without some reference to other

communities (in other words, book sales outside the region or to non-Indigenous

readers). They cannot afford to alienate readers in communities outside their own by

choosing an approach or publishing on a subject matter that is too specific to their own

community, nor should they generalise too much, or they risk losing their support in the

local community as well as their marketing ‘niche’.

With regard to Fremantle Press, it was noted in Part II (‘Fremantle Press’) of this

chapter how the Press attempted to make a virtue and a defining feature of regionalism.

In the latter half of its history, however, the Press seemed to believe it could balance this

interest with a selection of more ‘popular’ titles that did not tap so deeply into its

community of interest (in other words, Western Australia). Rather than attempting to

balance the demands of the home and outside communities within a single title,

Fremantle Press attempted to balance them across the breadth of its publishing

programme. Of course, as was detailed earlier in this chapter, the demands of books

that were specifically designed to appeal to a ‘popular’ audience placed greater than

anticipated demands on the Press’s resources for returns that were less than anticipated,

and the entire list suffered as a result.

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Magabala Books is both a regional and an Indigenous publishing house. As

such, it would seem to need to balance the demands of both communities. With its first

title, Mayi: Some Bush Fruits of Dampierland, it appears to have attempted this—the

book contains information that is specific to Indigenous culture in the region—but in

doing so it has perhaps overlooked the demands of other communities, especially more

‘mainstream’ communities, which constitute the majority of the book-buying public.

This is particularly relevant in the case of Magabala Books, since many of the qualities

that define Fremantle Press as a regional publishing house are even further intensified

for Magabala Books. In other words, there is regional, and then there is regional. A

book about metropolitan Perth—an area that includes Fremantle, home of Fremantle

Press—while it may not attract a readership in the eastern states, it will at least appeal to

the major population centre of Western Australia and, therefore, afford its publisher the

chance of breaking even. Even a book about the southwest of Western Australia has a

potentially sizeable readership, given the resident population of the region and its

popularity as a tourist destination. A book about the West Kimberley, on the other hand,

is playing to a much smaller market. In publishing Mayi, Magabala Books clearly

favoured ‘the quality and/or importance of the manuscript’ over that other assessment

criteria, ‘the perceived market and sales potential’, even as it tried to balance the

demands of being both a regional and an Indigenous publishing house.

The number of Magabala Books’s authors who come from the Kimberley region

in northwest Western Australia is disproportionately high; more of its writers come from

this region than from any other geographical area in Australia. Nonetheless, ‘Magabala

Books receives submissions from all over Australia, and books have been published

from every state [and territory] except Tasmania’.579 It lists as its aims:

• Recording, promoting and publishing a body of Aboriginal, TorresStrait Islander and South Sea Islander cultures.

579Giese, 112.

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• Assisting and encouraging people to pass on their history. • Making the wider community aware of the wealth of theirtradition and culture.

• Protection and education in matters of copyright. • Promoting acknowledgement of and respect for Indigenousculture through the use of published works and through electronicmedia.

• Providing employment and training of Aboriginal, Torres StraitIslander and South Sea Islander people.580

Notably, these aims make no reference to a specifically regional mandate. For this

reason, as well as its publication of writers from outside Western Australia, Magabala

Books has arguably contributed less than Fremantle Press, for example, to the

production of a regional literature in Western Australia. Also, the publishing house’s

identification with one ‘minority’ community (in other words, the Indigenous

community) has perhaps taken precedence over its identification with any other (for

example, the regional Western Australian community). Of course, the first book in any

publishing programme could be seen to make a statement about the publishing house’s

foundational values, and if this is the case, then Mayi: Some Bush Fruits of

Dampierland makes a particularly strong (though perhaps untenable, due to its limited

commercial viability) statement about Magabala Books’s commitment to both the

Indigenous and regional communities.

With its fourth publication, however, Magabala Books struck an excellent and

profitable balance between all of these competing forces, including importance and

marketability. Glenyse Ward’s memoir of her childhood experiences as a member of the

‘Stolen Generation’, Wandering Girl, was published in 1987 to much acclaim. The

book was ‘launched by the then Prime Minister Bob Hawke, and the initial print run of

5,000 sold out in two months, putting it on Sydney’s bestseller list while the rights to

publishing in the United Kingdom were taken up by Virago’.581 Heiss notes that

580Magabala Books, ‘About Us’.581Heiss, 53.

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works like ... Glenyse Ward’s Wandering Girl ... cite far harsher lifeexperiences [than Morgan’s My Place], discrimination and the impact ofracist government policy. However these works have not had near thesame success as Morgan’s work, arguably because their content andstrong Aboriginal identification were more challenging to potentialreaders.582

Nonetheless, Wandering Girl remains one of Magabala Books’s most commercially

successful publications. Ward’s second book, Unna You Fullas, published four years

later in 1991, also brought financial rewards to the publishing house. Notably, Ward is

one of nine Indigenous writers selected for inclusion in Lyn Jacobs’s aforementioned

canon of 29 writers that comprise her assessment of the ‘wealth of this state’s literary

heritage’.

Wandering Girl made a substantial contribution to the early success of Magabala

Books by establishing its profile in the literary community and suggesting the

possibility of a more secure financial future. Magabala Books’s second and third

publications, Jalygurr: Aussie Animal Rhymes and The Story of Crow: A Nyul Nyul

Story, both titles written and illustrated by Pat Torres (with Nyul Nyul language text in

the latter title provided by Magdalene Williams), also pointed the fledgling publishing

house in a potentially lucrative direction—the area of children’s book publishing.

Nonetheless, Magabala Books encountered difficulties when the funds received from

the Australian Bicentennial Authority’s National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander

Program were finally used up in October 1988.583 In its first 18 months, Magabala

Books had also received a couple of small grants from the Aboriginal Affairs Planning

Authority to cover expenses like rent and the purchase of furniture, a computer, fax

machine, and a second telephone line.584 With a handful of publications now under its

belt, Magabala Books once again looked to this organisation for further funding, as well

582Ibid., 103.583Mary Wright, ‘Recording—and Remaking—History’, Fremantle Arts Review 3, no. 10 (Oct. 1988): 11.584Ibid.

285

as to the Aboriginal Arts Board and the Western Australian Department for the Arts

(now Department of Culture and the Arts).585

Funding trickled in from various organisations, but mostly from the Department

for the Arts. The publishing house’s future would not be secure, however, until the

publishing house formally severed its ties to the Kimberley Aboriginal Law and Culture

Centre and established itself as an independent Aboriginal corporation in 1990.

Magabala Books had published 11 titles by 1990.586 Since this date, it has received

regular funding from the Western Australian Government, as well as from the Australia

Council. Of course, being dependent on a government organisation for funding can

hardly be considered a secure financial future. Nonetheless, the following chart (see

Table 4) reveals a much more stable funding pattern than the analogous chart for

Fremantle Press.

585Ibid.586Merrilee Lands, ‘Magabala Books—Celebrating Culture and Survival’, Habitat Australia 19, no. 3(Jun. 1991): 32.

286

Table 4: Western Australian Department for the Arts/ArtsWA Funding for

Magabala Books (1988–2000)587

Year Funds received

1988–89 $168,990

1989–90 $37,500

1990–91 $201,500

1991–92 $161,000

1992–93 $144,000

1993–94 $143,250

1994–95 $142,500

1995–96 $142,500

1996–97 $142,500

1997–98 $142,500

1998–99 $142,500

1999–2000 $142,500

Notably, Magabala Books did not suffer a dramatic decrease in funding beginning in the

1995–96 financial year and continuing over the next four years, as Fremantle Arts

Centre Press did in the wake of Taylor’s ‘Review into the Investment of Government in

the Publishing of Literary Works’. Instead, both Taylor in his ‘Review’ and White in

her ‘An Independent Evaluation of State Funding to Publishing of Literary Works in

Western Australia’ would seem to agree that ‘Magabala Books cannot be subjected to

the same criteria as other publishers ... because of its specific role as an Aboriginal

publisher and its attendant responsibilities’.588

Yet, a significant number of the difficulties portrayed as unique to Magabala

Books by individuals writing about the publishing house, as well as by publishing house

employees, have more to do with its status as a regional publishing house, than its

‘specific role as an Aboriginal publisher and its attendant responsibilities’. For

example, it was alluded to earlier how Magabala Books’s ‘location in Broome

587Table 4 is a composite of two sources: Taylor, ‘Review’, 20; and White, ‘Independent Evaluation’, 10.588Taylor, ‘Review’, 29.

287

exacerbates the problems for distribution, marketing and promotion which are common

to all Western Australian publishers’ (emphasis mine); after all, ‘Perth publishers are far

from eastern states markets, but have relatively ready access to Perth and the South

West of the state’, while ‘Magabala is remote from all its markets’.589 These statements

mark a common trend: Magabala Books’s difficulties might be ‘exacerbated’ by a

variety of features of the publishing house, but they are hardly unique in Western

Australian publishing. Another expert observation about the struggles that are

ostensibly specific to Magabala Books illustrates this point: ‘The most costly aspects of

publishing are printing—a huge factor—and storage. Freight is expensive as well, due

to the isolation of Broome in comparison to the authors and printers, most of whom are

a considerable distance from the Magabala office.’590 Of course, the costs associated

with the transportation of books is an issue for all Western Australian or regional

publishing houses, since they are at a great distance from the major markets for books;

however, this shared situation is then intensified by Magabala Books’s location.

Another characteristic of Magabala Books that is frequently cited as unique to its

position as an Indigenous publishing house, is how ‘the publishing process at Magabala

Books, in particular publisher-author relationships, is marked by exceptional

intensity’.591 Louise Poland expands on this idea in a journal article on the subject of

the acquisition of books by independent publishers:

The publisher faces the political and practical challenges of collaborativeprojects including multiple authors and community ownership.Furthermore, extensive consultation with Indigenous authors is requiredas almost all are first-time writers. ... Bruce Sims [Publishing Manager atMagabala Books] emphasises the importance of a publisher taking adevelopmental role when working with Aboriginal authors.592

589Ibid., 27.590Sue McGinty, ‘“It’s Really a Community Service”: Issues in the Publication and Retailing of Books inNorthern Australia’, in Value Chain Clustering in Regional Publishing Services Markets, ed. Bill Copeand Rod Brown (Altona: Common Ground Publishing, 2002), 181.591Poland, ‘Independent’, 114.592Ibid., 114–15.

288

Clearly, ‘collaborative projects including multiple authors and community ownership’

would be relatively unique to an Indigenous publishing house; there is certainly little or

no precedent for them amongst Western Australian publishing houses other than

Magabala Books. However, this is perhaps an example of the extremes of an

experience—its ‘exacerbated’ form, in other words—that is otherwise common to

Western Australian or regional publishing houses. After all, Poland mentions the

‘exceptional intensity’ of ‘publisher-author relationships’, and the need for ‘extensive

consultation’ with writers, all of which sounds very similar to what she writes about

Fremantle Press elsewhere in the same article: ‘Such a developmental role involves the

publisher in a long and careful process of working closely with the author, a form of

editorial involvement which, increasingly, multinational publishers do not choose to

make.’593 So perhaps the ‘exceptional intensity’ of ‘publisher-author relationships’ is an

issue for most or all independent publishing houses, rather than being a unique feature

of either regional or Indigenous publishing houses. Even Sims concedes (in an

interview conducted in 1997) that ‘there is an obligation [with Indigenous writers] to

consult more than usual, but I believe the same applies in any publishing.’594

Yet, even if it is not wholly unique, it has already been noted that Magabala

Books’s positioning as an Indigenous publishing house ‘exacerbates’ aspects of the need

for ‘extensive consultation’ with writers. So, too, does the positioning of a regional

publishing house. In other words, there is a hierarchy of sorts with a majority of

features that are shared by independent publishing houses; however, some of the

struggles that are particular to independent publishing houses are ‘exacerbated’ for

regional/independent publishing houses, and then are more difficult again for

Indigenous/regional/independent publishing houses. So when Poland writes ‘extensive

consultation with Indigenous authors is required as almost all are first-time writers’, it

593Ibid., 114.594Ibid., 115, quoting Bruce Sims.

289

should be noted that independent publishing houses will often devote a percentage of

their output to ‘first-time writers’ that is greater than any multinational publishing

house, and regional publishing houses (which are also almost always independent) will

contribute more than their fair share to this total.595 A publishing house that is

independent and regional and Indigenous could be said to be triply marginalised, and as

a result attracts an especially high percentage of ‘first-time’ and ‘only-time’ writers.

Consequently, Magabala Books frequently receives manuscripts

in forms that are not ready for publication: on tape, partially developedand sometimes just as ideas and the visions of storytellers.Developmental work entails recording stories, transcribing them,obtaining language translations for bilingual productions, and theapproval of community elders for some of the stories.596

Fremantle Press receives more than 40 unsolicited manuscripts per month.597 It

currently publishes approximately 30 books annually, or six percent of the more than

500 manuscripts it receives.598 Magabala Books, on the other hand, receives only three

or four manuscripts per month599 and rejects ‘between 20 and 40 books’ each year.600

Magabala Books currently publishes an average of five books per year, or between ten

and 20 percent of the unsolicited manuscripts it receives.

When Magabala Books finally decides to publish a title, ‘most print runs are

between 1500 and 4000 as a rule, but smaller and larger runs are organised when

required’.601 Landmark acts as the publishing house’s distributor to the national trade

(previously Australian Book Group was its distributor), and Fremantle Press as its

distributor to the trade in Western Australia with the exception of the Kimberley, where

Magabala Books oversees its own distribution network. The statement earlier about

Magabala Books being ‘remote from all its markets’ is not entirely true, as 34.7% (or

595Julian Lee, ‘Publishers Shun Rookie Authors’, Sydney Morning Herald, 22 May 2004.596Lands, 32.597Brian Raymond Coffey, interview by King, 46.598Heiss, 59.599Giese, 112.600McGinty, 179.601Ibid., 179–80.

290

$198,314.19) of the publishing house’s 2005 sales, for example, resulted from its own

distribution.602 A percentage of this figure was undoubtedly obtained from Magabala

Books distributing books directly to customers or bookstores outside the Kimberley

(indeed, there is a note that $5,427 resulted from distribution to the ‘overseas market’)

through avenues such as sales on the publishing house’s website, but this should not

detract from the obvious conclusion that the Kimberley is a strong market for Magabala

Books’s publications.603 In fact, the second-highest percentage of sales from any single

distributor came from Landmark and the national trade, but this comprised only 23% (or

$131,158.58) of the overall sales for 2005, much less than Magabala Books obtained

through its own distribution network.604

Magabala Books also has a distributor in the United States, but only a small

percentage of its titles that are successful domestically penetrate this market. Early in

its history, the publishing house had three such titles: Glenyse Ward’s Wandering Girl,

Bill Neidjie’s Story About Feeling (1989), and Raparapa Kularr Martuwarra: All Right,

Now We Go 'side the River, Along That Sundown Way: Stories from the Fitzroy River

Drovers (1988, edited by Paul Marshall). Other particularly successful Magabala Books

publications (though they have not necessarily been distributed in the United States)

include ‘four collaborations between husband-and-wife team Pat Lowe and Jimmy Pike,

with Pike providing his distinctive illustrations’; ‘the work of urban novelists Philip

McLaren and Bruce Pascoe’; and numerous children’s picture books, including the

award-winning Do Not Go Around the Edges (1990) by Daisy Utemorrah with

illustrations by Pat Torres, Tjarany Roughtail (1992) by Gracie Green and Joe

Tramacchi with illustrations by Lucille Gill, A Home for Bilby (2004) by Joanne

602Magabala Books, ‘Sales Figures 2005’.603Ibid.604Ibid.

291

Crawford with illustrations by Grace Fielding, and The Mark of the Wagarl (2004) by

Lorna Little with illustrations by Janice Lyndon.605

A couple of social history titles have already been mentioned or alluded to,

including Raparapa and Jilji: Life in the Great Sandy Desert (1990) with text and

photographs by Pat Lowe and paintings by Jimmy Pike, but these alone cannot do

justice to the breadth and depth of this publishing category at Magabala Books. Other

notable titles include Jandamarra and the Bunuba Resistance (1995) by Howard

Pedersen and Banjo Woorunmurra, and Out of the Desert: Stories from the Walmajarri

Exodus (2002) edited by Eirlys Richard, Joyce Hudson and Pat Lowe, both of which

won their subject prize in the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards, while

Jandamarra and the Bunuba Resistance also won the overall Premier’s Prize. Social

history and life writing arguably form the core of Magabala Books’s publishing

programme, with fiction publishing occupying a much smaller segment. The publishing

house has also published a very small selection of poetry, most notably the work of Alf

Taylor, and one play—‘the popular musical Bran Nue Dae by Jimmy Chi and Kuckles

was jointly published by Currency Press (and Magabala) in 1991’.606

Of course, any successes Magabala Books has enjoyed over the years have been

matched by funding problems and commercially unsuccessful publications. In 2001, for

example, Magabala Books published ten new titles and reprinted four more, but ‘only

two of these books ... actually sold well’.607 Then, the publishing house’s triennial

funding agreement with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board of the

Australia Council was changed to an annual agreement and its funding dramatically

reduced. Consequently, Magabala Books ‘chose to restructure and cease publishing for

six months at the beginning of 2002’.608 It has since significantly reduced the number of

605Giese, 112–13.606Heiss, 64.607Magabala Books, ‘Annual Report 2004’, 16.608Ibid.

292

new titles it publishes to the current level of five books per year, but it also seems to

have found new relevance in a recommendation from Taylor’s 1995 ‘Review into the

Investment of Government in the Publishing of Literary Works’:

Magabala, being an Aboriginal publisher, has a special niche in thenational market if adequately promoted. ... Recommendation 9: ThatMagabala Books be encouraged to target the tourist market in Broomeand two locations in Perth with specific marketing strategies over a trialperiod of one year, with a view to expanding this to other tourist areas inAustralia should it prove successful.609

Thus, the Magabala Books website now features the following declaration:

The Board recognises that it is crucial to grow the business of MagabalaBooks to increase commercial viability so that we can support the socialand cultural objectives of the organisation. We have identified thetourism market as an area that has an unmet need for quality Indigenousproduct that can be supplied by Magabala Books using existing artisticcollateral. This may include merchandising or product diversificationusing the books that Magabala produces as the basis for productdevelopment.610

The publishing house’s recent financial difficulties have inspired contemplation

of all aspects of its future: ‘The original aims and objectives are under scrutiny, now that

more publishing houses are taking up the work of Indigenous writers and artists. ...

Priorities [must be] determined, including whether to focus more on the Kimberley

area.’611 Magabala Books has always had a ‘particular interest in servicing the

Kimberley communities, with whom [it] closely liaises’, and yet it has also always

published the work of Indigenous writers from around Australia.612 The publishing

house has established interstate links that assist with the sometimes difficult

negotiations involved in a long-distance writer/publisher relationship.613 However, these

measures are not always seen to be sufficient:

The Australian Publishers Association Residential Editorial Program ...highlights the problems for Magabala as a result of its establishment in

609Taylor, ‘Review’, 27.610Magabala Books, ‘About Us’.611Giese, 113.612Ibid., 112.613Ibid.

293

such a remote location: ‘Editors need to be given the opportunity to meetwith authors more frequently. Several editors admitted that they had notmet authors whose work they had edited and that they perceived this as amajor problem in developing their manuscripts.’614

This injunction from the Australian Publishers Association Residential Editorial

Program is particularly relevant to Magabala Books, which in 1994 published a memoir

titled My Own Sweet Time, ostensibly written by a young Indigenous woman named

Wanda Koolmatrie. The book subsequently won the $5,000 Nita May Dobbie Award,

which is given to the best first novel by a woman writer. However, when the author’s

agent attempted in 1997 to submit a sequel to the prize-winning memoir, Magabala

Books insisted on meeting the author—up until this point, the publishing house had

dealt exclusively with the author’s agent—at which time it was revealed that the author

of My Own Sweet Time was not an Indigenous woman, but rather a white man named

Leon Carmen.

Clearly, Magabala Books’s status as an Indigenous publishing house made it the

target of Carmen’s literary hoax, but it was its positioning as a regional publishing

house with a national mandate that made it most susceptible to being hoaxed.

‘Focus[ing] more on the Kimberley area’ would almost certainly decrease the likelihood

of a hoax such as this being perpetrated on the publishing house ever again, but this is

never mentioned as a factor in Magabala Books’s recent consideration of a renewed (or

simply ‘new’) focus on the Kimberley region. Instead, it is said that ‘more publishing

houses are taking up the work of Indigenous writers and artists’, and Magabala Books

needs to differentiate itself from these producers, as well as differentiate the titles it

publishes from those of more ‘mainstream’ publishing houses. The publishing house’s

2006–08 business plan lists as one of its strengths the fact that it is ‘small and remote’:

Magabala is a relatively small organisation based in Broome, a fairlyremote regional town in the far north of Western Australia. While thiscould be perceived to be a weakness, in fact the reverse is true.

614Heiss, 54, quoting ‘Australian Publishers Association Residential Editorial Program Report 1999’, 17.

294

Magabala gains significant media attention precisely because of theuniqueness of the organisation regarding product and location.615

The last sentence of this excerpt arguably contains the two keys to Magabala Books’s

niche market appeal—‘the uniqueness of the organisation regarding product and

location’ (emphasis mine). In addition to being ‘small and remote’, the business plan

also lists as a strength that ‘Magabala Books is the only independent Indigenous

publishing house in Australia’.616 Magabala Books has always recognised the value of

emphasising the distinctiveness of its ‘product’, but perhaps now it is beginning to

better understand the potential value associated with the distinctiveness of its regional

‘location’.

Early in Magabala Books’s history, a newspaper journalist wrote of the

publishing house,

There is, inevitably, a view among some West Australian writers andpublishers that Magabala Books represents an unfortunate trend. Whyestablish a press (with substantial subsidy money) that won’t entertain theidea of publishing Uncle Wal’s bush ballads or the Hills short story writer—unless, of course, the authors are Aboriginal?617

This statement—or, at least, the ‘view’ described in this statement and the assumptions

that allow certain aspects of it to remain unwritten—seems to imply that Aboriginal

writers are not part of the larger community of Western Australian writers. Vickie

Laurie writes ‘some West Australian writers’, but what is meant is ‘some [non-

Indigenous] West Australian writers’, with the logical implication being that ‘West

Australian writers’ are non-Indigenous. And yet, as has been previously noted, many

Indigenous Western Australian writers have been embraced as central to an informal

canon of Western Australian literature. Therefore, it should be said that some of the

complaints about Magabala Books (such as those found in the excerpt above) arise

simply from objections to a system of government subsidy; the same sorts of complaints

615Magabala Books, ‘Business Plan 2006–2008’, 3.616Ibid.617Vickie Laurie, 26.

295

have been made about Fremantle Press and are unrelated to the ethnicity of the writers

being published or issues of content.

Without bothering to discuss any of the more clearly racist objections to

Magabala Books, there nonetheless remains another type of complaint that is very much

related to its identity as an Indigenous publishing house. The ‘view’ Laurie describes in

the above excerpt captures (perhaps unintentionally) a prominent aspect of this

complaint: Western Australians, like all marginalised communities, appear to believe a

degree of unity (and thus, uniformity) is necessary if they are to have any chance of a

successful rejoinder to the dominant group. Fremantle Press, for example, is commonly

thought of as the Western Australian publishing house, and the degree of unity this

represents has contributed to its success in raising the profile of Western Australian

writers and writing. On the other hand, Magabala Books is perhaps not seen as aiding

in this effort, since its primary allegiance is to a differently defined marginalised

community (in other words, the Indigenous community). Even the publishing house’s

name, Magabala Books, taps into the traditions of the latter community without

acknowledging the former (or at least not in a fashion recognised by the non-Indigenous

majority of the former):

Magabala is the Nyul Nyul, Nyangumarta, Karrajari and Yawurutraditional language word for the bush banana found on the westKimberley coast. ... Every part can be eaten—the skin, green seeds andpulp. Later the fruit hardens and dries, in preparation for the dispersal ofits many seeds with their spectacular parasol-shaped aerofoils. Like thebush banana, our organisation spreads the seeds of Aboriginal, TorresStrait Islander and South Sea Islander cultures, publishing and promotingIndigenous literature in Australia and throughout the world.618

Clearly, Magabala Books’s identity as an Indigenous publishing house is important both

to Magabala Books and its readership, but perhaps Magabala Books has underestimated

the relevance of its activities in the context of the region, much less as potentially

contributing to a regional literature. After all, while Western Australian ‘writers from

618Magabala Books, ‘About Us’.

296

both cultures [Indigenous and non-Indigenous] confront unresolved national issues of

equity, they similarly celebrate their regional distance from east coast imperatives as a

mark of artistic and social independence’.619

Magabala Books has published more than 100 titles since it was established in

1987, a fact which clearly marks it as one of the most significant publishing houses

operating in Western Australia. Within the diversity of a book publishing scene that

includes a trade publishing house (Fremantle Press), an academic publishing house

(University of Western Australia Press), and an Indigenous publishing house (Magabala

Books)—not to mention numerous smaller operations—the sites at which these Western

Australian publishing houses experience commonalities, form a compelling case for the

shared experiences of regional publishers in other parts of the world. Of course, these

sites are largely derived from their shared experiences of being located outside the

cultural centres, where the lack of access to the gatekeepers of cultural production (such

as literary agents, editors and publishers) has inhibited their reach into the public

imagination. As arguably the best example from amongst the regional publishing

houses under discussion of the tensions that exist between the marginalised and the

dominant group—a defining feature of regionalism and regional literature—Magabala

Books plays a particularly important role in this discussion.

IV. University of Western Australia Press

University of Western Australia Press (UWA Press) was the first book publishing

house established in Western Australia. It was established in 1935 in order ‘to produce

less expensive and more relevant student textbooks than those available through British

publishers’.620 UWA Press has since left off publishing textbooks, and instead has built

619Jacobs, 308.620Geoffrey Shellam, foreword to A Press in Isolation: University of Western Australia Press 1935–2004,by Criena Fitzgerald (Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 2005), v.

297

its identity as an academic publisher with a regional or Western Australian focus. In

2005, a book-length history of UWA Press was published to commemorate 70 years in

the book publishing business. Criena Fitzgerald’s A Press in Isolation: University of

Western Australia Press 1935–2004, published by University of Western Australia

Press, provides a reasonably comprehensive—though perhaps uncritical—account of

the publishing house’s history. Consequently, there is little need for this information to

be repeated here. Instead, this section of the thesis will confine itself to a brief critical

assessment of UWA Press’s history and current work as it has contributed to the

production of a regional literature in Western Australia.

Associate Professor and then Director of UWA Press Jenny Gregory notes in the

introduction to A Press in Isolation that

UWA Press is physically remote from the country’s major capital citiesand thus the major Australian book markets. Established to publishacademic books, it occupies an isolated position in an uneasy placebordering the world of commercial publishing. Set a task that is notprofitable, it has at times been marginalised and isolated within theuniversity.

But there are immensely positive aspects to geographicalisolation. It has triggered the Press’s strong regional focus, which hasbeen crucial for our understanding of the place in which we live. It hasheightened the Press’s awareness of the need to reach out and to publishbooks of international relevance.621

Clearly, there are many similarities between UWA Press, Fremantle Press and Magabala

Books, including their locations, which are ‘physically remote from the country’s major

capital cities’, having both positive and negative implications for their publishing

operations. Furthermore, like Magabala Books, UWA Press is marginalised not only by

its regional location and commitment to a regional community, but also by other aspects

of its publishing mandate such as its commitment to academic publishing.

Another similarity between the three publishing houses is that they all augment

their income received from book sales with substantial subsidies: Fremantle Press and

621Gregory, introduction to A Press in Isolation, 7–8.

298

Magabala Books benefit from government assistance, while UWA Press receives a

subsidy from the university, without which it would be unable to continue its operations.

Of course, university publishing houses are also subject to some unique forces,

and it is these forces to which the university is typically responding when it decides to

subsidise a publishing house’s operations. Frank Thompson attempts to summarise

these forces (from a specifically Australian perspective) in his ‘case-study’ of university

publishing houses:

Book publishing in Australia has always faced the problems of a smallpopulation base, competition from cheaper imports, and vast distancesbetween population centres. These problems are even more severe foruniversity presses. Because distribution costs are high, mainstreamdistributors are reluctant to handle expensive scholarly titles with suchsmall markets. Similarly, overseas importers are disinclined to marketthese titles. ... Australia’s surviving university presses have fought theseproblems in similar ways, confining their publishing to Australian topicsprincipally in the humanities and natural sciences—areas in whichimports cannot compete. They have broadened their lists to include non-academic books, and have focussed their attention on the subtleties of theAustralian marketplace.622

As Thompson notes, many of these ‘problems’ are common to publishing houses across

Australia, to one degree or another. For example, the unit price for Australia-originated

books is typically higher than for imported titles, because of the relatively small

population and, thus, print runs; this is a problem for independent publishing houses

more so than for their multinational colleagues. Thompson notes, however, that ‘these

problems are even more severe for university presses’.

While it is not the subject of the above excerpt, it has been noted many times

elsewhere in this thesis that these ‘problems’ are also more severe for regional

publishing houses. It follows that it would be especially difficult for a regional,

university publishing house such as University of Western Australia Press:

622Frank Thompson, ‘Case-study: University Presses’, in Paper Empires: A History of the Book in

Australia, 1946–2005, ed. Craig Munro and Robyn Sheahan-Bright (St. Lucia: University of QueenslandPress, 2006), 335.

299

Distribution and marketing have always been expensive for Australianpublishers because of the large distances between major populationcentres. For UWAP [University of Western Australia Press] the problemis even greater, because not only is Western Australia separated from therest of Australia by a vast desert but the state itself is huge.623

Consequently, UWA Press’s commitment to regional interests has been perhaps as much

a defining feature of its history as its commitment to academic concerns. Or, as

Thompson succinctly describes it, ‘Geographically, the University of Western Australia

Press (UWAP) is the most remote Australian university press and this has done much to

shape its publishing profile.’624 Among Australian university publishing houses, only

Central Queensland University Press (established in 1993) and Quintus Publishing

(established in 2006 as a joint venture between The University of Tasmania and Arts

Tasmania, the state government’s arts funding body), have a regional mandate similar to

that of UWA Press.

University of Western Australia Press’s regional mandate was an important

feature of the publishing house almost from its inception in 1935 as The University of

Western Australia Text Books Board. While its initial publication was the first volume

of the non-place specific University Studies in History and Economics, by 1941 it was

publishing more regionally specific titles such as J. Gentilli’s Atlas of Western

Australian Agriculture. In 1953, the publishing house changed its name to University of

Western Australia Press, and under this new brand continued to make a valuable

contribution to the culture of the region.

However, as was mentioned in Chapter 3 of this thesis, very little of UWA

Press’s publishing programme prior to 1970 falls within the parameters of the definition

of ‘literature’ employed in this thesis. Gregory notes in her introduction to A Press in

Isolation that, ‘in the 1970s, as the Press increasingly focussed on publishing in the

623Ibid., 331.624Ibid.

300

humanities, the idea of the textbook gradually began to fall out of favour in that area’.625

This resulted in the first substantial introduction of literature to UWA Press’s publishing

programme. Then, beginning in the mid-1980s, but only really gaining momentum with

the arrival of Janine Drakeford at the Press in 1992, UWA Press diversified its list

further to include children’s books under its Cygnet Books imprints.626 The pool of

talented writers it draws upon has, consequently, also been stretched far beyond its

traditional base in academia. This development has resulted in strong sales for the

Press, as well as a large number of awards from bodies as diverse as the Children’s

Book Council and the Wilderness Society, not to mention numerous awards in the

children’s book category of the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards. At

approximately the same time as the Press introduced children’s books to its publishing

programme, it also began making a more concerted effort to reach a general trade

audience; this effort included publishing an increasing number of titles with ‘popular’ or

commercial appeal, such as ‘gift’ or ‘coffee table’ books, as well as a ‘more aggressive

marketing and promotions policy’.627 This timeline roughly corresponds with Fremantle

Arts Centre Press’s similar efforts.

Nonetheless, the majority of University of Western Australia Press’s output

remains decidedly non-literary. As recently as 2006, The Australian Writer’s

Marketplace described the publishing house’s ‘specialisation’ as ‘natural history,

history, maritime history, contemporary issues, critical studies, women’s studies, literary

studies, general non-fiction (e.g. travel), children’s picture books, and young fiction’.628

It is often (though not necessarily) the case that much of the material published in these

genres (with the exception of children’s and young adult books) will not participate in

the aforementioned ‘broadly based, as distinct from a narrowly specialist, cultural

625Gregory, introduction to A Press in Isolation, 5.626University of Western Australia Press, ‘Children’s Catalogue 2005–2006’.627Fitzgerald, 82.628Queensland Writers Centre, 477.

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debate’. Given that UWA Press was the only book publishing house in Western

Australia for a full 40 years until Fremantle Arts Centre Press was founded in 1975, it is

perhaps surprising that this may mean UWA Press will never rival the influence of

Fremantle Press when it comes to shaping the way in which individuals conceive of the

region and of a regional literature. Nonetheless, it is undoubtedly true that UWA Press

‘remains an essential regional voice’.629 On those occasions when it produces a book

that reaches beyond a narrowly conceived audience, it makes ‘an important contribution

to discussion of the environment, history and culture of WA and beyond’—that is, it

makes an important contribution to a regional literature.630

In 2001, the Press began publishing young adult fiction under its Cygnet Young

Fiction imprint, followed by the introduction of adult fiction for the first time in 2005

under its New Fiction imprint. The latter development, in particular, had the potential to

increase UWA Press’s influence in defining a regional literature and move it into

territory otherwise successfully colonised by Fremantle Press. However, instead of

focusing on its regional mandate during the implementation of its New Writing imprint,

the Press emphasised its commitment to the academic community by limiting the

manuscripts it would consider to those received from postgraduate students enrolled in

(or recent graduates of) university courses in creative writing; there was no geographical

limitation to this brief. More recently, UWA Press under the leadership of Director

Terri-ann White decided to accept submissions to the imprint from university staff, as

well as students. Yet, it purchased the rights to Scottish author Ewan Morrison’s

collection of short stories, The Last Book You Read and Other Stories (first published by

Edinburgh-based Black & White Publishing in 2005), which it then published in 2007,

with no explanation forthcoming of the current focus of the New Writing imprint.

629Thompson, 335.630Queensland Writers Centre, 477.

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Another recent development at UWA Press is that, as of May 2007, it is

‘undergoing a period of “renewal” involving staffing changes and a new focus’.631

White has said that she is ‘trying to reposition UWA Press, as an Australian intellectual

publisher based in Perth, to take much more of a marketing and business approach and

to look at the press as more of a national press’.632 She characterised these changes as

‘follow[ing] on from the launch of a fiction list in late 2005’.633 Furthermore, it has

been reported that UWA Press ‘will discontinue its young adult list and has put on hold

its publishing of children’s books, pending a reassessment of the list’.634 All of these

developments appear geared towards repositioning and asserting UWA Press’s role as a

university publishing house of national significance, to the detriment of its other

traditional role as a regional publishing house. Of course, the Press will almost

certainly continue to publish, for example, scientific works concerned with the flora and

fauna of the region—especially since Conservation International identified the

southwest of Western Australia as one of 25 ‘biodiversity hotspots’ in the world, thereby

virtually guaranteeing a modest but consistent institutional audience for these titles—as

well as local histories. However, these are not often books that fit the definition of

‘literature’ employed in this thesis and, more importantly, that is recognised by many of

the most influential forces in book production (for example, government funding bodies

for the arts, literary editors at newspapers, the ‘general reader’). In contrast, those

books that are intended to appeal to a more broadly conceived audience and recognised

as ‘literature’ will most likely have been denuded of their regionality.

In the past, UWA Press’s status as a university publishing house was nearly as

important as its status as a regional, Western Australian publishing house. Balancing the

631‘Changes at UWA Press’, in Bookseller+Publisher Online (2 May 2007, accessed 2 Apr. 2008), quotingTerri-ann White; available from http://www.booksellerandpublisher.com.au/articles/2007/05/04042/.632Ibid.633‘Changes at UWA Press’.634‘UWA Press Reassessing Children’s List’, in Bookseller+Publisher Online, (8 Aug. 2007, accessed 2Apr. 2008); available from http://www.booksellerandpublisher.com.au/articles/2007/08/05096/.

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demands of these two arguably marginalised communities (in other words, communities

of university and regional publishing houses—not the university community as a whole,

which cannot be characterised as marginalised) defined its publishing history. Now,

while the Press’s association with The University of Western Australia is in many ways

enough to sustain its appearance of importance in the Western Australian community, it

seems that in other more relevant ways UWA Press has begun to absolve itself from the

task of promoting a regional literature in Western Australia. Interestingly, other

university publishing houses, faced with a similar sort of question about where they are

meant to turn ‘if the role of monographs diminishes in the coming years and university

support continues to decline’, have ‘tried to become regional publishers as a solution to

this dilemma’.635 Specifically, university publishing houses in the American states of

‘Nebraska and Oklahoma have developed impressive lines of books on local history’.636

Nonetheless, the process of absolving itself from the task of promoting a

regional literature, which already appears to be gaining momentum, could be sped up if

UWA Press embraces electronic publishing as an alternative to more conventional print

publishing methods. White wrote in April 2008, on the subject of electronic publishing,

‘We are currently exploring the whole field—there is a strong chance we’ll make a

move in the next 18 months.’637 Experts in the field of electronic publishing have noted

that ‘when it comes to e-publishing, it could be argued that university presses are ideally

suited to this development in the book world’.638 The rationale for this statement is that

the ‘underlying motivation’ of university publishing houses is ‘to disseminate

information, as opposed to the commercial aims of mainstream trade publishers’.639

According to this logic, UWA Press would be much more likely to consider electronic

635Schiffrin, 139.636Ibid.637Terri-ann White, e-mail to author, 2 Apr. 2008.638‘E-presses impress universities’, Campus Bookseller+Publisher, Oct. 2006, 18.639Ibid.

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publishing than the other two Western Australian publishing houses, Fremantle Press

and Magabala Books. However, where ‘mainstream trade publishers’ are taking steps in

this direction—for example, by digitising all new and backlist titles, as HarperCollins is

doing—they are almost invariably multinational publishing houses; they can afford such

forays into emerging technologies where any financial returns may not be seen for many

years, whereas small, independent publishing houses cannot.640

The first step in this process is digitising the publishing house’s output:

‘Digitising has many aspects: there’s digitising for production, for searchability, for e-

books and so forth.’641 The then Production Manager at UWA Press, Janine Drakeford,

has said that the ‘company’s digital output is less than 10%, but adds that figure is “at

present”’.642 None of the titles the Press has digitalised have been released as e-books.

In contrast, Australian National University and Monash University already have

extensive electronic publishing programmes, Melbourne University Publishing ‘has

advertised CD-ROM titles and University of Queensland Press has experimented with

an electronic text—a medical resource book’.643 The concern for a publishing house

with a regional brief, such as UWA Press, is that ‘electronic media pose problems ...

when it comes to defining their location in the sense of their attachment to region and

their local symbolic significance within, for example, contexts such as the idea of

“Australia” or “Australian”’.644 Clearly, much the same thing could be said for

electronic media in the context of ‘Western Australia’, thereby further divorcing UWA

Press from its regional situation and the constituent community.

640Andrew Wilkins, ‘Future-proofing HarperCollins’, Bookseller+Publisher, Aug. 2006, 17.641Ibid., quoting Jane Friedman.642

Bookseller+Publisher, Feb. 2006, 31, quoting Janine Drakeford.

643Anne Galligan, ‘Case-study: Publishers On-line’, in Paper Empires: A History of the Book in Australia,1946–2005, ed. Craig Munro and Robyn Sheahan-Bright (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press,

2006), 132.644Martin Harrison, Who Wants to Create Australia?: Essays on Poetry and Ideas in Contemporary

Australia (Broadway: Halstead Press, 2004), 11.

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Of course, University of Western Australia Press has published more than 700

titles since 1935—it currently publishes an average of 25–30 books per year—and none

of these have been e-books. With the Press’s already unsteady commitment to its

regional base, a possible future in electronic publishing is perhaps a small concern when

the issue at hand is the production of a regional literature in Western Australia.

Roy Lourens, then lecturer at The University of Western Australia when he ‘conducted

an investigation in 1971 into the Press finances’ (at the behest of the Deputy Vice

Chancellor), reminisced in a 2002 interview:645

Remember in those days The University of Western Australia was still ina Cinderella state, fighting for national recognition and someinternational recognition. It didn’t like to be parochial and tended toresist parochial things, so it was probably more anti-Press in the earlydays than the later ones. When it got its confidence, such as in the late‘80s and ‘90s, it felt more comfortable about specialising in a regionalPress.646

Of course, UWA Press contributed to this new confidence—both within the university

and in the wider Western Australian community—through the publication of scholarly

titles on Western Australian topics that received national acclaim, such as Tom

Stannage’s edited collection A New History of Western Australia (1981) and the fourteen

volumes published in honour of the Western Australian sesquicentenary. Brian Dickey

at Flinders University wrote of the former publication in a 1984 issue of Canberra

Times, ‘The scholars of the West have no need to suffer inferiority complexes. I

commend the presence of this fine volume.’647 Interestingly, the aforementioned

publications represent high points for UWA Press in its roles as both university and

regional publishing house.

645Fitzgerald, 45.646Ibid., 45–46, quoting Roy Lourens.647Cited in Fitzgerald, 59.

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Clearly, it is possible to balance the demands of these two roles—and perhaps

striking the appropriate balance even increases the Press’s chances of success—but, of

course, success thus measured does not necessarily equate with commercial success.

UWA Press is understandably concerned with ensuring its continued existence by

establishing a commercially successful publishing model. It is unlikely, however, to

ever achieve complete financial independence from The University of Western

Australia. Thus, if UWA Press’s decision ‘to take much more of a marketing and

business approach’ has already resulted in indications that its commitment to the

production of a regional literature is wavering, this raises questions about how long it

can sustain its commitment to that other marginalised role—as a university publishing

house—that constitutes its identity. Of course, any perceived neglect of its

responsibilities as a university publishing house would endanger its funding from the

University. Already, its movement away from a firm commitment to the Western

Australian region could be perceived as a black mark in the university’s register, since

The University of Western Australia sees the Press as fulfilling part of its brief of

community outreach—a ‘new emphasis’ that ‘was a direct consequence of the federal

government’s Committee for Quality Assurance in Higher Education, which began to

measure community service by universities in 1993’.648

Of course, this is all very similar to Fremantle Press’s increased concern with the

bottom line beginning in the early to mid-1990s—even the timelines approximately

match—and the effects this had on its publishing programme, as well as on the benefits

it could be perceived as providing the Western Australian Government in return for its

funding. Both publishing houses would do well to remember a comment made by Brian

de Garis, which although he is referring specifically to the publishing of history titles at

648Gregory, introduction to A Press in Isolation, 5–6.

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UWA Press, with a few substitutions would apply equally well to any Western

Australian publishing house:

The fundamental value of the Press as a publisher of history is that muchof the history I have referred to would probably never have beenpublished if the Press had not been there. ... Although some of the localhistories and commissioned histories brought out by the Press wouldhave found out-of-state publishers, and others would have been producedby local printers without adequate professional publishing input, manywould probably never have been written without the assurance of acompetent local publisher.649

The minute any of the three Western Australian publishing houses described in this

chapter of the thesis loses sight of this ‘fundamental value’, it also loses sight of its most

distinguishing feature and perhaps only competitive advantage, thus exposing itself to

the many and various advantages that publishing houses located in the traditional

centres of book publishing have over those located outside these centres.

V. Other Western Australian publishing houses

As was mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, there are publishing houses

in Western Australia beyond the three identified above. The histories and current work

of these other publishing houses are not charted in this thesis, however, since they are

mostly hobby or ‘vanity’ publishing houses, or they publish titles that do not fit the

definition of ‘literature’ employed in this thesis. Fremantle Press, Magabala Books and

University of Western Australia Press produce the vast majority of Western Australia’s

relatively modest literary output and, thus, also contribute the most to the formulation of

a regional literature in Western Australia. Nonetheless, for the sake of

comprehensiveness, it is worth providing a brief description of some of the other

publishing houses currently operating in Western Australia. These publishing houses

can be roughly divided into four categories: educational publishing, vanity publishing,

poetry publishing, and specialist publishing.

649de Garis, 126.

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Educational publishing: Narkaling publishes audio books that are meant to aid

young people with literacy and reading difficulties, as well as a range of short, easy-to-

read fiction and non-fiction titles in print for adults;650 Ready-Ed Publications publishes

‘educational photocopy masters for primary schools and secondary schools’;651

Chalkface Press ‘specialises in publishing textbooks for students and teachers in the

area of subject English, at secondary and tertiary level’;652 and RIC Publications, which

‘was incorporated in 1986 with the primary aim of producing’ books for Australian

primary school teachers that included the right to photocopy pages for student use, now

has a publishing list that ‘exceeds 900 titles’ and ‘offices in England, Ireland and Japan’,

in addition to its home office in Western Australia.653

Vanity publishing: Indian Ocean Books publishes approximately 80 titles per

year in the genres of fiction and poetry;654 Valvana Publishing House publishes on

average one title per year from the genres of ‘poetry, short stories, plays, biography,

novels, and music’, and it donates the proceeds from sales of its publications to

charity;655 and Access Press ‘specialises in limited print runs ... of biographical,

autobiographical or historical works’, although it also occasionally publishes works

with larger print runs that do not fit the ‘vanity publishing’ bill.656

Poetry publishing: Cactus Publishing typically publishes one poetry title per

year;657 and Sunline Press, which is run by Roland Leach (a poet with a volume

published by Fremantle Arts Centre Press), also publishes on average one poetry title

per year.658

650Queensland Writers Centre, 450.651Ibid., 463.652Chalkface Press, ‘About Chalkface Press’, in Chalkface Press (accessed 4 Apr. 2008); available fromhttp://www.chalkface.net.au.653RIC Publications, ‘About Us’, in RIC Publications (accessed 16 Apr. 2008); available from

http://www.ricgroup.com.au/Frontend/aboutus.html.654Queensland Writers Centre, 440.655Ibid., 478.656Ibid., 411.657Ibid., 421.658Sunline Press, ‘About Sunline Press’, in Sunline Press (accessed 4 Apr. 2008); available from

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Specialist publishing: Æolian Press specialises in Italian literature in translation,

as well as the publication of limited edition fine art books;659 Hesperian Press has

published more than 300 titles since it was founded by Peter Bridge in 1979,

specialising in ‘bush history’, Australiana and reprints of historical source material;660

Kaleidoscope Publishing publishes 15–25 titles per year that are concerned with

Christian themes;661 Western Australian Museum Publications ‘is a specialist press

dedicated to publishing quality books about the natural and cultural heritage and

environment of Western Australia and Australia’, which is of course housed in the

Western Australian Museum;662 and the Westerly Centre ‘is a research centre situated

within the School of Social and Cultural Studies at The University of Western

Australia’, which every year publishes ‘up to two books of literature or literary

scholarship’ on the subject of Australian literature, as well as the literary journal

Westerly.663

Notably, none of these publishing houses has ever published a play or film

script. Fremantle Press, Magabala Books and University of Western Australia Press

also all have very limited records of publishing dramatic scripts: Fremantle Press

published Hewett’s The Man from Mukinupin (in conjunction with Currency Press) and

Radio Quartet: A Collection of Radio Plays (1980) by Joan Ambrose, Hal Colebatch,

John Meredith Evans, and Elizabeth Jolley; Magabala Books published Bran Nue Dae

(also in conjunction with Sydney-based Currency Press); and UWA Press has never

published a play or film script. Considering two of Australia’s most notable

http://www.sunlinepress.com.au/sunline/.659Æolian Press, ‘The Æolian Press’, in Fontecolombo: A Piece of Italy in Western Australia (accessed 4Apr. 2008); available from http://www.fontecolombo.com.au.660Hesperian Press, ‘About Hesperian Press’, in Hesperian Press: Real Australian Books (accessed 4 Apr.2008); available from http://www.hesperianpress.com/otherpages/about.htm.661Queensland Writers Centre, 443.662Western Australian Museum, ‘Western Australian Museum Publications’, in Western AustralianMuseum (accessed 4 Apr. 2008); available from http://www.museum.wa.gov.au/collections/publications/wampubs.asp.663Westerly Centre, ‘Home’, in Westerly Centre (accessed 4 Apr. 2008); available fromhttp://www.westerlycentre.uwa.edu.au/home.

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playwrights, Jack Davis and Dorothy Hewett, were born and spent much of their lives in

Western Australia, this is a remarkable gap in the Western Australian publishing scene.

The oddity of this situation is only multiplied by the presence in Perth of the nationally

renowned Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (which teaches units in

script writing), as well as a lively community of theatrical practitioners and theatre-

goers.

All of the publishing houses listed above are currently operating Western

Australian publishing houses. It is not worth mentioning most of the publishing houses

that have been founded and since ceased operations in the period from 1970 until the

present, since the majority of these would be a perfect fit for the categories outlined

above. Besides, any contribution they made to the production of a regional literature in

Western Australia was generally small, bordering on the inconsequential. Perhaps the

only two no-longer-operating publishing houses worth mentioning are St. George Books

and Artlook Books.

St. George Books was founded in 1980 ‘as a subsidiary of West Australian

Newspapers’.664 It published titles from all genres, but these titles were ‘often linked to

the Western Australian market’, including reprints of written and photographic material

originally published in The West Australian newspaper.665 Notable titles include

Western Images: Western Australia in Pictures from the Colonial Era to the Present

(1996) with text by Thomas Austen, and In Perspective: An Anthology of Women’s

Writing (1993) written by members of the Western Australian branch of the Society of

Women Writers.

Helen Weller and a non-profit literary group known as the Nine Club began to

publish a magazine, Artlook, in 1973.666 The magazine eventually folded in 1983, but

664Queensland Writers Centre, 471.665Ibid.666Publish Your Own Book (Northbridge: Access Press), 1.

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not before Weller led the group into book publishing in 1979. Artlook Books, as the

publishing house would come to be known, was initially set up to publish works by

Western Australian writers, though it later abandoned this brief.667 Within four years,

Artlook Books had published more than 100 titles.668 Among its most successful

publications were France Australe: A Study of French Explorations and Attempts to

Found a Penal Colony and Strategic Base in South-western Australia, 1503–1826

(1982) by Leslie R. Marchant, and Full Fathom Five (1982), a history of the pearling

industry by Mary Albertus Bain, both of which were shortlisted for The Age Book of the

Year Awards.669 In late 1984 and carrying over into 1985, however, Artlook Books

became embroiled in controversy after it was placed in receivership as complaints rolled

in about unpaid authors’ royalties.670 Subsequently, its typesetting operation was sold to

Access Press, a purportedly new company that had, in fact, functioned for several years

much like an imprint of Artlook Books, engaging in ‘vanity’ publishing and directed by

Weller’s son, Guy Weller.671 On the heels of this controversy, Weller and company

abandoned the Artlook Books label and continued to publish as Access Press, though as

was noted above in the description of the latter publishing house, it is now

predominantly a vanity publishing house.

This has not stopped Helen Weller, however, from becoming one of the most

outspoken critics of the manner in which state government funding is administered to

publishing houses in Western Australia. For example, in 1984, ‘Weller said she was

“very sour” that Artlook had received only $800 this year from the WA Arts Council,

which contrasted with the thousands given to the Fremantle Arts Centre Press. ... The

annual grant for FACP was about $70,000.’672 A close associate of Weller, Hal

667Allan Veal, ‘Publish, and Be Different’, West Australian, 2 July 1983.668Ann Treweek, ‘Artlook Losses Lead to Receivership’, West Australian, 28 Dec. 1984, 2.669Ibid.670‘Artlook’s Typesetting Division Sold’, West Australian, 5 Jan. 1985, 10.671Bruce Lawson, ‘Four Different Ways of Keeping the Book Business Booming’, West Australian, 5 June

1982; ‘It was Nothing New ...’, Western Mail, 19–20 Jan. 1985, 5.672Treweek, 2, quoting Helen Weller.

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Colebatch, wrote, ‘No private-enterprise publisher could compete with a State publisher

of creative writing supported by a unique and relatively massive subsidy especially in a

small and competitive market.’673

Another frequent critic of the system of government assistance for the Western

Australian publishing industry is Peter Bridge at Hesperian Press. These complaints are

largely directed at Fremantle Press, which Bridge, among others, feels has a virtual

monopoly on ‘federal and state grants and literary awards’.674 Bridge and other like-

minded publishers ‘talk of “cliques” and “factions” within the arts bureaucracy which

prevent them from receiving a slice of the subsidy cake’.675 Furthermore, ‘they would

claim that they offer wider publishing prospects than Fremantle Arts Centre Press with

its perceived concentration on “high-brow” fiction’.676

For the government’s part, its response to these claims typically runs along the

following lines: ‘Of all the West Australian arts organisations that have received a

subsidy from the state, the Fremantle Arts Centre Press has presented over the past

decade the most consistent quality product.’677 While a valid point that can be

demonstrated through a variety of measures (such as number of awards won, amount of

media coverage received, units sold), the obvious rejoinder to this statement is that the

subsidy Fremantle Press receives from the Western Australian Government has helped

create an environment that fosters such achievements. This, too, is a valid point, and

one that has been made by Bridge, but it overlooks the unique benefits afforded the

Western Australian Government (and Western Australians, more generally) by the

publishing programme of Fremantle Press—benefits that do not typically accrue to

educational or speciality publishing, for example. As was noted in the ‘Fremantle Press’

673Hal Colebatch, ‘The Public Funding of Literature’, Quadrant 31, nos. 1–2 (Jan./Feb. 1987): 17.674Vickie Laurie, 25.675Ibid.676Ibid.677Ibid., quoting Keith Sinclair, Arts Development Officer for Literature, Western Australian Departmentfor the Arts.

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section of this chapter, one of the reasons the Press was established was ‘to encourage

the growth of the appreciation ... of works of literary ... merit produced by West

Australian writers’.678 And as was also noted in this section, certain types of books are

more likely than others to accomplish this lofty aim; certain types of books are more

likely to possess cultural value that is identifiable as specific to a region (in part due to

their engagement with influential individuals and institutions, such as by being

reviewed in newspapers and journals, chosen as set texts for secondary- and tertiary-

level courses, and winning literary prizes). In short, Fremantle Press participates in a

brand of book publishing that is more likely than some others to attract acclaim to

Western Australian writers and writing:

Many people in the book industry believe small presses to be the majorsource of innovation and excitement within publishing. ... Most smallpresses actually engage in non-fiction publishing, specializing inbusiness, spirituality, how-to, and other circumscribed areas. But whilethese presses may be admired for filling (or creating) a need amongreaders, it is the presses that engage in literary fiction, poetry, and seriouspolitical and social commentary that inspire so many small pressadvocates.679

The acclaim that Fremantle Press generates for Western Australian writers and writing

as a result of its specific brand of book publishing also implicates the Western

Australian Government for its support of this artistic form. Contrary to what is

suggested by Bridge’s critique, Fremantle Press’s subsidy from the state government is

not about support for an industry. Bridge’s Hesperian Press, and other Western

Australian publishing houses like it, are unlikely ever to attract a similar subsidy so long

as they continue to publish books and generally operate outside a culture that recognises

achievements in the aforementioned terms and makes them known to the general public.

Of course, government funds allocated to support book publishing stretch only

so far. In 1987, for example, the state government commissioned Western Australian

678Fremantle Arts Centre Press, ‘Constitution and Rules’, 2.679Miller, 71–72.

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writer Bryn Griffiths to examine ‘the state’s book publishing industry and new

approaches that might be adopted to provide more publishing opportunities for West

Australian writers’.680 This commission was, presumably, a response to complaints the

government had been receiving from the proprietors of Western Australian publishing

houses that did not receive government support. The main recommendation of

Griffiths’s report was

to establish in Perth an ‘alternative press’, possibly within the complex ofthe Perth Institute of Contemporary Art. The aim would be to publish‘original writing of acceptable quality from all areas of the WAcommunity—the native-born, immigrant and Aboriginal’. Three-yearfunding would be provided by the Department for the Arts.681

Western Outlook magazine noted that, ‘informally, many people feel Griffiths has

effectively recommended a second Fremantle Arts Centre Press, when the first is

performing its duties well’.682 The official response, however, was that ‘the Panel would

not like to see the financial curtailment of any existing programmes to allow support for

the implementation of the Griffiths’s recommendations’.683 Clearly, the lack of available

funding (or interest in making additional funds available) is the inspiration for this

response, but there might also be certain benefits associated with the provision of

subsidies to a very limited number of publishing houses, such as the more coherent and

focussed representation of the region which will almost certainly result.

A ‘coherent and focussed representation of the region’ is perhaps exactly the sort

of thing Sue McGinty had in mind when she wrote that ‘the region needs a marketable

product’ in order for ‘the cluster concept to work’.684 Explaining this concept in more

detail, McGinty writes,

The ‘clusters’ idea ... maintains that you need a critical mass and linksaround skills. Components may involve retailing bookstore outlets,

680Vickie Laurie, 25.681Ibid.682Ibid.683Literature Consultative Panel, ‘Notes’, 27 May 1988, State Records Office of Western Australia.684McGinty, 183–84.

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people who have competence to produce marketable materials, those whohave the technical skills, and people with equipment. This is the sort ofmix needed for the cluster concept to work. The region needs amarketable product for this to happen.685

She goes on to say that ‘this is what appears to be happening in the Broome region with

the focus on local histories and local knowledges and cooperation between those who

have the skills, the know-how, the know-who, and the equipment to publish’.686

McGinty’s reference to Broome has as much to do with individuals and organisations

that decide to self-publish, as it does with Magabala Books and the more traditional

organisation of a publishing house as it has been examined in this thesis:

Some people in Broome are doing their own publishing. Noel Trevors, alocal author, is about to publish his second book investigating the reasonspeople live in Broome. In the first book he recorded people’s stories,published them and has sold 3000 copies in the last two years. PaulRoberts, the local magistrate who flies around the countryside takingphotos, has also published with some success. Both Noel Trevors andPaul Roberts do their own publishing and distribution. Mrs. Miller andher illustrators have produced children’s books about frogs. They wereprinted locally. The local historical museum did their own history ofBroome. They used the local printers, too.687

Clearly, each of these self-publishers has the potential to diversify the representation of

the region and remedy any narrowness in its definition that can result from the activities

of a single publishing house; in the process, they can perhaps make an important

contribution to the culture of the region.

It is worth noting, however, that the flagship publishing house (in this case,

Magabala Books, but Fremantle Press is arguably the flagship Western Australian

publishing house) plays an important role in that it is often the first to define the bounds

of the ‘marketable product’, as well as to train and/or identify a community of people

‘who have the skills, the know-how, the know-who, and the equipment to publish’. In

other words, the flagship regional publishing house is largely responsible for creating an

685Ibid.686Ibid., 184.687Ibid., 182–83.

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environment in which other publishing houses or self-publishers might flourish; this is

evidenced by the fact that none of the publishing houses identified in this section of the

thesis (‘Other Western Australian publishing houses’) existed prior to Fremantle Press

or, in the case of those Broome-based self-publishers, prior to Magabala Books. Of

course, the existence of all these smaller publishing operations with their diverse

agendas alongside Western Australia’s three mainstream, though still remarkably

diverse, publishing houses—a trade publishing house (Fremantle Press), an academic

publishing house (University of Western Australia Press), and an Indigenous publishing

house (Magabala Books)—is testament to the perceived need for literature to represent

the full diversity of voices that comprise any given community. Regional literature is a

response to that perceived need in a specific geographical area. And regional publishing

(in all its guises, from mainstream trade publishing house to self-publisher) is the

manifestation of a recognition that ‘any given community’ could be a subculture

resident in the region, the region as a whole, the nation, or even an international

community of readers.

317

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Conclusion

I. Critical regionalism

In September 2007, a call for papers for a conference was circulated that read,

‘Paul Keating famously said that if you weren’t living in Sydney, you were camping.

More recently, Per Henningsgaard argued in Antipodes (June 2007) that we have seen a

decline of regionalism in Australian literature and culture.688 This conference will

explore the power of place and region in Australian writing.’ The conference, sponsored

by the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, was titled ‘Critical

Regionalism: Realizing the Local’.

‘Critical regionalism’ is defined by Penguin’s Dictionary of Architecture &

Landscape Architecture as

a term coined in 1981 and quickly given currency by architectural criticsthough never precisely defined. It is an attitude or approach rather than atheory, in reaction against the consumerist Post-Modern hedonism of theReagan and Thatcher years. Conspicuously ‘regional’, it seeks tocombine a response to the local with a certain universality, avoiding thevernacular, sentimental or picturesque while affirming the importance ofenvironmental, cultural and societal values.689

The subject-specific Dictionary of Architecture & Landscape Architecture provides a

particularly detailed definition of the term, but even a dictionary that is not subject-

specific, such as The Oxford English Dictionary, recognises that ‘critical regionalism’

springs from an architectural tradition. Moreover, current applications of the term have

not strayed far from these beginnings. In fact, a brief survey of the available literature

reveals that the term ‘critical regionalism’ is almost never applied to literary study. The

logical follow-up to this observation takes the form of a question: ‘Why was “critical

regionalism” chosen as the title and organising theme of a conference sponsored by the

Association for the Study of Australian Literature?’

688Per Henningsgaard, ‘The Decline of Regionalism in Australian Literature and Culture’, Antipodes 21,no. 1 (June 2007): 53–59.689John Fleming, Hugh Honour, and Nikolaus Pevsner, ‘Critical Regionalism’, in Dictionary ofArchitecture & Landscape Architecture, 5th ed. (London: Penguin, 1999), 134.

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The answer is perhaps as simple as the conference organisers wishing to specify

a ‘critical’ investigation of regionalism, rather than a rose-tinted embrace of ‘the power

of place and region in Australian writing’. By nominating a ‘critical’ approach to

regionalism, they hopefully dodge accusations of parochialism or provincialism, two

terms that have been used almost interchangeably by Australian critics to constitute one

of the oldest criticisms of regionalism. This criticism was present even at the 1978

seminar organised by Fremantle Arts Centre Press, ‘Time, Place and People:

Regionalism in Contemporary Australian Literature’, which inaugurated the

conversation about regionalism in Australian literature and culture.

In addition to the term ‘critical regionalism’ being uncritically appropriated from

an architectural tradition, however, its choice as the conference theme is symptomatic of

a more pervasive disempowerment of both the region and regionalism. The term

‘critical regionalism’ was used most famously by Kenneth Frampton in his essay

‘Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance’ published

in 1983. In this essay, Frampton argues that critical regionalism should adopt features

of modern architecture for its universal qualities, while at the same time valuing and

responding to the particularities of place.690 He writes:

The fundamental strategy of Critical Regionalism is to mediate theimpact of universal civilization with elements derived indirectly from thepeculiarities of a particular place. It is clear from the above that CriticalRegionalism depends upon maintaining a high level of critical self-consciousness.691

The choice of the term ‘critical regionalism’ to describe this approach has implications

that are the same for architecture as they would be if this term was applied to literature:

namely, modifying ‘regionalism’ with ‘critical’ implies that ‘regionalism’ alone (that is,

not ‘critical regionalism’ but rather plain ‘regionalism’) responds only to the

690Kenneth Frampton, ‘Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance’, in

The Anti-aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, ed. Hal Foster (Seattle: Bay Press, 1983), 16–30.691Ibid., 21.

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particularities of place and is absent of any universal qualities. If you have to specify

‘critical regionalism’ when discussing an approach that values both the specific and the

universal, then ‘regionalism’ without the ‘critical’ must not value the same things—it is

seen to value only the specific.

In his essay, Frampton also references the progenitors of the term ‘critical

regionalism’, Alex Tzonis and Liliane Lefaivre in their 1981 essay ‘The Grid and the

Pathway: An Introduction to the Work of Dimitris and Susana Antonakakis’. Tzonis

and Lefaivre make the aforementioned point (about the perception of ‘regionalism’ as

absent of universal qualities) most explicitly: ‘Regionalism has dominated architecture

in almost all countries at some time during the past two centuries and a half. By way of

general definition we can say that it upholds the individual and local architectonic

features against more universal and abstract ones.’692 According to this definition,

‘regionalism’ is also thought to possess a lower ‘level of critical self-consciousness’

than ‘critical regionalism’.

This proposition is very similar to John Kinsella’s theory of ‘international

regionalism’, which he has discussed in several published interviews as well as

delivering unpublished lectures on the subject. Although he has never published a

formal exegesis of his theory, Kinsella has made clear his intentions for the theory: ‘At

the core of it is a desire to cross boundaries, to open up lines of communication. This is

not done randomly, but within a code of respect for the integrity of regional concerns

and demarcations.’693 Furthermore, he writes that ‘the globalisation of text must also

carry respect for the specific’.694 Once again, the implication is that ‘regionalism’ as a

solitary term is incapable of ‘open[ing] up lines of communication’—perhaps because it

692Alex Tzonis and Liliane Lefaivre, ‘The Grid and the Pathway: An Introduction to the Work of Dimitrisand Susana Antonakakis’, Architecture in Greece 15 (1981): 178.693John Kinsella, ‘International Regionalism and Poetryetc’, in John Kinsella (accessed 10 Oct. 2005);

available from http://www.johnkinsella.org/essays/international.html.694Ibid.

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is only capable of a single-minded focus on ‘the integrity of regional concerns’—while

‘international regionalism’ can manage this balance perfectly well.

Of course, even as both formations, ‘critical regionalism’ and ‘international

regionalism’, problematise regionalism, they also express a generalised discontent with

the ‘international’, the ‘universal’ and the ‘global’ where it is unresponsive to the local

and specific. This does not mean, however, that the choice of ‘critical regionalism’ as

the theme of the aforementioned conference is not symptomatic of the disempowerment

of ‘the region’. To the contrary, these formations locate the local and specific as a

subjective concept which may be more or less necessary—even unnecessary—in

different contexts. The ‘international’, the ‘universal’ and the ‘global’, on the other

hand, are represented as something towards which all should aspire, even though some

will clearly find this task more difficult than others. The terms ‘critical regionalism’ and

‘international regionalism’ demonstrate, for example, the sort of linguistic contortions

many feel are necessary for those outside the centres to achieve this result, balancing the

local and specific with the ‘global’.

Gareth Griffiths describes how this imbalance of expectations is created:

It is a fact often forgotten in cultures which have publishing traditionsrunning back hundreds of years that books are not made by writers alone,and that ‘literature’, as opposed to the act of narrative or writing isconstructed not only by ‘authors’ but by a complex economic and socialinstitution of ‘publication, distribution and exchange’ (to appropriate theMarxist dictum in a new but perhaps quite appropriate way).695

The ‘complex economic and social institution of “publication, distribution and

exchange”’ that Griffiths identifies as responsible for constructing ‘literature’ is very

similar to what Pierre Bourdieu called the ‘field of cultural production’. As was noted

in the Introduction to this thesis, in the case of print culture, this field includes writers,

literary agents, editors, publishers, government arts organisations, the media, schools,

695Gareth Griffiths, ‘Documentation and Communication in Postcolonial Societies: The Politics ofControl’, The Yearbook of English Studies 27 (1997): 132.

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book clubs, and book retailers, just to name a few. The clustering of these instruments

of cultural production in certain locations creates an effect whereby ‘the region’ is

subject to a different set of rules than the ‘international’, the ‘universal’ and the ‘global’;

thus, it also creates the intellectual and cultural conditions that give rise to phrases such

as ‘critical regionalism’ and ‘international regionalism’.

In cultural centres such as London and New York City, or the ‘“golden triangle”

of Sydney–Melbourne–Canberra’, the high concentration of instruments of cultural

production results in the perception that the local and specific of these places constitutes

the ‘universal’.696 It is no coincidence, for example, that London and New York City are

traditional centres of book publishing, home to a critical mass of the instruments that

constitute the literary field of cultural production, and that they are also used as the

settings for more novels than any other cities in the world.697 Of course, by conducting

the survey of 13,000 works of adult fiction published in the United States that led to this

conclusion, Bowker (a leading source of bibliographical information and exclusive

distributor of ISBNs in the United States) is acknowledging the significance of the local

and specific—the ‘specific’ locations of London and New York City were found to be

most popular. Nonetheless, the disproportionately high representation of these centres

in the cultural sphere, resulting from the concentration of instruments of cultural

production in these locations, abets the popular belief that representations of these

specific places are ‘universal’. Writing that does not take into account the local and

specific version of their reality (that is, the reality of the cultural centres) is thought to

be neglecting some ‘universal’ value.

696Bruce Bennett, ‘Literary Culture since Vietnam’, 258.697‘New York and London are Most Popular Settings for Novels, According to Newly Released Fiction

Statistics Analysis from Bowker’, in Bowker (21 Jan. 2006, accessed 22 Dec. 2006); available from http://www.bowker.com/press/bowker/2006_0121_bowker.htm.

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II. Australia as a region

Clearly, while the aforementioned conference was meant to ‘explore the power

of place and region in Australian writing’, ‘the region’ more often than not finds itself

disempowered. Constructions such as ‘critical regionalism’ and ‘international

regionalism’ reveal that regionalism is widely thought to be germane only for those

located outside the centres of culture and influence. Bruce Bennett recognised this fact

when he wrote, ‘I tried to extend notions of regionalism which I had been developing in

Australian terms to the neighbouring countries of Southeast Asia, whose cultures, like

those of Western Australia, and Australia itself, had been too glibly passed over.’698

Bennett uses the expression ‘cultures ... [which] had been too glibly passed over’ to

describe ‘those located outside the centres of culture and influence’. Moreover, he

understands it is only these cultures, which can lay no convincing claim to the

‘universal’, that are seen to produce cultural records of the local and specific—that is, of

the regional.

Of course, as Bennett briefly mentions above, ‘Australia itself’ is one of these

marginal spaces that ‘ha[s] been too glibly passed over’. There is ample evidence of

this neglect: ‘Far more foreign books are distributed here than Australian books

distributed overseas; more knowledge is imported than exported, and popular culture

sees the most successful products as coming from the USA.’699 The significance of

these observations can perhaps only be fully appreciated when one is reminded of the

fact that

the nation-state’s geographical relationship to political communitiesbeyond its borders is an important component in defining the collectivepolitical identity of the people within national borders. Australia’sidentity has been defined through spatial practices that position theAustralian nation-state in the larger international community.700

698Bruce Bennett, ‘Home and Away’, 236.699Ted Wheelwright, introduction to Communications and the Media in Australia, ed. Ted Wheelwright

and Ken Buckley (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1987), 16.700Cerwonka, 197.

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This statement need not apply only to Australia’s political identity, as it has been

elsewhere observed that ‘“Aust.Lit.” evolved as a category through its own provincial

relations to the western European literary canon’.701 More recently, however, the

contexts in which Australian literature defines itself have changed and diversified.

Within Australia, for example, the high concentration of instruments of cultural

production in Sydney and Melbourne results in the perception that the local and specific

of these places constitutes the ‘universal’; any attention paid to the local and specific in

the cultural products of other Australian locations, such as Western Australia, therefore

constitutes the ‘regional’. In an international or global context, however, Australia

constitutes the ‘regional’ rather than the ‘universal’, since the relatively greater

concentrations of instruments of cultural production in places such as London and New

York City indirectly confers upon them the latter title. The connection between regional

identity and access to the field of cultural production is perhaps best illustrated by a

practical example:

The high unit costs typical of Australian literary publications generally,caused by Australia’s small population, are magnified in WA. And just asit is difficult and costly to promote and market Australian titles abroad, itis difficult and costly to market WA titles interstate because of the greatdistance involved.702

It seems there are many continuities between Western Australia’s situation as a region

within Australia, and Australia’s situation as a region in the international literary

community.

Of course, it is uncommon to hear the positioning of ‘the Australian nation-state

in the larger international community’ conceptualised as a sort of regionalism. The

scarcity of this concept is perhaps symptomatic of the paucity of informed commentary

on regionalism in Australia, but it is also at least in part due to the fact that, while

701Ken Gelder, ‘Recovering Australian Popular Fiction: Towards the End of Australian Literature’, inAustralian Literary Studies in the 21st Century, ed. Philip Mead (Association for the Study of Australian

Literature, 2001), 113.702Taylor, ‘Review’, 24.

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regionalism may refer to the distinctive local character of different partsof the world or to a people’s perception of and identification with suchplaces ... [t]he concept is rarely applied ... to differences between parts ofa city or to those between continents or countries. Rather, it is usuallyused as an intermediate scale.703

Nonetheless, there is an undeniable parallel between the dynamic that governs

Australia’s negotiations with the international literary community, and the dynamic that

governs the negotiations of a more conventionally conceived region (such as Western

Australia) with its national literary culture.

This dynamic had especially profound implications when Australian literature

first ‘began to be disseminated on a world scale in the 1980s’.704 In the decade or so

leading up to this, Nicholas Birns and Rebecca McNeer, in their recently published A

Companion to Australian Literature since 1900, contend that ‘nationalism within

Australia burgeoned, as seen in the founding of the strongly nationalistic Association for

the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) and the Literature Board of the Australia

Council for the Arts’.705 It was noted in Chapter 1 of this thesis that ‘in Australia the

development of regional differences in the cultural sphere has been dwarfed and

stultified by a powerful continental vision of nationhood which has been the mainspring

of our sense of identification’.706 Australian nationalism certainly flourished in the

1970s and ‘80s, and while it may be true this nationalist sentiment ‘stultified’ the

‘development of regional differences’ to some extent, it is also true that the offence

could have been much greater. After all, during the 1970s and especially in the 1980s,

Australian nationalism as it manifested itself in the literary sphere was increasingly

concerned with its new ability ‘to be disseminated on a world scale’. On this scale, the

only role Australia could convincingly play was that of a region; while manifestations of

703R. Cole Harris, ‘Regionalism’, in The Canadian Encyclopedia (accessed 8 Feb. 2008); available fromhttp://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com.704Nicholas Birns and Rebecca McNeer, eds., A Companion to Australian Literature since 1900(Rochester: Camden House, 2007), 1.705Ibid., 4.706Whitlock, ‘Queensland’, 88.

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the nationalist myth within Australia had trafficked heavily in the sentiment, Australia

could make no pretence to represent the ‘universal’ in the international literary

community where there were so many more culturally powerful entities.

One of the most remarkable outcomes associated with this dynamic is that ‘by

the 1970s and 1980s ... Australian writers were praised for having specifically

Australian content’.707 Or, to put it another way, ‘The Australian novels that go well in

the current global market are those acted out against an unfamiliar backdrop, that is a

backdrop unfamiliar to an international audience, which basically means an English or

American audience.’708 Andrew Wilkins, publisher of Bookseller+Publisher magazine,

offers a similar explanation for the occasions when the Australian book industry has

enjoyed success in the export market: ‘He feels many overseas markets “are looking for

something that is slightly different and Australia is seen as a place that is slightly

different”.’709 The identification of ‘Australia’ by overseas audiences as somewhere or

something ‘slightly different’ is an example of Australia’s regional identity. In order to

appeal to this overseas audience, Australian literature abandoned any pretence to

represent the ‘universal’ and instead traded in the local and specific. Australian

literature’s focus during this period on the local and specific—a focus that necessitated

Australian literature function as a region in the international literary community—

perhaps also made it possible for literary cultures within Australia to entertain other

aspects and manifestations of regionalism, such as literary regions within the framework

of a formerly overwhelming nationalist literary tradition.

However, Birns and McNeer observe a ‘waning of the appeal of the specifically

Australian’ in the 1990s.710 They speculate that

707Birns and McNeer, 4.708Drusilla Modjeska, Timepieces (Sydney: Picador, 2002), 209.709Rosemary Neill, ‘Paperback heroes’, Australian, 13 August 2005, quoting Andrew Wilkins.710Birns and McNeer, 5.

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the decreasing salience of the specifically Australian angle [in the1990s] ... meant that Australian writers, having gained a new sense ofcommon ground with the other world writers, increasingly lacked themarketing niche available to their predecessors.711

Birns and McNeer further write:

This crisis was perhaps expressed in the ‘Tasmanian novel’, popular inthe late 1990s and early 2000s. Novels by Julia Leigh, Chloe Hooper,and Richard Flanagan were set in Australia’s southernmost state andgained exposure abroad that was reminiscent of that garnered ten yearspreviously by the ‘class’ of Australian writers that included Carey,Malouf, and Winton. Flanagan’s Gould’s Book of Fish and Leigh’s TheHunter were, in part, brilliant allegories of tensions between the globaland the local that did not stand the universal in good light. But theirworks were nevertheless appreciated by readers presuming themselves‘universal’ and hankering after the token of the vanishing local color thatthe novels themselves thematized more rigorously. It was as if Tasmaniawas now the only part of Australia that was unique, and therebyappropriate for niche marketing. But the Tasmanian books also showedthat the spirit of Australian place had a particular appeal to aninternational audience. Ironically, the more cosmopolitan the writing, theless centered on place it appeared, the less the international audience wasprepared for it.712

Birns and McNeer are not alone in their observation:

Tasmania has always fascinated the literary world. An isolated islandhaunted by its ‘blood-soaked history’—this phrase appears again andagain—it has become disproportionately significant in Australian writing.So marked has this trend become that, according to one commentator, werisk the Tasmanianisation of Australian literature. Gould’s Book of Fish[by Richard Flanagan] and Chloe Hooper’s A Child’s Book of True Crimeare just two of a number of recent novels set in Tasmania (in 1999 therewere four) and both have had an enthusiastic reception overseas, theattraction being in no small measure due to their ‘blood-soaked’setting.713

The authors of these two excerpts clearly connect the international commercial success

of a certain type of Australian literature with its attention to issues of place, thereby

aligning Australian literature with the local and specific—that is, with the conventions

of regional literature—rather than with the ‘universal’.

711Ibid.712Ibid., 5–6.713Shirley Walker, ‘Coming and Going: A Literature of Place, Australian Fiction 2001–2002’, Westerly 47(Nov. 2002): 38–39.

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III. Postcolonial literature

Accordingly, both Western Australia and Australia can be understood as

peripheries dominated in their different spheres (the ‘national’ and the ‘international’,

respectively) by cultures residing elsewhere. There are parallels between this dynamic

and the dynamic responsible for producing postcolonial literature, a literary movement

that ‘emerged ... out of the experience of colonization and asserted [itself] by

foregrounding the tension with the colonial power, and emphasizing ... differences from

the assumptions of the imperial centre’.714 It has been said that all postcolonial societies

are ‘constituted by their difference from the metropolitan and it is in this relationship

that identity both as a distancing from the centre and as a means of self-assertion comes

into being’.715 It has also been remarked that ‘in settler colonies the first task seems to

be to establish that the texts can be shown to constitute a literature separate from that of

the metropolitan centre’.716 This is, of course, very similar to the centre versus

periphery articulation of regionalism discussed in Chapter 1 of this thesis; it also draws

upon one of the justifications for regionalism discussed in Chapter 1, the region as

distinctive. Furthermore, it should be noted that the postcolonial impulse ‘to constitute

a literature separate from that of the metropolitan centre’ is similar to Australian

literature’s trading in the local and specific in order to attract an overseas audience.

Nonetheless, there are a number of differences between literatures that are

traditionally held to be ‘postcolonial’ and those labelled ‘regional’. Arguably the most

important amongst these differences is that race is often a dominant factor in the former,

while location and access to the field of cultural production are more important in the

latter.717 In both postcolonial and regional literatures, however, ‘power’ or the

714Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in

Post-colonial Literatures (London: Routledge, 1989), 2.715Ibid., 167.716Ibid., 131–32.717Josephine Donovan, ‘Local-Color Literature and Modernity: The Example of Jewett’, Tamkang Review38, no. 1 (Dec. 2007): 23.

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domination of one culture by another could be said to encompass and most accurately

characterise the variety of dynamics that defines these categories.

Lip service has been paid to the ‘power of place and region’, but those

employing the phrase have rarely bothered to critically examine the ‘power’ of which

they are speaking. It is significant, for example, that Australian academics first

published on the subject of regionalism in the late 1970s but mostly in the 1980s, a time

when even the dominant discourse seemed to endorse challenges on issues such as race

and gender. Ken Gelder and Paul Salzman, in their 1989 publication The New

Diversity: Australian Fiction 1970–88, noted parallels in the emergence of regional

literature in Australia and that of other ‘minority’ literatures: ‘Looking back over the last

twenty years, the shifts in the construction of Australia and its regions parallel the

historical development of many social groups defined against the mainstream.’718

Gelder and Salzman use the phrase ‘social groups defined against the mainstream’ to

describe ethnic minority writers, as well as categories such as women’s literature, queer

literature and experimental literature. All of these categories of literature have been

explicitly shaped by their relation to the centres of power and by the idea of power.

Furthermore, it seems the development of these minority literatures in the 1970s and

‘80s was paralleled by ‘shifts in the construction of Australia and its regions’—in other

words, the growth of interest in regional literature.

However, regionalism and regional literature have almost never been framed in

reference to this larger conversation about power, which is one reason the effects of

regionalism are not more widely recognised or appreciated. Australia’s national literary

culture, on the other hand, found arguably its most potent articulation in a dialectic

about power. After all, Australian literature came to prominence as a region on the

international literary scene in no small part due to international interest in the study of

718Gelder and Salzman, 82.

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postcolonial literatures, which address structures of power as well as its distribution. It

is no small coincidence that the timeline describing serious scholarly interest in

postcolonial literature closely mirrors the rise of international interest in Australian

literature in the 1970s and ‘80s:

Employed by historians and political scientists after World War II interms such as the post-colonial state, ‘post-colonial’ then had a clearlychronological meaning, simply designating the post-independence period.By the late 1970s the terms had been used by a few literary critics tocharacterize the various cultural effects of colonization. ... Thedevelopment of colonial discourse theory in the work of Gayatri Spivakand Homi Bhaba, following on from Edward Said’s landmark workOrientalism (1978), provided a more theoretically stringent andconceptually original intervention into the debate about these issues.719

This timeline, in addition to earlier observations about the importance of power in the

formations of both postcolonial and regional literatures, suggests that an international

interest in postcolonial literature may have contributed to Australian literature being

taken more seriously as a regional contribution to the international literary community.

This parallel between postcolonial and regional literatures is not frequently

remarked upon, though it has been noted by at least one scholar that ‘regionalism

surfaced in Australian art discourse at roughly the same time it emerged in literary

debate, as part of a widespread anti-modernist, postcolonial critique’.720 Furthermore,

an American scholar remarked that ‘local-colorists’, a 19th-century manifestation of the

regional writer, ‘evince the “double vision” characteristic of the postcolonial author who

has one eye on the hegemonic audience and the other on their native subjects.

Translating from the latter to the former is what local-color literature does.’721 This idea

of regional literature ‘translating’ the ‘native subject’ of the region for a ‘hegemonic

719Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin, 197.720Diane Roberts, ‘The Implications of “Regionalism” for South West Contemporary Artists and Art

Practice’ (paper delivered at the Association for the Study of Australian Literature’s ‘Critical

Regionalism: Realizing the Local’ conference, Perth, 8–9 Feb. 2008), 2.721Donovan, 7.

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audience’ located in the cultural centres is particularly significant, since it has strong

parallels in postcolonial theory:

Ideas and images of self and place for peoples in the former whitecolonies of the British Empire have always been produced for others, thatis, for a metropolitan market (in the first instance, the place where thewhite settlers came from). Lacking a self-sustaining critical mass ofpopulation or financial capital, the settler society was shaped by forcesdictating that whatever is produced must also be exportable. This demandis not merely economic but cultural. In such places it determines thearticulation of self, of identity.722

In this excerpt, Stephen Turner makes the astute observation that ‘this demand’ in

postcolonial (and, I would add, regional) societies to produce ‘ideas and images of self

and place ... for others’, rather than for the ‘native subject’, ‘is not merely economic but

cultural’. He makes the mistake, however, of identifying the lack of ‘a self-sustaining

critical mass of population or financial capital’ as the only factors responsible for this

result. Rather, the ‘cultural’ aspects of the ‘demand’ placed on postcolonial and regional

societies are, at least in part, the result of cultural factors—namely, the imbalance of

cultural power between regional areas and the cultural centres, between postcolonial

societies and the metropolitan. Of course, some of this imbalance of cultural power is

the result of population or financial factors, but as has been comprehensively

demonstrated throughout this thesis, it would be a gross oversimplification to identify

these as the only relevant factors.

One outcome associated with writing for others, rather than for the ‘native

subject’, is that

celebrated postcolonial writers are typically situated in relation to anumber of underdeveloped locales, such that what Brennan calls the‘banners’ of geographical affiliation are always in sight: ‘Being from“there” in this sense is primarily a kind of literary passport that identifiesthe artist as being from a region of underdevelopment and pain.’ ... In fact

722Stephen Turner, ‘Colonialism Continued: Producing the Self for Export’, in Race, Colour and Identity

in Australia and New Zealand, ed. John Docker and Gerhard Fischer (Sydney: University of New SouthWales Press, 2000), 218.

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these writers in part succeed because of their ostensible attachment tospecific locations.723

This is similar to another observation—this one by several prominent scholars of

postcolonial literature—that one of the few things ‘each of these [postcolonial]

literatures has in common’ is that each possesses ‘special and distinctive regional

characteristics’.724 Apparently, success as a postcolonial writer is often associated with

the writer’s ‘ostensible attachment to specific locations’, since place and location are

typically accorded great significance by ‘the institutions and circumstances that make

up the field of postcolonial literature’.725 Of course, this is similar to the aforementioned

observation that ‘Australian writers were praised for having specifically Australian

content’. It also bears a strong resemblance to the pressures to which regional writers

and writing are subjected, such that it should be no surprise that Tim Winton is Western

Australia’s most famous literary export—his work is deeply engaged with the local and

specific of the Western Australian landscape.

Winton has, for this reason, contributed immeasurably to the production of a

regional literature in Western Australia. Indeed, he is the first writer most people think

of when ‘Western Australian literature’ is mentioned, and his descriptions of Western

Australian locations have shaped the perceptions of locals and visitors to Western

Australia alike, not to mention influenced a generation of Western Australian and

Australian writers. However, this thesis does not examine his contribution in any

significant way, since none of the works for which Winton is best known—his novels

and short story collections—were published by a Western Australian publishing house;

and beyond just studying the production of a regional literature, this thesis is concerned

723Sarah Brouillette, Postcolonial Writers in the Global Literary Marketplace (Houndmills: PalgraveMacmillan, 2007), 61, quoting Timothy Brennan, At Home in the World: Cosmopolitanism Now(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 38.724Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin, 2.725Brouillette, 2.

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with the various ways in which a regional culture can be encouraged through local

efforts to lay claim to cultural influence in the literary sphere.

For the purposes of this thesis, the anecdote about Tim Winton and, indeed, the

larger point about regional and postcolonial literatures functioning in similar ways,

serve as examples of how,

if we are to fully understand the power and effect of texts on shapingwhat we call objective reality, we need to consider the texts not only inthemselves as formal constructions through which our ideas are shapedbut also as themselves products of large-scale institutions through whichthe particular shape and form they assume is determined. It is clearly alot more difficult to continue with the myth of the independent author inthe context of a scenario such as that of Heinemann’s influence in Nigeriain the late 1950s and 1960s than in the context of the much moreobscured force of such institutions in societies such as Britain, America,or even Australia.726

Similar ‘institutions’ to those that determine the ‘particular shape and form’ of

postcolonial literatures can also impact on the production of regional literatures. The

above excerpt mentions the publishing house Heinemann, for example, and its influence

on postcolonial Nigerian literature, while this thesis examines the production of a

regional literature in Western Australia by the state’s three major publishing houses—

Fremantle Press, Magabala Books and University of Western Australia Press.

Publishing houses clearly function in any marginalised culture (whether postcolonial,

regional, and so forth) as particularly significant symbols (and, of course, literal

manifestations) of the field of cultural production; it should not be forgotten, however,

that the experience of being marginalised is arguably the greatest influence of all, as this

experience has the ability to shape a publishing programme, as well as all the other

‘institutions and circumstances’ that define a local culture.

726Griffiths, 133.

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IV. The contemporary relevance of regionalism and regional literature

Of course, as Ashcroft, Griffiths and Tiffin note in their seminal work The

Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-colonial Literatures, the process of

identifying a marginalised culture might be complicated by the existence of ‘conflicting

postures of the dominant society which might itself be subtly dominated by another

power’.727 This phenomenon was mentioned in Chapter 4 of this thesis with reference

to Magabala Books and Indigenous literature more generally. Similarly, the

aforementioned authors elaborate this point:

In Australia ... Aboriginal writing provides an excellent example of adominated literature, while that of white Australia has characteristics of adominating one in relation to it. Yet white Australian literature isdominated in its turn by a relationship with Britain and Englishliterature.728

Chapter 4 describes how Indigenous literature is perhaps more comfortably

accommodated within the field of regional literature than in analogous contexts.

Similar claims have been made about regional literature and other minorities:

‘Regionalism ... affords literary access to women, African Americans, and ethnic

immigrants and “made the experience of the socially marginalized into a literary asset,

and so made marginality itself a positive authorial advantage”.’729 Nonetheless,

Indigenous literature is also clearly marginalised within the field of regional literature,

just as regional literature is marginalised within the national literary tradition, and

Australia’s national literary tradition is marginalised within the international literary

community. Even within a regional literary tradition, it could be argued that a hierarchy

is constructed (or replicated) within a larger social context, typically presenting cultural

727Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin, 31.728Ibid.729Joseph Yu, ‘Editor’s Note’, Tamkang Review 38, no. 1 (Dec. 2007): 3–4, quoting Richard H. Brodhead,

‘Regionalism and the Upper Class’, in Rethinking Class: Literary Studies and Social Formations, ed. WaiChee Dimock and Michael T. Gilmore (New York City: Columbia University Press, 1994), 151.

335

centres as the dominant elite, with regional centres and rural outposts occupying lower

levels of the structure respectively.730

As has been argued at various points in this thesis, access (or a lack thereof) to

the field of cultural production plays a significant role in establishing and shaping an

identity for each of these marginalised constituencies. Indeed, it is the very thing that

subjugates one community to another. However, this does not explain why at certain

historical moments regionalism and regional literature are seen as particularly relevant

concerns and a flourish of activity surrounds them. Earlier, the publishing house

Heinemann was mentioned for its role in the 1950s and ‘60s in shaping a postcolonial

Nigerian literature and, indeed, cultivating interest in postcolonial literatures, more

generally. Oxford University Press also contributed to the popularisation of

postcolonial literature, most notably in Africa in the 1960s and ‘70s; its involvement

and the involvement of publishing houses like it has been attributed to ‘the new African

nations’ investment in education’ and the money they expected could be made from this

development.731 In other words, changes in the larger field of cultural production

spurred this development. Similarly, changes in government policy with regard to

literature and the arts played a significant role in shaping critical and popular interest in

the subjects of regionalism and regional literature in Australia. As was mentioned in

Chapter 3 of this thesis, the formation by the Australian Government of the Literature

Board in 1973 brought a four-fold increase in literature funding to just over one million

730Anecdotal evidence of this phenomenon comes in the form of anxieties expressed during interviews for

this thesis by several residents of the town of Broome in Western Australia’s far north Kimberley region.These anxieties concerned recent depictions of the Kimberley region by noted Western Australian writersWinton and Drewe (in their novels Dirt Music and Grace, respectively). The residents were only too

happy to claim Winton and Drewe as Western Australian writers and expressed a considerable affinity forthis category, so long as these two writers did not venture too far from the geographical areas with whichthey have well-known associations, mainly Perth, its suburbs, and the southwest of Western Australian.Within the aforementioned hierarchy, it would seem it is acceptable to write from a more marginalised to

a less marginalised (or even central) position, but the inverse is somehow less acceptable. An Australianwriter of Anglo-Celtic descent writing a story from the perspective of an Indigenous narrator might elicita similar reaction, although the intensity of the response is variable depending on the communitiesinvolved.731Caroline Davis, ‘The Politics of Postcolonial Publishing: Oxford University Press’s Three CrownsSeries 1962–1976’, Book History 8 (2005): 229.

336

dollars.732 This funding ‘played a major role in the encouragement of cultural

diversification’ in Australia, in particular the interest in regional literature.733 New

avenues for publication were opened with the help of Literature Board funding,

including several specifically devoted to the promotion of regional interests.

This thesis is not, however, exclusively concerned with history and historical

detail; it also aims to make a case for the contemporary relevance of the ideas raised

concerning regionalism and regional literature. Yet, there has been no recent change in

the field of cultural production comparable to Africa’s investment in education or

Australia’s investment in literature that sparked an interest in postcolonial and regional

literatures respectively, which would make these ideas seem particularly relevant to the

present moment. Instead, the contemporary relevance of regionalism and regional

literature depends on factors similar to those that gave rise to arguably the most famous

regional literature in the world—the literature of the American South, in particular in

the 1920s and ‘30s:

The regionalists of the interwar years were not the first to awaken to thepossibilities of a regionally differentiated nation. ... But it was under thepressures of modernization and industrialization, especially in thenineteenth and twentieth centuries, that the personal landscape of theregion began to assume for a long line of artists and intellectuals a certainutility as a device for art, social commentary, and political expression.734

It was noted in the Introduction to this thesis that regional literature first emerged in the

United States in a form roughly approximating a genre in the period following the

conclusion of the Civil War, a time of great change and, more specifically, rapid

modernisation. It was also noted that there was a resurgence of interest in regional

literatures in the United States in the 1920s (carrying over into the 1930s), another

period of concentrated modernisation following the conclusion of World War I. Indeed,

732Shapcott, The Literature Board, 8.

733Headon, xix.734Robert L. Dorman, Revolt of the Provinces: The Regionalist Movement in America, 1920–1945 (ChapelHill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993), xiii.

337

regional literature has been characterised as ‘an early expression of what became a

widespread cultural resistance to the colonizations of modernity’.735

The contemporary relevance of regionalism and regional literature is not located

as a ‘resistance to the colonizations of modernity’, per se, but rather as a resistance to

and critique of the processes associated with globalisation. Of course, both

modernisation and globalisation represent challenges to the notion of ‘cultural

pluralism’.736 Modernisation in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the United States

was strongly associated with industrialisation, which was perceived as a threat to local

cultures, since it placed a premium on efficiency resulting from regulation and

homogenisation. Globalisation is seen as fulfilling much the same role in the early 21st

century, even though its methods differ. Thus,

to the extent that ... cultures could be identified not merely as ‘American’but only in their association with particular geographic and historicalregions of the country, the regionalist ethic of pluralism became moredirectly an ideological construct, commenting on the distribution ofpower among and within the various sections of the nation, andupholding heterogeneity over homogeneity.737

This concept of ‘upholding heterogeneity over homogeneity’ is paramount to the

concerns of regionalism and regional literature. Therefore, ‘one response’ to

homogeneity (in whatever form it presents itself—globalisation, modernisation, and so

forth) is

resistance and even a kind of cultural reversion. ... Surrender to the lawsof the global village is not the only available option. On the contrary ...one viable response to feelings of being marginalized is to build on themargins, to root one’s thinking precisely in the sense of beingdisempowered and different.738

This excerpt captures the sentiment of a significant conclusion expressed in Chapter 4

of this thesis: the book publishing industry in Western Australia could benefit from

735Donovan, 8.736Dorman, xii.737Ibid.738Richard Gray, ‘Writing Southern Cultures’, in A Companion to the Literature and Culture of theAmerican South, ed. Richard Gray and Owen Robinson (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 6–7.

338

recreating that ‘sense of being disempowered and different’—that is, recreating its

regional identity. Individuals associated with this industry often place too much

emphasis on the influence of other instruments in the field of cultural production, such

as changes in government funding and book retailing practices, and not nearly enough

emphasis on the very significant contributions that publishing houses themselves are

capable of making as instruments of cultural production. A publishing house committed

to presenting an image of itself and its native region, not to mention the inhabitants of

that region, as different and somehow special, is going to contribute to the establishment

and direct the future growth of a larger culture that values that difference. And not just

that difference, but a culture that values difference more generally.

The conceptual framework for understanding regionalism and regional literature,

which has been outlined in this thesis, is of potentially great importance to the book

publishing industry in Western Australia. Moreover, this framework contributes to a

much larger conversation about power and influence in the literary field of cultural

production, especially as these dynamics manifest themselves in relation to geography.

Thus, this thesis has implications for the book publishing industry not only in Western

Australia, but also in other regional areas of Australia. Its conclusions can, furthermore,

be generalised to address relevant issues in Australia as a whole, as well as other

culturally marginalised parts of the world (including in particular all postcolonial

societies, since geography uniformly combines with race and other factors to abet their

cultural dislocation and marginalisation).

The implications of these conclusions should not, however, be misconstrued as

relevant only in a trade or industry context. This concern is reflective of an awareness

that, ‘until recent years, publishing has constituted the academy’s medium for research

dissemination rather than its explicit subject’.739 However, the field of publishing

739Simone Murray, ‘Publishing Studies: Critically Mapping Research in Search of a Discipline’,

Publishing Research Quarterly 22, no. 4 (2001): 3.

339

studies ‘is currently experiencing a sense of urgency arising from both scholars and

their institutions to reconfigure itself as a critical—rather than merely a descriptive or

vocational—field’.740 In order to accomplish this goal, the scholarly study of the

publishing industry must overcome a major institutional hurdle:

Frequently, work analysing contemporary book publishing industrydynamics exists at the periphery of academic sub-disciplines such asliterary studies, bibliography and librarianship, communication, mediaand cultural studies, sociology, history, or in research centres focussedupon interdisciplinary topics such as gender, sexualities or nationalidentities. As a result, research about contemporary book publishing isoften in the ignominious position of being regarded as a fringeintellectual undertaking by groups themselves wedded to the principle ofinterdisciplinarity.741

With no single, clear-cut disciplinary home, studies of the publishing industry risk being

marginalised within the scholarly community. Yet, it is important for this community to

recognise the publishing industry, not to mention scholarly study of the publishing

industry, for what it is—‘an agent in complex global cultural flows’ which has profound

implications for virtually every scholarly endeavour, not to mention on culture when it

is more broadly conceived as the ‘way of life and manner of living of a people’.742 It

would seem, however, that there is still a long way to go in this regard:

Despite ‘the history of the book’ and similar projects, it is still possible tothink of these aspects of production, distribution and governance asinessential, almost accidental, in relation to literature—even opposed toliterature—in ways that do not even begin to make sense in other fieldsof culture. In short, we have scarcely begun to talk about literature as aform of public-commercial-aesthetic institution comparable to cinema,television or popular music. More precisely, we have consideredliterature this way, and uncontroversially, when it has been removed fromthe realm of immediate cultural value: the further removed from culturalcapital the texts are the more easily we read them historically—hence thereally interesting ongoing work on the nineteenth century in Australia.743

740Ibid.741Ibid.742Ibid., 6.743David Carter, ‘Good Readers and Good Citizens: Literature, Media and the Nation’, AustralianLiterary Studies 19, no. 2 (Oct. 1999): 141.

340

Clearly, the study of contemporary book publishing occupies particularly tenuous

territory in the scholarly realm.

Book history, print culture studies and publishing studies, along with literary

studies and cultural studies, roughly approximate a disciplinary map of the types of

research that constitute this thesis. The former three disciplines or sub-disciplines, in

particular, are regarded as ‘a fringe intellectual undertaking’; when applied to the

subject of contemporary book publishing, as in the case of this thesis, they are further

marginalised. Literary studies and cultural studies, on the other hand, are better

established as academic disciplines and fields of scholarly research. Yet, their primary

application in the context of this thesis—the subject of regionalism and regional

literature—is at least as peripheral as publishing studies.

Regionalism is a topic of peripheral interest, at least as far as scholarly research

and academia are concerned, because those who are most likely to be affected by and

thus interested in the topic, are also those who are most disempowered as a result of its

attendant dynamics. The ‘power of place and region’ is vested with those most

disempowered, with the marginal and peripheral. In his foreword to Raymond D.

Gastil’s Cultural Regions of the United States, Nathan Glazer writes,

Gastil points out sadly ‘how small a constructive role academics play inthe regions in which they reside’. He ascribes this charitably to theirmobility. One may also point to the features of their disciplines andrecruitment patterns which set the eyes of academics on distant andabstract topics rather than the vivid reality around them.744

Perhaps a majority of academics also subscribe to the widespread belief that, ‘with the

Internet and modern telecommunication and transportation systems ... it is no longer

necessary for people who work together to be together, so they won’t be’.745 However,

as Richard Florida goes on to explain, ‘never has a myth been easier to deflate. ... Place

744Nathan Glazer, foreword to Cultural Regions of the United States, by Raymond D. Gastil (Seattle:

University of Washington Press, 1975), x.745Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class (New York: Basic Books, 2002), 219.

341

and community are more critical factors than ever before. And a good deal of the

reason for this is that ... the economy itself increasingly takes form around real

concentrations of people in real places.’746 Florida is not alone in this observation: ‘The

only indispensable material factor in the generation of power is the living together of

people. Only where men [sic] live so close together that the potentialities for action are

always present will power remain with them.’747 Academics regularly employ

universities as physical sites around which power (in the form of knowledge and

disciplinary expertise, but also funding, grant administration, and so forth) concentrates,

and yet there exists little evidence in the literary scholarly record of ‘the region’ being

highly valued as a research topic. In Australia, this interest scarcely extends outside the

bounds of a single decade, the 1980s, and a small group of critics. One possible reason

for this oversight is that some of the structures of power that prop them up, are the same

structures that hinder the cause of regionalism.

However, the literary scholarly community ignores ‘the power of place and

region’ at its own peril, as it is a highly valued feature in society at large: ‘A 2002

survey of 4,000 recent college graduates, reported in The Wall Street Journal, found that

three-quarters of them identified location as more important than the availability of a

job when selecting a place to live.’748 Also, ‘in a survey of 960 people looking to switch

jobs, reported in The Wall Street Journal in July 2001, location ranked second only to

salary (chosen by 25 percent versus 32 percent) as the prime motivation for

switching’.749 Florida attributes the high value ascribed to place to the fact that

place provides an increasingly important dimension of our identity.Fewer people today find lifelong identity in the company for which theywork. We live in a world where many traditional institutions have ceasedto provide meaning, stability and support. ... The combination of where

746Ibid.747Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 201.748Florida, xix.749Ibid., 96.

342

we live and what we do has come to replace who we work for as a mainelement of identity.750

Place as an increasingly important and even a ‘main element of identity’ is perhaps the

best possible explanation for the contemporary relevance of regionalism and regional

literature.

Of course, ‘a perceived grouping based upon place and similar ways of life

represents one form among many’.751 Furthermore, ‘the existence of a “regional group”

may defy clear definition from the objective measures of a social scientist’; in other

words, a certain type of critical or scholarly examination may raise questions about the

validity of claims regarding the existence of an identifiable region and derivative

regional identity.752 An example of this perspective was quoted in the Introduction to

this thesis, where it was observed that ‘many cities have indulged in some interesting, if

rather desperate, ploys to proclaim their, and thus their inhabitants’, particularity’.753

The same author, Wilbur Zelinsky, insists that ‘many cities, towns, and other

localities ... have reacted to the perils of placelessness and labor to sustain or fabricate

some semblance of distinctiveness’ (emphasis mine).754 Yet, even if, as Zelinsky seems

to suggest, some regions exist only as the collective figment of their inhabitants’

imagination, these regions ‘may nonetheless be “real” as a relatively subjective

phenomenon that appears to influence human actions’.755

The following excerpt concerning regions and regional identities in the United

States illustrates one way in which regions ‘influence human actions’:

Southerners are, arguably, the most self-conscious and distinctive of themajor American regional groups and have therefore received moreattention than the others, at least explicitly. (Certainly we know a great

750Ibid., 229.751J. Nicholas Entrikin, The Betweenness of Place: Towards a Geography of Modernity (Baltimore: JohnsHopkins University Press, 1991), 54.752Ibid.753Zelinsky, 141.754Ibid., 138.755Entrikin, 54.

343

deal about the Northeast, but studies of that region are seldom seen as‘regional’; they are, rather, thought to be ‘American’.)756

Overlooking one region while assuming that another is representative of the nation—

assuming it is not, in fact, a ‘region’ but the ‘whole’—is a particularly influential form

of human action. This dynamic has shaped the development of cultural industries in

Western Australia, which in turn shape a regional or Western Australian identity. The

three publishing houses detailed in this thesis are notable examples of this cycle of

influence; they are disadvantaged by many of the forces associated with their

geographical distance from the traditional centres of book publishing, while at the same

time producing a regional literature that serves as a platform from which the state

broadcasts its distinctive contributions to the cultural landscape and to a wider

understanding of concepts like space, place and belonging. The results benefit not only

Western Australian writers and their personal economies, but also all residents of

Western Australia, as well as readers-at-large who benefit by virtue of a diversification

of the literary voices they receive.

756John Shelton Reed, 15.

344

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