Literature and Politics

In the literary production in the first half of twentieth century Australia, authors' choices of genres were often strategic based on reception of their work, markets and family income in context of the dominance of the British publishing industry. With the emergence of an independent publishing industry in Australia, the University of Queensland Press was transformed into a dynamic, creative and experimental press especially in the halycon days of Australian publishing 1965 to 1995. Recently Darcy Randall, former senior fiction editor at UQP, has argued the importance of the 'clearing of the imagination'. Readers bring with them  'thickets of misconceptions' especially where the canon is impoverished - such as that in Australian women's biography (until the early 1970s).  This paper will address shifts across the genres through the examination of  UQP's backlist of biography, life-writing and autobiography, written by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian women, contextualised in context of agency and embodiment, that is historical, material and ideological practice. It will focus on intertextual dialogues and layers of meanings in feminist biographies and research such as in Emma Miller, issues of authenticity in Barbara Hanrahan's fictional biographies notably Flawless Jade, autobiographical fiction and exposure such as Oh Lucky Country by Rosa Cappiello and the memoirs a of the early Indigenous David Unaipon Award winners. In a broader frame the paper will address gender and the role of the publisher in the formation of the canon.

Currently working with Professor Ivor Indyk,  David Carter and others on the 'Economies of Literary Publishing' in Australia, 1965-1995, as a Research Fellow in the School of English, Media Studies and Art History, Deborah Jordan is a historian, writer, and biographer  - of Nettie Palmer Search for an Aesthetic - and more recently working on an edition of the Palmers' courtship correspondence.