'During the 19th century, throughout the Anglophone world, most fiction was first published in periodicals. In Australia, newspapers were not only the main source of periodical fiction, but the main source of fiction in general. Because of their importance as fiction publishers, and because they provided Australian readers with access to stories from around the world—from Britain, America and Australia, as well as Austria, Canada, France, Germany, New Zealand, Russia, South Africa, and beyond—Australian newspapers represent an important record of the transnational circulation and reception of fiction in this period.
Investigating almost 10,000 works of fiction in the world’s largest open-access collection of mass-digitized historical newspapers (the National Library of Australia’s Trove database), A World of Fiction reconceptualizes how fiction traveled globally, and was received and understood locally, in the 19th century. Katherine Bode’s innovative approach to the new digital collections that are transforming research in the humanities is a model of how digital tools can transform how we understand digital collections and interpret literatures in the past.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
'This article combines Indigenous mobility studies with recent work on seriality and periodical form to examine how the structural necessities of serialised periodical fiction reinforced representations of settler and Aboriginal mobilities for Australian readers across the nineteenth century. It considers the limits or gaps in the project of Australian settlement that these serial texts highlight through an exploration of how settler authors formulated ideologically acceptable and more ‘suspect’ manifestations of Aboriginal mobilities and persistence. Building upon Katherine Bode’s work in World of Fiction (2018) on Aboriginal presence in nineteenth-century Australian periodical fiction, this article considers how the structure of the serial itself worked to reinforce – and occasionally disrupt – perceptions of Aboriginal-settler frontier violence and white supremacy. It also explores moments of settler discomfort and unsettlement in these serial texts that operate as counterpoints to the larger imperatives of this periodical fiction to support and reinforce the colonial project. By aligning the disruptive potential of these serial narratives and their representations of Aboriginal and settler mobilities, I argue we can uncover moments when these texts appear to resist the rhetoric of forward momentum and advancement traditionally associated with narratives of colonial modernity.' (Publication abstract)
'This article proposes speculative bibliography as an experimental approach to the digitised archive, in which textual associations are constituted propositionally, iteratively, and (sometimes) temporarily, as the result of probabilistic computational models. Speculative bibliography is offered as a complement to digital scholarly editing, and as a direct response to the challenges of scale and labour that will make comprehensive editing of digital archives impossible. Rather than acting on specific, individual texts, a speculative bibliography enacts a scholarly theory of the text through a computational model, reorganising the archive to evidence a particular idea of textual relation or interaction. Such models, in which textual relationships are determined by formal, internal textual structures, constitute bibliographic arguments that can be verified, amended, extended, or contested on either humanistic or computational grounds.' (Publication abstract)
'Katherine Bode has written a bold and illuminating book. A World of Fiction: Digital Collections and the Future of Literary History asks difficult questions and is groundbreaking in its interpretations. Treating Australian literature with tools and insights drawn from digital humanities, her work has important implications for literary study writ large.'
Source: Abstract.
'Katherine Bode has written a bold and illuminating book. A World of Fiction: Digital Collections and the Future of Literary History asks difficult questions and is groundbreaking in its interpretations. Treating Australian literature with tools and insights drawn from digital humanities, her work has important implications for literary study writ large.'
Source: Abstract.
'This article combines Indigenous mobility studies with recent work on seriality and periodical form to examine how the structural necessities of serialised periodical fiction reinforced representations of settler and Aboriginal mobilities for Australian readers across the nineteenth century. It considers the limits or gaps in the project of Australian settlement that these serial texts highlight through an exploration of how settler authors formulated ideologically acceptable and more ‘suspect’ manifestations of Aboriginal mobilities and persistence. Building upon Katherine Bode’s work in World of Fiction (2018) on Aboriginal presence in nineteenth-century Australian periodical fiction, this article considers how the structure of the serial itself worked to reinforce – and occasionally disrupt – perceptions of Aboriginal-settler frontier violence and white supremacy. It also explores moments of settler discomfort and unsettlement in these serial texts that operate as counterpoints to the larger imperatives of this periodical fiction to support and reinforce the colonial project. By aligning the disruptive potential of these serial narratives and their representations of Aboriginal and settler mobilities, I argue we can uncover moments when these texts appear to resist the rhetoric of forward momentum and advancement traditionally associated with narratives of colonial modernity.' (Publication abstract)
'This article proposes speculative bibliography as an experimental approach to the digitised archive, in which textual associations are constituted propositionally, iteratively, and (sometimes) temporarily, as the result of probabilistic computational models. Speculative bibliography is offered as a complement to digital scholarly editing, and as a direct response to the challenges of scale and labour that will make comprehensive editing of digital archives impossible. Rather than acting on specific, individual texts, a speculative bibliography enacts a scholarly theory of the text through a computational model, reorganising the archive to evidence a particular idea of textual relation or interaction. Such models, in which textual relationships are determined by formal, internal textual structures, constitute bibliographic arguments that can be verified, amended, extended, or contested on either humanistic or computational grounds.' (Publication abstract)
