'This book explores the fin de siècle, an era of powerful global movements and turbulent transition, in Australia and beyond through a series of biographical microhistories. From the first wave feminist Rose Summerfield and the working class radical John Dwyer, to the indigenous rights advocate David Unaipon and the poet Christopher Brennan, Hearn traces the transnational identities, philosophies, ideas and cultures that characterised this era.
'Examining the struggles and aspirations of fin de siècle lives; respect for the rights of women and indigenous peoples, the injustices and hardship inflicted on working men and women, and the ways in which they imagined a better world, this book examines the transformation and renewal brought about by fin de siècle ideas. It examines the distinctive characteristics of this 'great acceleration' of economic, technological and cultural forces that swept the globe at the turn of the 19th century both within an Australian context and on the world stage. Asserting that the fin de siècle was significant for the making of modern Australia, and demonstrating the impact Australian fin de siècle lives had on the transnational and global movements of the era, Mark Hearn traces the turbulent nature of the fin de siècle imagination in Australia, and its response to these dynamic forces.' (Publication summary)
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Ends and Beginnings: Life and Mind at the Australian Fin de Siècle
1. The Bush Undertaker: Henry Lawson and the Stragglers of the Second Industrial Revolution
2. Rose Summerfield Imagines a New Woman
3. The Wanderer: Christopher Brennan's Two Lives in Fin de Siècle Sydney
4. 'A Modern Eve': Vida Goldstein Stands for Parliament
5. 'Some Disquieting Symptoms': Alfred Deakin's Nervous Breakdown
6. David Unaipon, 'The Super-Aborigine'
7. John Dwyer's Family Stories
Conclusion: Fin de Siècle Afterlife
Endnotes
Bibliography
Index
'In The Fin de Siècle Imagination in Australia, 1890–1914, Mark Hearn uses a biographical method to investigate the influence of ‘powerful movements’ and new ideas on seven select Australian writers, activists, and politicians, who are distinguished by their differences of race, class, and gender. The test subjects, in order, are the working-class writer Henry Lawson; the feminist activists Rose Summerfield and Vida Goldstein; the poet and academic Christopher Brennan; the journalist-turned-politician and, ultimately, prime minister Alfred Deakin; the First Nations writer and inventor David Unaipon; and the working-class activist John Dwyer. The book is organised into an introduction, the seven biographical chapters, and a brief conclusion.' (Introduction)
'The primary aim of Mark Hearn’s The Fin de Siècle Imagination in Australia is to chart interactions between the rise of Australian nationalism and the global conditions that facilitated this political establishment. By focusing on how ‘global exchanges’ (4) of various kinds contributed to ‘the emerging Australian nation’ (5), Hearn draws on recent fin de siècle scholarship by Michael Saler and others as he seeks to interrogate the older myths that were content to promote Australian culture as a repository of bush mateship and pastoral separatism. Instead, Hearn emphasises the impact of the telegraph, undersea cables and other new forms of communication technology, and he suggests convincingly how ‘Australia helped to shape the global fin de siècle’ (6), actively participating in the creative energies associated in manifold ways with the contradictory worlds of intellectual degeneration and progressive politics.' (Introduction)
'The primary aim of Mark Hearn’s The Fin de Siècle Imagination in Australia is to chart interactions between the rise of Australian nationalism and the global conditions that facilitated this political establishment. By focusing on how ‘global exchanges’ (4) of various kinds contributed to ‘the emerging Australian nation’ (5), Hearn draws on recent fin de siècle scholarship by Michael Saler and others as he seeks to interrogate the older myths that were content to promote Australian culture as a repository of bush mateship and pastoral separatism. Instead, Hearn emphasises the impact of the telegraph, undersea cables and other new forms of communication technology, and he suggests convincingly how ‘Australia helped to shape the global fin de siècle’ (6), actively participating in the creative energies associated in manifold ways with the contradictory worlds of intellectual degeneration and progressive politics.' (Introduction)
'In The Fin de Siècle Imagination in Australia, 1890–1914, Mark Hearn uses a biographical method to investigate the influence of ‘powerful movements’ and new ideas on seven select Australian writers, activists, and politicians, who are distinguished by their differences of race, class, and gender. The test subjects, in order, are the working-class writer Henry Lawson; the feminist activists Rose Summerfield and Vida Goldstein; the poet and academic Christopher Brennan; the journalist-turned-politician and, ultimately, prime minister Alfred Deakin; the First Nations writer and inventor David Unaipon; and the working-class activist John Dwyer. The book is organised into an introduction, the seven biographical chapters, and a brief conclusion.' (Introduction)
