Issue Details: First known date: 2022... 2022 Australian Women Writers’ Popular Non-fiction Prose in the Pre-war Period : Exploring Their Motivations
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'Since the 1970s, feminist scholars have undertaken important critical work on Australian women’s writing of earlier eras, profiling and promoting their fiction. Less attention has been afforded to the popular non-fiction produced by Australian women writers and, in particular, to that produced before the Second World War. Yet this writing is important for several reasons. First, the non-fiction writing of Australian women was voluminous and popular with readers. Second, this popular work critically engaged with a tumultuous political, social and moral landscape in which, as women’s rights were increasingly realized through legislation, the subjectivity of women themselves was fluid and contested. Third, as many of these women were also, or principally, fiction writers, their non-fiction can be shown to have informed and influenced many of their fictional interests, themes and characters. Lastly, and critically, popular non-fiction publication helped to financially sustain many of these writers. In proposing a conceptual framework informed by the work of Pierre Bourdieu to analyse examples of this body of work, this article not only suggests that important connections exist between popular and mainstream non-fiction works – newspaper and magazine articles, essays, pamphlets and speeches – and the fictional publications of Australian women writers of the early twentieth century but also suggests that these connections may represent an Australian literary habitus where writing across genre, form and audience was a professional approach that built and sustained literary careers.' (Publication abstract) 

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon The Australasian Journal of Popular Culture vol. 11 no. 1-2 2022 25600139 2022 periodical issue

    'In our twenty-first century context, we tell stories through the foods we eat, the images we share, the people we follow on social media, the shows we watch and the music we listen to. From film to television, from Twitter accounts to the latest fandom trend, popular culture provides us with channels through which our narratives of everyday can transform from immaterial notions to very material and tangible objects of consumption. At the centre of our ways of storytelling lies the formation of our identities. This editorial introduces a Special Issue of the Australasian Journal of Popular Culture that is focused on exploring the many complex intersections between storytelling, identity and popular culture.' (Lorna Piatti-Farnell; Gwyneth Peaty; Ashleigh Prosser : Editorial introduction)

    2022
    pg. 63-80
Last amended 4 Jan 2023 09:02:30
63-80 Australian Women Writers’ Popular Non-fiction Prose in the Pre-war Period : Exploring Their Motivationssmall AustLit logo The Australasian Journal of Popular Culture
Subjects:
  • 1930s
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