Cirrus@Austlit

'There was a time when the study of Australian literature was the wild west, something that took place beyond the institutions, along the fringes and margins of journals, little magazines and newspapers. If the current institutional decay of the humanities and arts within universities is leading to the new-found surety of the discipline fraying a touch at the edges, it is nonetheless evident that the study of Australian literature has come a long way. And yet, it remains a remarkable fact that—whether we consider its origin point in those early days where men and women of letters compiled rudimentary histories, from the appointment of the first lecturer in Australian literature in 1941, or the appointment of the first professor of Australian literature in 1962 (G. A. Wilkes, see Carter 144)—no one across that great span of time has attempted to tell a standalone history of its most popular form: the novel. Given the rapid expansion of Australian publishing in the second half of the twentieth century and early twenty-first, the nature of this task has become more herculean with each passing year. With the publication of The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel, edited by David Carter, the long wait is over.' 

(Introduction)