Armand Jerome Armand Jerome i(A42319 works by)
Gender: Male
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BiographyHistory

There is no information about the early life of Armand Jerome, prior to his 'bursting upon Sydney like a brilliant meteor' in the early years of the 1890s, as one contemporary report phrased it. Jerome quickly gained the favour of numerous people in Sydney's theatre and bohemian circles by treating them to picnics and lavish suppers, and by passing as a relative of the British writer Jerome K. Jerome.

Jerome said he had come to Australia from a visit to America, and he was generally regarded as a worldly, talented man who could play the piano, speak several languages, and who 'dallied with literature now and then merely as a recreation'. He showed his commitment to literature by founding Cosmos Magazine in 1894. While in Sydney, Jerome lived at the elegant Australia Hotel, which stimulated the sense that he was a wealthy man. At first, his creditors were generous, but in 1896 rumours started spreading that he was an impostor. Soon after, one of his creditors denounced Jerome for forging some documents in order to borrow ten pounds, which led to the issue of an arrest warrant in July of that year. By this time Jerome had left his usual place of residence, and the authorities initially believed that he had fled New South Wales.

Some four months after the event, Detectives Goulder and Hinds followed leads that pointed to Jerome's hiding place in Liverpool, thirty kilometres from Sydney. After seeing Jerome walking in the street, one of the detectives approached him and escorted him to the boarding house where he had been living under a false name. Newspaper accounts of the event remark approvingly on Jerome's courteousness towards the detectives, the fact that he was clean shaven, and that he changed his linen before being taken into custody at the Water Police Court (now the Justice and Police Museum in Sydney).

Armand Jerome was charged with forgery and sentenced to three years' imprisonment.

Jerome married journalist, author and playwright Nellie Bruton (Helen Jerome) in Sydney in 1900.

Most Referenced Works

Notes

  • Many sources assert that 'Armand Jerome' was a pseudonym used by Ernest Favenc but research by Rachael Weaver ( 'Cosmos Magazine and Its Contexts', ASAL conference paper, July 2011), and columns in the Australian press in 1895 and 1896 confirm that Jerome was a real person.

Awards for Works

y separately published work icon Cosmos Magazine Cosmos Sydney : 1894-1899 Z185625 1894-1899 periodical (53 issues)

Cosmos: An Illustrated Australian Magazine was a monthly literary journal published in Sydney from 1 September 1894 until 31 May 1899. Featuring the work of many well-known colonial Australian writers as well as playing host to a range of more obscure ones; Cosmos offers a vivid insight into the lively colonial Australian literary scene during the final years of the nineteenth century. Though relatively short-lived compared with publications such as the Australian Journal, Cosmos managed to survive—and briefly flourish—in a market that was flooded with many imported journals, including special colonial editions of periodicals such as Britain's Review of Reviews and the American-based Scribner's Magazine, as well as popular local publications such as the Sydney Bulletin. The self-consciousness with which Cosmos considered its position within this marketplace is one of the interesting things about it. All too aware of the ephemerality of many colonial literary enterprises, Cosmos was often explicit in addressing the question of what qualities were necessary for a magazine's survival. 'Our Local Contemporaries,' an article written by Annie Bright for the May 1895 issue, for example, offers a valuable insight into the colonial Australian journal scene, as she works to carve out a place for Cosmos amid Sydney's 'immense quantity of reading matter with its four daily journals, to say nothing of the twenty weekly papers and twenty-two periodicals of diverse kinds.'

Cosmos's founder and first editor was Armand Jerome, a flamboyant figure who became well known in Sydney's bohemian theatrical and literary circles soon after his arrival from America in 1893. Like many who energetically pursued literary careers in colonial Australia, Jerome has been largely forgotten today. But during his lifetime he achieved considerable notoriety—not least in July 1896 when he was exposed as a charlatan and forger. He was imprisoned for three years after several months on the run. He argued at his trial that it was his literary ambition that had led him to a life of crime; a suggestion viewed sceptically by his contemporaries. But whatever his motivations, within a year of coming to Australia, Jerome had become recognised as a 'society journalist,' edited three Australian-focussed books and started what he claimed to be the only literary journal in Australasia at that time.

It was through the insistent cultivation of an Australian literary sensibility and the promotion of a distinctive national identity that Cosmos sought to distinguish itself from other publications. Jerome presented the idea of an Australian national literature as unchartered ground, an unknown territory that needed a magazine like Cosmos to help it become properly defined and settled. 'Does [Australia] realise,' he demanded in the first editorial, 'the fact that it, one of the great sections of the English speaking people, is dependent, but for the Cosmos, upon publishers in other parts of the world? Does it realise that of the vast field of fictional opportunity, the bush, the settlement and the township offer, scarcely an acre has been taken up?' In expressing the importance of developing a distinctive national literature this early editorial reproduces the kinds of clichés found more broadly in the commentaries of the day. 'In fiction as in other branches,' it announces, 'the Cosmos aims at being Australian, and writers, especially of short stories are desired, who will reach beyond the blackfellow and the bushranger yarn, and enter the real sphere of Australian life.' The outback tales of author-adventurers such as Ernest Favenc and Alex Montgomery were certainly a regular feature in its pages. But Cosmos also seemed to move beyond the familiar themes of frontier and South Sea adventure through its emphasis on typically feminine popular literary genres. The fragrant, lyrical poems, short stories and novellas of writers such as Louise Mack appeared alongside romance tales by novelists such as Mrs H. E. Russell and E. L. Sutherland, while many interviews, literary articles and reviews seem directed toward a cultivated, and primarily urban, female audience.

Ethel Turner's 'Women's Department' played an important role in establishing the sophisticated, metropolitan and feminine tone of the journal's early editions, offering notes on fashion, domesticity and social life. Perhaps most significant though, was the way her column brought together the feminine and the literary. Her topics of the day ranged from 'New Woman' novelists, such as Sarah Grand, to the changing role of the heroine in contemporary fiction, and the formulaic nature of women's romance writing. Many articles by other female authors took up similar themes, including, for example, 'Australians in Fiction,' by 'Eric' (Caroline Montefiore) in October 1894, which explores the figure of the 'Australian Girl' in some recent fiction.

Apart from offering space for women's fiction and giving women a critical voice, Cosmos also featured many stories of women's successes—from 'glamour' articles about female actors, singers and gaiety performers on the one hand, to stories of women working in senior professions on the other, such as 'The Sydney Women's College and its Principal' (June 1895). Colonial author and spiritualist Annie Bright wrote many such pieces; she had taken over as editor of Cosmos from the second issue, while Jerome stayed on as manager. Bright retained a focus on Australian femininity and literary themes, nationalism and federation throughout her editorship, as well as writing regular biographical columns, articles on spiritualism and book reviews. Her monthly editorials were at once cosmopolitan and regional in focus, encompassing a wide range of both international and local topics.

In August 1895 Bright cautiously celebrated the magazine's survival in 'Our First Year,' an article that notes the 'daunting experience of so many shipwrecked ventures before us.' From that time, production continued uninterrupted for eight months. Starting in May 1896, however, there was a two-month break, and when publication resumed on 7 July that year, Alex Montgomery was named as editor, and Maxwell Keely as manager. One week later, Armand Jerome disappeared. Despite speculation that Cosmos would close down, it continued publication for several more years, continuing its investment in a cultivated and empowered colonial femininity, despite publishing fewer well known authors, and coming increasingly to rely on long running serials to fill its pages. Even with its eventual closure, Cosmos didn't die out completely; it was incorporated into another of its publisher, Maclardy & Co's, literary publications, Southern Cross: An Illustrated Australasian Magazine. Maxwell Keely stayed on as editor and manager. Despite its more parochial sounding title, Southern Cross was another lively colonial magazine with an investment in literature as well as peculiarly Australian forms of metropolitan femininity and glamour that perhaps reflected, at least in part, something that Cosmos had worked towards developing.

(History of Cosmos Magazine provided by Dr Rachael Weaver, October 2012. Her article, 'Cosmos Magazine and Colonial Feminity' can be accessed here.)

2020 recipient The Copyright Agency Cultural Fund Cultural Fund Grants for Organisations New ways of seeing: Commissions for creative writers to engage with Australian science through a series of long-form features in Cosmos magazine
Last amended 27 Feb 2014 10:02:23
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