Cirrus@Austlit

'This paper will present an interpretative and selective survey of colonial events and controversies  leading to Alfred Deakin's establishment of the Commonwealth Literary Fund in 1908. Deakin inherited the ideological commitment of colonial cultural missionaries who had for decades debated five related lasses: the aims of "culture"; the role and importance of the writer in relation to his society; the connection between literature and nationality, and between literature and nationalism; the kind of support writers might receive; and the responsibility of the State towards the writer. These issues are discussed not as abstract debate, but within a researched historical and documentary framework, which, it is hoped, will itself fill some gaps in the generally received awareness of colonial literary history. An examination is offered of the sequence of practical efforts made to assist writers for the second half of the nineteenth century, in en attempt to understand and define some colonial attitudes towards literature and literary culture. ' (Introduction)