'The writers and story-tellers included in this collection relate an important, even epic tale. They tell a story which in 1988 (white Australia's bicentennial year) rarely received attention because, while it tells of courage and love, it also focuses on killing and conquest, eccentricity and madness, and a land as hostile and murderous as it could be gentle and caring...' (Source: Preface)
Epigraph: North of the Ten Commandments,/North of the Barkly Plains,/Into the forest and jungle,/Drenched by tropical rains./Tis there my thoughts oft wander,/Tis there I long to be -/But I'm doomed to end in this city -/Ora pro nobis Domine.
William Linklater & Lynda Tapp, Gather No Moss ,1968
Arranged into chronological and/or thematic sections, each with an initial illustration and epigraphs, as follows:
'This article examines the role of book publishing outside the cultural centres, where the lack of access to the gatekeepers of cultural production, such as literary agents, editors and publishers, has inhibited both the publishers' and region's reach into the public imagination.
It takes Western Australia as a case study, analysing the impact of geographical regionalism on the processes of book production and publication. Western Australia is infrequently represented in the cultura record, much less in those aspects of the cultural record that are transmitted overseas.
This imbalance in 'cultural currency' arises because regions are at least in part defined by their ability to participate in what Pierre Bourdieu has deemed the 'field of cultural production'. In the case of print culture, this field includes writers, literary agents, editors, publishers, government arts organisations, the media, schools, and book retailers, just to name a few.
This article pays particular attention to Western Australia's three major publishing houses (Fremantle Press, University of Western Australia Press, and the publisher of Indigenous literature, Magabala Books), as well as those Western Australian writers who have achieved the greatest international success, such as Tim Winton and Elizabeth Jolley. It demonstrates that the awareness of geographically and culturally diverse regions within the framework of the nation is derived from representations of these regions and their associated regional characteristics in the movies, television and books.' (Author's abstract)
'This article examines the role of book publishing outside the cultural centres, where the lack of access to the gatekeepers of cultural production, such as literary agents, editors and publishers, has inhibited both the publishers' and region's reach into the public imagination.
It takes Western Australia as a case study, analysing the impact of geographical regionalism on the processes of book production and publication. Western Australia is infrequently represented in the cultura record, much less in those aspects of the cultural record that are transmitted overseas.
This imbalance in 'cultural currency' arises because regions are at least in part defined by their ability to participate in what Pierre Bourdieu has deemed the 'field of cultural production'. In the case of print culture, this field includes writers, literary agents, editors, publishers, government arts organisations, the media, schools, and book retailers, just to name a few.
This article pays particular attention to Western Australia's three major publishing houses (Fremantle Press, University of Western Australia Press, and the publisher of Indigenous literature, Magabala Books), as well as those Western Australian writers who have achieved the greatest international success, such as Tim Winton and Elizabeth Jolley. It demonstrates that the awareness of geographically and culturally diverse regions within the framework of the nation is derived from representations of these regions and their associated regional characteristics in the movies, television and books.' (Author's abstract)
