y separately published work icon The Native Companion periodical  
Issue Details: First known date: 1907... 1907 The Native Companion
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

The Native Companion was printed on antique paper made in Australia and illustrated with line drawings by Australian artists including Blamire Young, Alek Sass, Ida Rentoul and Ruby, Percy, and Lionel Lindsay (qq.v.). The writers were all Australians, with the exception of Katherine Mansfield (q.v.).

Notes

  • Subtitle: The Native Companion : An Australian Monthly Magazine of Literature and Life

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Melbourne, Victoria,: Lothian , 1907 .
      Note/s:
      • Vol.1, no.1 - v.2, no.5 (Jan. 1907 - Dec. 1907)

Works about this Work

Literary Journals and Literary Aesthetics in Early Post-Federation Australia Ken Gelder , Rachael Weaver , 2014 single work criticism
— Appears in: JASAL , vol. 14 no. 5 2014;

'The first decade after Federation saw the establishment of a significant number of new Australian literary journals and magazines, some of which defined themselves against mainstream literary interests – against the Bulletin, for example. What we see here is in fact a splintering of literary activity across a number of journals that fragments (or perhaps continues to fragment) any received sense of what constitutes a national literature. This paper looks at three of Thomas C. Lothian’s Melbourne journals - the Native Companion (January - December 1907), Trident (May 1907 – April 1909) and Heart of the Rose (December 1907 – October 1908) – and also briefly discusses Alfred Dickson and Frank Wilmot’s The Microbe, and Hal Stone and the ‘Waysider’ group’s Ye Kangaroo (1902 –1905), Ye Wayside Goose (1905 – 1906) and Red Ant (1912), also mostly Melbourne-based.

'The Native Companion in particular nourished an early feminine modernist aesthetic: publishing Katharine Mansfield’s first short stories, first example, and providing space for a coterie of women writers who specialised in the ‘vignette’: a narrative form that contrasted to male-centred bush nationalisms of the ‘sketch’. Like the Trident and Heart of the Rose, this journal was caught somewhere in between the influences of fin-de-siècle decadence and newly emergent European modernism; its interest in international avant-garde literary aesthetics worked to stretch modernism into the antipodes, sometimes casting it as a kind of free-floating literary effect. Heart of the Rose presented translations of Paul Verlaine and essays on Baudelaire; but it also charted local, vernacular versions of these influences, offering up delirious visions of what a trans-national, trans-historical Australian literature might be.

'The Microbe and Hal Stone’s journals celebrated an amateur literary status that allowed them to satirise the Bulletin’s claim on Australian literary tastes. They also turned to the ‘vignette’, and played out the influences of European symbolism and nascent modernism; but they satirised the pretentions of journals like Heart of the Rose and never invested in a representative canon of writers. Together, these little magazines present an alternative literary scene that tried to re-imagine the ideals of a national literature even as they radically distinguished themselves from the mainstream.' (Publication abstract)

y separately published work icon The Native Companion : Complete Indexes Carol Mills , Canberra : Mulini Press , 1999 Z902318 1999 single work bibliography Includes a brief history of the magazine The Native Companion (1907), indexes to authors and titles, illustrators, advertisers and subjects, and brief biographies of contributors.
Fasolis Carol Mills , 1992 single work criticism
— Appears in: Quadrant , March vol. 36 no. 3 1992; (p. 43-47)
Australian Little Magazines E. J. Brady , 1948 single work criticism
— Appears in: Focus , April vol. 3 no. 2 1948; (p. 7-9)
The Necessity of the Little Magazine : The Australian Scene Norman Bartlett , 1948 single work criticism
— Appears in: Meanjin , Winter vol. 7 no. 2 1948; (p. 108-117)
Notes on Australian Writers E. J. Brady , 1930 single work biography
— Appears in: All About Books , 20 January vol. 2 no. 1 1930; (p. 26)
Brady gives a brief biographical and bibliographical sketch of each of these writers who, early in their careers contributed to his magazine The Native Companion.
Bertram Stevens : Reminiscences of J. Le Gay Brereton J. Le Gay Brereton , 1922 single work obituary (for Bertram Stevens )
— Appears in: The Home , (Autumn) 1 March vol. 3 no. 1 1922; (p. 7)
The Necessity of the Little Magazine : The Australian Scene Norman Bartlett , 1948 single work criticism
— Appears in: Meanjin , Winter vol. 7 no. 2 1948; (p. 108-117)
Australian Little Magazines E. J. Brady , 1948 single work criticism
— Appears in: Focus , April vol. 3 no. 2 1948; (p. 7-9)
Fasolis Carol Mills , 1992 single work criticism
— Appears in: Quadrant , March vol. 36 no. 3 1992; (p. 43-47)
Last amended 26 Jun 2014 09:54:28
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