Populating the Nation: A Genealogy of Colonial Australian Character Types

Grant number: DP140102288 | Funding period: 2014 - 2017

Completed

Abstract

This project investigates the vast array of character types mobilised by colonial writers in Australia from the mid-1800s to the beginning of the First World War. Rural Australia saw numerous character types introduced into the landscape (the rouseabout, the selector, the bush parson, and so on), but the cities also saw a proliferation of types that turned metropolitan Australia into a fluid, complex and often spectacular social space. This project examines colonial character types across print and visual culture as a matter of national investment, conceived in terms of their capacity to contribute to a rapidly-growing and increasingly modern colonial cultural economy.

Related publications (8)

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Irish Republicanism and the Colonial Australian Bushranger Narrative

Ken Gelder, Rachael Weaver

2021-09-19

This article examines a range of colonial Australian Irish bushranger narratives in terms of their investments in revolutionary re..

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Colonial Australian Fiction: Character Types, Social Formations and the Colonial Economy

K GELDER, R WEAVER

2017-03-04

Over the course of the 19th century a remarkable array of character types appeared – and disappeared – in Australian literature: t..

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Introduction to Force and Fraud: A Tale of the Bush

K Gelder, R Weaver

2017-01-01

Ellen Davitt's Force and Fraud: A Tale of the Bush is a feisty account of a murder investigation in the colonies that takes the tw..

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Introduction to John Lang's The Forger's Wife

K Gelder, R Weaver

2017-01-01

John Lang was Australia's first locally born novelist, publishing early work in Sydney in the 1840s and going on to write several ..

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Colonial Australian Detectives, Character Type and the Colonial Economy

Ken Gelder, Rachael Weaver

2016-11-28

This book brings together new contributions in Popular Fiction Studies, giving us a vivid sense of new directions in analysis and ..

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Towards a Genealogy of Minor Colonial Australian Character Types

Ken Gelder, Rachael Weaver

2015-03-04

The business of colonization is often understood in terms of global frameworks, large-scale movements and top-down, 'abstract' per..

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Ecologies of the Beachcomber in Colonial Australian Literature

R WEAVER

2015-01-01

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'Explorations in Industry': Careers, Romance, and the Future of the Colonial Australian Girl

RA WEAVER, K Gelder

2014-09-09

Drawing on a range of approaches including history, anthropology, and literary and cultural studies, this book reflects on the com..

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