Literary Journals and Literary Aesthetics in Early Post-Federation Australia

Abstract

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 W..