Australian Books and Authors in the American Marketplace 1840s-1940s

"‘This account of American publishing serves as a parallel literary history: of fiction that has become part of our literary canon, and of popular writing that has disappeared from memory. Carter and Osborne quote numerous published reviews and private comments by American publishers that reinforce a sense of the openness, sophistication and perceptiveness of these literary Americans. They place Australian writing in the context of the international development of the novel rather than the conventional local interest in Australianness.’ -- Susan Lever * Inside Story * ‘The book is chock-full of intriguing facts which could either be vital leads or red herrings depending on the reader’s predilections, but which are all tantalising. Their appeal is buttressed by many color and black and white reproductions of book covers and, most intriguingly, advertisements in American papers which are often fascinating documents of cultural evidence.’ -- Nicholas Birns, New York University * Southerly * 'David Carter and Roger Osborne have produced a highly readable, deeply interesting and provocative study of the fortunes of Australian literature. If as they argue, ‘Australia’s place in the world republic of letters needs a new trigonometry,’ then their book has provided a powerful mapping of a vital segment of Australian literary history, and one that will provide a new set of coordinates for future researchers.' -- Robert Clarke * Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature * ""What this erudite study shows is the value of paying closer attention to genre and moving beyond a rigid conception of nation, and it thus situates itself as part of the transnational turn in publishing studies rather than addressing those questions of definition directly. Overall, this is an excellent contribution to transnational print culture studies, taking seriously the need to think across borders when evaluating the spread of literature in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."" -- Emily Bell * Publishing History * ‘This is book history par excellence, assured of its breadth and detail of the archive, but rich with the humanity of its makers. Australian Books and Authors is an elegantly told story of the ebbs and flows of a cultural trademark manufactured by the publishing apparatus of America’s dominant book industry.’ -- Keyvan Allahyari * Australian Book Review * ‘This book serves as both an enjoyable read as well as a scholarly perusal, drawing on extensive research into primary resources and a wide range of critical and historical documents … [The book shows] us how Australian literature—contrary to the “evolutionary mode” of approaching independent, mature and modern status—migrated transnationally, and then achieved international presence before it was recognised as “national literature”.’ -- Zhao Siqi * Journal of Australian Studies *"