Writing the colonial adventure : race, gender and nation in Anglo-Australian popular fiction, 1875-1914
This book is an exploration of popular late nineteenth-century texts. Robert Dixon looks at a selection of adventure/romance writers whose narrative themes, he argues, captured many aspects of imperial ideology. Here is an original approach to popular fiction, both for its own sake and as a mode of cultural history.
Criticism, interpretation, etc
x, 228 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
9780521484398, 9780521481908, 0521484391, 0521481902
222042694
Introduction; 1. The romance of property: Rolf Boldrewood and Walter Scott; 2. Outlaws and lawmakers: Boldrewood, Praed and the ethics of adventure; 3. Israel in Egypt: the significance of Australian captivity narratives; 4. Imperial romance: King Solomon's Mines and Australian romance; 5. The new woman and the coming man: gender and genre in the 'lost-race' romance; 6. The other world: Rosa Praed's occult novels; 7. The boundaries of civility: Australia, Asia and the Pacific; 8. Imagined invasions: The Lone Hand and narratives of Asiatic invasion; 9. The colonial city: crime fiction and empire; 10. Beyond adventure: Louis Becke; Conclusion.