In 1880 J. F. Archibald and John Haynes began publication of the Bulletin magazine, one of the best known and influential journals in Australian literary history. The Bulletin became a medium for the publication of verse, articles and short stories. It reflected and encouraged the sentiments of nationalism and even republicanism that existed during the years that led up to Federation in 1901.
The Australian national consciousness became more sharply defined in the
last decades of the nineteenth century and found its expression in literature,
music and art. In an attempt to define an identity which was uniquely
Australian, artists and writers turned to 'the bush' for the model of the
quintessential Australian. The artists of the Heidelberg school of painting -
Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and Frederick McCubbin - provided paintings of
sheds, bush workers, selectors' families, and sun-filled rural scenes as a
visual context for the literary works of the day. Both art and literature
displayed a strong masculine flavour, for the 'typical' Australian was depicted
as an Anglo-Saxon male bushman. The atmosphere of literature tended to be sexist
and chauvinistic; 'mateship' was the admired virtue. The view of a 'White Australia' was
strongly advocated by the Bulletin.
The majority of writers were, by the late nineteenth century, native born, and
though loyalty to the British Empire could be counted on in crisis situations
such as the Boer War (1899-1901), there were many expressions of republicanism
e.g. Henry Lawson's first published poem in the Bulletin, The Song of the
Republic. The 1890s were tough economic times marked by severe drought, economic
recession and crippling strikes. Writing about the bush became more realistic
and less romantic, as seen in Henry Lawson's stories about outback life. Some
authors like Rolf Boldrewood wrote about miners' rights and working-class
reform. Even though Australian society was in reality becoming more urban, the
'bush' continued to dominate literature.
Verse generally showed the same preoccupation with bush themes. A. B. Paterson
wrote The Man from Snowy River (1895), Clancy of the Overflow and Waltzing
Matilda. Henry Lawson produced The Old Bark School (1897) among many other
works. Bernard O'Dowd was one of the most radical nationalists, describing
Australia in The Southern Call (1913) as a land of 'Love and Liberty', a
'Promised Land' that would welcome 'the wronged of ages singing songs of Human
Rights.'
Along with the movement for increasing social and political rights for women,
the first journal for, and by, women, and dealing with women's issues, appeared
in 1888 with the publication of Louisa Lawson's Dawn: Journal for Women - a
periodical which ran until 1905. Radical magazines such as The Boomerang (1892)
and in Brisbane The Worker (1890) publicised Australia's potential to be a
'working man's paradise.'
Women authors included Rosa Praed and Tasma (Jessie Couvreur), both of whom
wrote romantic novels set in Australia. Their novels were published in England
after they had left Australia to live in Europe. In Australia, authors such as
Ethel Turner, Mary Grant Bruce, May Gibbs and Dorothy Wall wrote stories set in
the bush. Well known were Bruce's Billabong stories, and characters based on
bush animals, for example May Gibbs' Gumnut babies and Wall's Blinky Bill.
In the early twentieth century, urban themes became more common in Australian
literature, as seen in the poetry of Christopher Brennan, in Louis Stone's novel
of the Sydney slums, Jonah (1911), and in C. J. Dennis' verse about Melbourne
larrikins.