SOURCE: Kiernan, Brian. “Literature, History, and Literary History: Perspectives on the Nineteenth Century in Australia.” In Bards, Bohemians, and Bookmen, edited by Leon Cantrell, pp. 1-18. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1976.

In the following essay, Kiernan encapsulates the range of modern views of nineteenth-century Australian literary history.

To trace the growth of letters in the community, from the earliest period of our history to the present time, and to show in what manner that growth had been influenced by the productions of the Mother Country … would amount to a literary history of the country, and it was hoped that such a history would serve more than one useful service. It would enable the reader to form an exact idea of the progress, extent and prospects of literary enterprise among us, more readily than could be done by means of any general statement; it would constitute a bibliographical...