SOURCE: Nesbitt, Bruce. “Literary Nationalism and the 1890s.” Australian Literary Studies 5, no. 1 (May 1971): 3-17.

In the following essay, Nesbitt recounts the debate between realism and romanticism conducted by Henry Lawson and “Banjo” Paterson in the pages of the Bulletin during the 1890s, suggesting its impact in accelerating Australian literary nationalism.

As every culture advances toward maturity, R. W. B. Lewis has suggested, it seems ‘to produce its own determining debate over the ideas that preoccupy it’.¹ In the nineteenth century, Australians certainly participated enthusiastically in numerous controversies about the great issues of each decade: civil and religious liberties, economic theory, and the political future of the colonies. Many of these issues were resolved by the end of the century, yet none of them had emerged as Australia's ‘own determining debate’. Australia's culture was still unformed, if Lewis is also correct in suggesting that the debate ‘may be said...