SOURCE: Jarvis, Doug. “Lawson, the Bulletin and the Short Story.” Australian Literary Studies 11, no. 1 (May 1983): 58-66.

In the following essay, Jarvis evaluates the fictional techniques favored by the Bulletin in the 1890s.

The importance of the Bulletin in the emergence of a national literary tradition in the last decades of the nineteenth century is generally recognised, but precisely how it carried out this role is only vaguely defined. The Bulletin of the early 1880s shows scant evidence, as Ken Levis points out in ‘The Role of the Bulletin in Indigenous Short Story Writing During the Eighties and Nineties’, of being a vehicle for the encouragement of local talent (although there is plenty of evidence that it was greatly interested in literature and cultural development generally).¹ A. G. Stephens, also generally recognised as a significant figure, did not achieve a position of influence on the Bulletin until 1896 (having arrived...