Subject: Re: Dickens & Empire
Date: Mon, 17 Jul 1995 08:55:57 +1000 (EST)


Gill,
White's novel Voss was based upon the missing german explorer Ludwig 
Leichardt (not Eyre) with a dash of Hitler (seriously) mixed in.  There is 
quite a bit of material which deals with 
the influence of Dickens in colonial Australia.  Martin Lyons and Lucy 
Taska's 'Australian Readers Remember' is a discussion of 
Australian reading practices and has some useful information. There were 
numerous Dickens reading societies and the colonial papers are full of 
reviews of his latest novels.  My grandfather-in-law was a rural 
doctor in the 1920s-50s and he had a complete and well thumbed Dickens 
collection. Perhaps the most famous 
colonial/nationalist Australian writer was heavily influenced by Dickens: 
Henry Lawson.  There is a truck load of work on Lawson. A rather old 
fashioned piece that u could readily acquire is Stanley Gerson's 'A Great 
Australian Dickensian' Dickensian 68 (1972): 75-89.  Lynn Sunderland's 
'The Fantastic Invasion' Melbourne UP 1989 examines Lawson (along with 
Kipling and Conrad) in the context of Empire.  A good bibliography of 
Lawson criticism from 1963-1990 can be found in Martin Duwell and Laurie 
Hergenhan's 'The ALS Guide to Australian Writers' U of Queensland P, 1992.
Good luck with your project,
Chris Lee
USQ Australia
PS Lawson's other great influence was Bret Harte


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