Colonial Australian Women Poets: Political Voice and Feminist Traditions

by Katie Hansord

Overview

My book traces the significant poetic and political contributions made by non-canonical women poets, situating women's poetry both in colonial Australian print culture and in wider imperial and transnational contexts. Women poets in colonial Australia have tended to be represented as marginal and isolated figures or absent. This study intervenes by demonstrating an alternative networked tradition of transnational feminist poetics and politics beyond and around emergent masculine nationalism, particularly within newspapers and periodical print culture. Without the inclusion of periodical literature, women’s poetry in Australia during the colonial period would appear to have been fairly limited. When periodical literature is taken into account, this picture is radically altered, and poets emerge as consistent contributors, often across a variety of newspapers and journals, who were well-known, influential and connected with political figures and literary circles. In examining this poetry in the original context of the newspapers and journals, the political intervention and the reception of that poetry is made much more apparent.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781785272691
Publisher:	Anthem Press
Publication date:	01/08/2021
Series:	Anthem Studies in Australian Literature and Culture
Pages:	252
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Katie Hansord is a writer and researcher living in Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests include gender, poetry, feminism, political activism and print culture.

Katie Hansord is a writer and researcher living in Melbourne, Australia. She completed her PhD at Deakin University. Her research interests include gender, poetry, feminism, political activism and print culture. She has published on the poetry of Eliza Hamilton Dunlop, Louisa Lawson, Mary Fortune and Caroline Leakey.

Table of Contents

List of Figures; Foreword; Acknowledgements; Introduction: Rereading Colonial Poetry; 1. Eliza Hamilton Dunlop: Anti-Slavery, Imperial Feminism and Romanticism: 1820–40; 2. Mary Bailey: Hellenism, Bluestockings and the Colonial Times: 1840–50; 3. Caroline Leakey: The Embowered Woman and Tasmania: 1850–60; 4. Emily Manning: Spiritualism and Periodical Print Culture: 1860–80; 5. Louisa Lawson: Fin de Siècle Transnational Feminist Poetics and the Dawn: 1880–1910; Conclusion: Beyond the Dawn; Appendix: Selected Poems; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

A ground-breaking examination of five colonial Australian women writers within transnational contexts. The poems of Eliza Hamilton Dunlop, Mary Bailey, Caroline Leakey, Emily Manning and Louisa Lawson are for the first time fully explored in relation to the literary, social and political movements of the nineteenth century.” —Professor Emerita Elizabeth Webby, University of Sydney

From the Publisher