Newspapers and Journals

This chapter examines how novels in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the South Pacific were reviewed and publicized, and how readerships were informed and created. Literary journalism in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the South Pacific varies according to the populations, histories, and communications infrastructure of each location. In general, a common pattern has been initial evaluations of work against British and European, then latterly American, models, during which time commentators promoted local writing and sketched national ideals for an independent artistic expression. The chapter considers how book reviews were undertaken, as well as the role of reviewers, in newspapers, magazines, literary journals, academic periodicals, and on radio and television programmes. It shows that all the emergent national literatures in English functioned in an increasingly transnational space in the four nations from the 1950s, first under the rubric of Commonwealth literature and then as postcolonial literatures.