The Tramp
NO PLACE FOR A WOMAN
The Australian author Barbara Baynton had her first short story published under the title “The Tramp” in 1896 in the Christmas edition of the Bulletin. Founded in Sydney in 1880, the Bulletin was instrumental in developing the idea of Australian nationalism. It was originally a popular commercial weekly rather than a literary magazine but in the 1890s, with the literary critic A.G. Stephens as its editor, it was to become “something like a national literary club for a new generation of writers” (Carter 263). Stephens published work by many young Australian writers, including the short story writer Henry Lawson and the poet “Banjo” Paterson and in 1901 he celebrated Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career as the first Australian novel.
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… Stephens deemed her “too outspoken for an Australian audience” (Schaffer 154). She was unable to find a publisher in Sydney willing to print her stories as a collection and it was not until 1902 that six of her stories were published in London by Duckworth’s Greenback Library under the title Bush Studies. It was, on the whole, reviewed favorably. She subsequently published a novel, Human Toll, in 1907 and an expanded collection of stories in 1917. Yet, although individual stories were regularly included in anthologies of Australian literature, by the time of her death in 1929 she was better known as an antique collector and her collected stories were not reprinted until 1980.
3
Until the advent of feminist criticism in the 1980s, Baynton remained a largely forgotten figure, dismissed as a typical female writer who did not know how to control her emotions and who was unable to put her “natural talent” to good use. As late as 1983 Lucy Frost could talk of “her unusually low level of critical awareness” (65) and claim that she “relies … on instinct … In order to write well she needs to write honestly out of intuitive understanding. … As art it makes for failure” (65). For a long time reading the implicit in
The Australian author Barbara Baynton had her first short story published under the title “The Tramp” in 1896 in the Christmas edition of the Bulletin. Founded in Sydney in 1880, the Bulletin was instrumental in developing the idea of Australian nationalism. It was originally a popular commercial weekly rather than a literary magazine but in the 1890s, with the literary critic A.G. Stephens as its editor, it was to become “something like a national literary club for a new generation of writers” (Carter 263). Stephens published work by many young Australian writers, including the short story writer Henry Lawson and the poet “Banjo” Paterson and in 1901 he celebrated Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career as the first Australian novel.
2
… Stephens deemed her “too outspoken for an Australian audience” (Schaffer 154). She was unable to find a publisher in Sydney willing to print her stories as a collection and it was not until 1902 that six of her stories were published in London by Duckworth’s Greenback Library under the title Bush Studies. It was, on the whole, reviewed favorably. She subsequently published a novel, Human Toll, in 1907 and an expanded collection of stories in 1917. Yet, although individual stories were regularly included in anthologies of Australian literature, by the time of her death in 1929 she was better known as an antique collector and her collected stories were not reprinted until 1980.
3
Until the advent of feminist criticism in the 1980s, Baynton remained a largely forgotten figure, dismissed as a typical female writer who did not know how to control her emotions and who was unable to put her “natural talent” to good use. As late as 1983 Lucy Frost could talk of “her unusually low level of critical awareness” (65) and claim that she “relies … on instinct … In order to write well she needs to write honestly out of intuitive understanding. … As art it makes for failure” (65). For a long time reading the implicit in