First Steps toward a History of the Mid-Victorian Novel in Colonial Australia

Very little is known about the popular novels of mid-Victorian colonial Australia which makes it impossible to form any certain idea of the effects of imaginative, discursive, or narrative texts on the minds of colonial societies. The method of recent studies of Victorian print culture which established that the earlier publication of many novels as serials in newspapers, magazines, and instalments shaped particular contexts for meaning that are lost to readers of modern editions is discussed.