PSR- The Australian Journal. Audrey Burton

PSR 1: Primary Source Report on The Australian Journal, 1926-1955

 

 

 

 

Circulation

What can you find out about the circulation of the magazine? How would you characterise the circulation--was it limited, or popular?  Can you find out if that was considered expensive?

 

 

The Australian Journal began as a weekly magazine in 1865 and transitioned into a monthly journal, by 1869. Most critics know about it as a 19^th century magazine, but Osborne’s research (2017) points out that it was also an important magazine in the 1930s to 1950s, when Ron G. Campbell was editor.

 

The Journal was put together in Melbourne, from 1859-1949 at the Massina’s Swanston Street building (Osborne 228). After which it was widely delivered around Australia and New Zealand, finally to subscribers across the world (Osborne 229).

 

Osborne points out that during Campbell's tenure, sales rose from 30,000, to 54,000 copies per issue during the 1930s, and reached a peak of 120,000 copies by 1945 (Osborne 228).

 

 

Editor

Does the magazine have the same editor for a range of time? Can you find out anything about this person?  What is her or her background, education, training? If the editor writes for the magazine, what kind of things does he/she write?

 

One of the editors of the 19^th c. period of the magazine was Mary Fortune.  She was a writer of detective fiction and the first editor of the “detective album” was a section of the journal.

 

W.E Adcock was the editor (Osborne 227) prior to Campbell. W.E Adcock hired Campbell after Campbell submitted several short stories in the fall of 1922.

 

 

R. G. Campbell, who was a teacher prior to becoming assistant editor to the Australian Journal. After a four year probation, he was appointed editor in 1930.

 

 

After leaving the journal, he went overseas and wrote travel stories for the journal.

 

 

 Fig. 1 R. G. Campbell, editor of the Australian Journal, 1926–1955.

Louise Campbell Private Collection. From Osborne, Roger. ‘An Editor Regrets’

R. G. Campbell’s Australian Journal, 1926–1955

 

 

Campbell continued to write, beginning his memoir, about his life in magazines. Unfortunately, he died on the 18 April 1970 (Osborne 233).

 

 

 

 

 

Implied Reader

After studying thoroughly a single issue of the magazine--ads, articles, stories, everything--consider its target reader implied by the magazine’s contents: age, sex, economic class, intellectual class, race, political position, and anything else that seems important

 

The Australian Journal offered a broad mixture of editorial and advertising content and was read by the whole family (Osborne 230).

 

Contents

a. In a single issue, what kind of content gets the most pages (creative: fiction, poetry, drama, visual art, music/ critical: cultural, aesthetic, social, political/ informative: travel, biography, history, news)

 

 

The magazine was an important venue for short story writers.  In its early years some of these authors were Adam Lindsay Gordon, Henry Kendall, Marcus Clarke and the writer of detective stories (and first editor of the “Detective’s Album”), Mary Fortune (“Waif Wander”).

 

In the 1930s to 50s some of the authors who regularly contributed were Myra Morris, Jon Cleary, Robert Close, and Xavier Herbert.

 

 

b. Advertising: Ratio of advertising to other aspects of the text. What kind of advertising gets the most space? Anything else significant about advertising?

 

As Osborne points out “advertisements, promoting a wide variety of home products, remedies, and personal improvement schemes, including drawing and short story writing Courses” could be found in the magazine’s pages (Osborne 230).

 

c. If the magazine attends to social, political, or cultural issues, is there anything that helps you describe its position? 

 

 

 

Format

How many average pages per issue? Did it use colour?  How much?  Photography? How much?  How are images used?  Do they illustrate stories or article?  If there are illustrations, how do they make the magazine feel?

 

Ranging between 100 and 200 pages throughout Campbells editorship.

 

 

 

Audrey Burton

 

Secondary Source Report Title

By Audrey Burton

 

Complete citation: Matthews, Jill Julius. Dance Hall and Picture Palace: Sydney Romance with Modernity. Currency Press, 2005. (Chapter 3).

 

Key Words: Modernity, machines, profit, entertainment, popular culture, photography, film.

Brief Overview:

Chapter 3 deals with the rise of machines in Australia, from the late 1800s to the early 1900s, and the growing demand for up- to- date, new and constantly evolving innovation in entertainment for pleasure.

 

Summary of key points:

In chapter 3, the author explains how the rise of machines came to Australia.

How the invention created marvel and awe in the viewing public.

The author then goes on to explain the need for a rapid, evolving technology development.

Jill Julius Matthews also discusses how the machines went from the public domain, to the private.

 

 

Important Quotations:

“More important than content was the modernity of their very machineness.” (115)

“Another crucial dimension of modernity was newness and constant change.” (115)

“They wanted their knowledge of the world to be up-to-date.” (116)

 

 

Usefulness to our group topic or individual project:

Matthews chapter on the development of machines and markets in Sydney Australia, gives an important insight into the evolving culture and society of Sydney. It would be a useful chapter to use if you were looking at the growth of media in the early days of film, radio and popular culture of the early 1900s in Australia.

 

Practise SSR – Of Machines and Markets Report by Karla Destéfani

Complete citation

Matthews, J.J. (2005). Dance hall & picture palace: Sydney’s romance with modernity. (Pp. 102-116)Currency Press.

Keywords:

Magic
Machines
Modern
International
Travel
Entertainment
Mass production
Global

Brief overview:

A look into reproducing machines and the subsequent entertainment domain. Focussing primarily on how Australians interacted with these new technologies but referencing other nations in order to provide context to understand Australians accurately. 

Key points:

Reproducing machines include a wide variety of tech - wireless radio, talkies, gramophones - and became the foundation of the commercial. 

These technologies were international, nonetheless, they reached Australia often a decade or more late.

Technologies reached Australia through travellers and performers often associated with magic.  It was quickly capitalized and pirated versions of shows would be used. 

This technology is what is referred to as a major segment of modernity.

The technology paved a way for entertainment in a public space (much like how magazines were often shared in a household) to private for example gramophones. 

Important quote:

Engines acted as a form of the robotic body that could replace human labour ... to advance science, improve education, dominate nature, serve the nation, delight and entertain, and make money. 

Paraphrased:

To be modernity the machine must work in modern ways and serve modern purposes. 

Over three decades of a complex interaction between machines and people in search of a good time created a new domain of popular culture. 

 

Secondary Source Report on The Conditions of Fame: Literary Celebrity in Australia between the Wars written by David Carter

By Cassidy Pearson 

Complete citation: Carter, D. (2015). The Conditions of Fame: Literary Celebrity in Australia between the Wars. Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 39, (1), pp. 170-187.doi: 10.2979/jmodelite.39.1.170

 

 

Image Credit: December 1, 1926 Vogue Issue. Retrieved from Vogue Archives: https://archive.vogue.com/issue/19261201

 

Key Words:  Australia, Celebrity, Periodicals, Modernity, Authorship

Brief Overview: The late Victorian period was “both the first and the only mass literary age” (pp. 173.) with the introduction of new media and entertainment such as photography, cinema, wireless (radio) and the gramophone.

 

Summary of key points:

Vogue and Vanity Fair readers were in a league of their own.

Magazines like this were more focused on the celebrity gossip, rather than educational purposes.

The Victorian Era was the rise in interest in celebrity culture, design, fashion.

Important Quotations:

“it is useful to think of these magazines as occupying the same public sphere as the commercial theatre, which was also their bread and butter: they were overflowing with theatre reviews, news and gossip, celebrity and personality features, and photo-galleries of theatre stars.” (pp. 173).

 

“Sophistication meant, in part, being neither cowed by highbrow modernism nor “consumed” by lowbrow entertainment, but able to seek distinction in both. Thus a photograph of James Joyce with Sylvia Beach or studio portraits of Shaw and G.K. Chesterton could appear together (in Home) with portraits of Hollywood stars Greta Garbo and Myrna Loy, or artistic female nudes, on much the same plane and with much the same kind of weight and presence.” (pp. 184)

 

The features around which the two modern magazines were organized are those described by Faye Hammill in regard to their international contemporaries, Vogue and Vanity Fair, both of which were available in Australia: Vanity Fair competitive at an annual subscription of £1.10.0 and Vogue expensive at £2.8.0 compared to Home at 10s.6d. Vogue and Vanity Fair readers, “elite in class rather than intellectual terms,” were encouraged “to seek distinction in all aspects of their lives” (Hammill, Women 36); such was the case for readers of Home and BP This content downloaded from 137.219.5.13 on Fri, 28 Aug 2020 12:25:05 UTC All use subject to ht 184 Journal of Modern Literature Volume 39, Number 1 Magazine. Although addressed as if to “an already sophisticated metropolitan elite” the magazines offered “an education in sophistication designed for those who aspired towards membership of that elite” (pp. 184).

 

“The celebrity roll call of visitors to Australia is impressive—Harry Houdini, Harry Lauder, Lilly Langtry, Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Benno Moiseiwitsch, Jascha Heifetz, Fritz Kreisler, Clara Butt, Fedor Chaliapin, Anna Pavlova, and Melba. Although the visitors were mostly in “high” art forms—opera and classical music—they arrived very much as modern celebrities, were covered intensively in the press and on radio, and were enormously popular with local audiences.” (pp. 181).

 

 

 Usefulness to our group topic or individual project:

 I found Victoria’s comment about the world being very Kardashian-ified and famous people being famous for no particular reason quite interesting. Celebrity culture is not something I ~really~ care about. Which might be rare for a millennial. I really know nothing about what celebrities are doing and how they got famous. I would like to focus my essay on the transition of fame in the early 1920’s to the 1950’s and see how celebrities changed – I could only imagine the interest in fame and fortune grew, so I am hoping that magazines reflect this. I would like to focus on one American magazine, and one Australian. Perhaps Vanity Fair and Home magazine as Home was compared to Vanity Fair/Vogue/Harpers Bazaar.

Secondary Source Report on Chelsea Barnett’s Journal Article Man's man: representations of Australian post-war masculinity in Man magazine

 

By Mark Bradley

Complete citation:

Chelsea Barnett (2015) Man's man: representations of Australian post-war masculinity in Man                     magazine, Journal of Australian Studies, 39:2, 151-169, DOI: 10.1080/14443058.2014.1001422

 

 

Women assuming financial control. Man, September 1946, 60.

Image Credit:

Chelsea Barnett (2015) Man's man: representations of Australian post-war masculinity in Man    magazine, Journal of Australian Studies, 39:2, 151-169, DOI: 10.1080/14443058.2014.1001422

Key Words:

post-war Australia; masculinity; conflict; feminism; man

 

Brief Overview:

Examines the masculinity represented in Man magazine in the 1950’s and the way it attempted to relate to its imagined emasculated reader in a changing culture.

 

Summary of key points:

·       * Man magazine aimed to entertain the average male rooted in the problematic routines of a changing       suburban life.

·       * Encouraged the masculine identity while portraying feminism as a threat to it.

·       * Could not compete with magazines of specific areas of interest.

 

Important Quotations:

“Man’s representations of frustration and resentment about male responsibilities were overt, as was the articulation of the desire to be liberated from these burdens. However, the magazine also acknowledged that fulfilling these desires wasvirtually impossible” (166).

“Readers were reminded that “weakness is never desirable, that it is never safe, that it should not exist”; any suggestion of femininity in this space was thus disparaged” (155).

“These years ‘bear a heavy metaphorical weight of contemporary sentiments about gender, intolerance and national identity’; all too frequently, the 1950s are depicted as the period of gender rigidity “before” the transformations of the 1960s and 1970s” (152-153).

Usefulness to our group topic or individual project:

 This journal article focuses on exploring Man magazines attempts to relate perceived threats to masculinity and disenfranchised men. The article is a good starting point in looking at imagined conflicts between femininity and masculinity, but also how a magazine fails to change and improve in a static culture.

 

SSR 1. Week 5. (Practice)

 Jon Cockburn’s Journal Article  Olivetti and the Missing Third: Fashion, Working Women, and Images of the Mechanical-Flâneuse in the 1920s and 1930s.

By Sarah Burke

Complete citation:

Cockburn, Jon. “Olivetti and the Missing Third: Fashion, Working Women and Images of the Mechanical-flâneuse in the 1920s and 1930s. Fashion Theory, vol.19, no.5, 2015, pp. 637-686.  Taylor & Francis Online,  doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2015.1071069
 

Advertisements in The Home, 1 November 1937.  Shows modern technology being used by, and aspired by women.

Image Credit: https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-384910274/view?partId=nla.obj-385165150#page/n69/mode/1up,  
accessed 27 August 2020.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Key Words: Images, modernity, advertisements, mechanical progress, feminism, Vogue.

Brief Overview: 

Detailed analysis of woman as the mechanical-flâneuse, a type of flaneur portrayed by women in images in the 1920s and 1930s to symbolise privilege and independence.  The act of being a flâneur was a literary and artistic movement that was once only afforded to men. An observer-participant activity that required a person of affluence and modernity to be seen in the streets as a wanderer, and discoverer.  Women however were slow to being afforded such freedom of movement, so they took to machinery and invention as a way of portraying themselves as modern women.

Summary of key points:

The advertised image of a flâneuse allowed women to negotiate their way through social, educational, and employment changes.  As the author explains, it was previously a performance only for men, yet, with the advent of new technology and machinery, it allowed woman an avenue for self-presentation, and self-identify becoming active members of modernity.  Images in advertising for Vogue, movie advertisements, and technology advertisements are used as examples of the technological performance of woman.  Women, through technology, had access to; travel, education, a wider choice in employment, and more time to socialise, and was advertised to them via images of women engaging as the modern flaneuse.

Important Quotations:

 “it is ”…a re-examination of the presence of all kinds of women on the city streets” and identifies “women who were not necessarily prostitutes or other working women, out shopping or on a philanthropic mission, but women of all classes and identities tracing paths and lives in the spaces of the city.” ” (639).

“A relationship exists between actively participating in modernity (being a modernist) and the concentrated self-awareness of being modern that is often captured in a variety of media” (648).

“It is the stare of the mechanical-flâneuse: it is not an evacuation of the present, or a negation of the modern, but a going away so as to be at rest or adrift within modernity” (671).

Usefulness to our group topic or individual project:

This journal article gives some meaning to the way that images were used in advertisements to make comfortable the commercialisation of modernity to women.  A flâneuse is a woman who is engaged with her surroundings, can go where the action is, and be seen discovering the world around her.
The ability to be independent was important to the feminist movement in the 1920s and 1930s. Magazines that portrayed images of woman actively using technology in an independent way was also an advertisement towards liberation from patriarchal conformity, publicly reproducing the definitions of who they could be aspire to be.

PSR 1: Primary Source Report on The Australian Journal By Sebastian Mauger-Hollmann

 PSR 1: Primary Source Report on The Australian Journal

By Sebastian Mauger-Hollmann

 

Circulation

What can you find out about the circulation of the magazine? How would you characterise the circulation--was it limited, or popular?  Can you find out if that was considered expensive?

 

The Australian Journal was first published in the city of Melbourne in 1865 and was delivered widely throughout Australia and New Zealand. The Australian Journal eventually reached subscribers across the world; from the UK, to Canada and the USA, South Africa, and India (Osbourne, 2017).

 

The Australian Journal began as a weekly magazine in 1865; it became a monthly magazine by 1869. In 1937 it cost 2 shillings; in 1951 it cost 1 shilling.

 

During R.G. Campbell's (editor) tenure, sales rose from 30,000 to 54,000 copies per issue during the 1930s, and reached a peak of 120,000 copies (Osbourne, 2017).

 

Editor

Does the magazine have the same editor for a range of time? Can you find out anything about this person?  What is her or her background, education, training? If the editor writes for the magazine, what kind of things does he/she write?

 

Mary Fortune, writer of detective fiction and the first editor of the ‘Detective Album’ (a section of the journal), was one of the editors during the 19^th century.

 

W.E Adcock was also the editor of The Australian Journal prior to R.G. Campbell, and his retirement a factor contributing to Campbell’s appointment as editor of the magazine (Osbourne, 2017).

 

R.G. Campbell was the editor of The Australian Journal for thirty years (1926-1955). After leaving the journal, he went overseas and wrote travel stories for the journal (Osbourne, 2017).

 

Implied Reader

After studying thoroughly a single issue of the magazine--ads, articles, stories, everything--consider its target reader implied by the magazine’s contents: age, sex, economic class, intellectual class, race, political position, and anything else that seems important

 

People looking for local content.

The Australian Journal entertained a wide variety of readers (men, women, and children) who were looking for local content and quality reading material to leisurely enjoy (Osbourne, 2017).

 

The Australian Journal was middlebrow/upper middlebrow reading.

 

Contents

a. In a single issue, what kind of content gets the most pages (creative: fiction, poetry, drama, visual art, music/ critical: cultural, aesthetic, social, political/ informative: travel, biography, history, news)

 

Contributors to The Australian Journal filled more pages with around 6,000 words of popular romance, adventure, crime and detective fiction (Osbourne, 2017).

 

Contributors included authors such as: Adam Lindsay Gordon, Henry Kendall, Marcus Clarke, Mary Fortune, Myra Morris, Jon Cleary, Robert Close, and Xavier Herbert (Osbourne, 2017).

 

b. Advertising: Ratio of advertising to other aspects of the text. What kind of advertising gets the most space? Anything else significant about advertising?

 

The Australian Journal included several pages of advertisements, promoting a wide variety of home products, remedies, and personal improvement schemes, including drawings and short story writing courses (Osbourne, 2017).

 

c. If the magazine attends to social, political, or cultural issues, is there anything that helps you describe its position? 

 

The Australian Journal contained such vast amount and variety of stories which could allow authors to address and discuss any issues they wanted to (Osbourne, 2017).

 

Format

How many average pages per issue? Did it use colour?  How much?  Photography? How much?  How are images used?  Do they illustrate stories or article?  If there are illustrations, how do they make the magazine feel?

 

Ranging between 100 and 200 pages throughout Campbell's editorship it responded to the economic realities of publishing balanced advertising revenue with circulation/demand.  Short stories were tailored to a specific formula and were required to be within 2,000 and 3,000 words in length (Osborne, 2017).

 

References

Osborne, R. (2017). ‘An Editor Regrets’ R. G. Campbell’s Australian Journal, 1926–1955. Script & Print 41(4), p. 226–24. https://search-informit-com-au.elibrary.jcu.edu.au/documentsSummary;dn=143740445102341;res=IELL

PSR 1: Week 4 (Practice).

Primary Source Report on The Home, 1 March 1939.

 By Sarah Burke

 Circulation

    The Home: the Australian Journal of Quality began in 1920 as a periodical, and boasted a healthy readership that allowed it to print 230 issues over 23 years. It was quite expensive, averaging at £0.10.6. which translates to a $37.32 per year subscription.  

As a magazine that imported trends from overseas, it was quite popular with readership ranging from those in the upper middle-class, to those that aspired to a higher economic, and social position.  

Vol. 20, No. 3 released on March 1^st 1939, had a cover price of 1 shilling and threepence or $0.12 or $5.58 in current money. 

Fig. 1.  Front cover of The Home, 1 March, 1939

Editors

    The first editor was Bertram Stevens a popular journalist, literary and art critic whose open-mindedness, and eclectic tastes often bought him derision in regard to his liberal views.   

In 1922 Bertram Stevens passed away.  Ure Smith and Leon Gellert co-edited the magazine until 1939.  

Ure Smith was trained in the fine arts, and specialised in pen and pencil drawing.  He attempted to change incorporate quality art into advertising by co-founding Smith & Julius, the earliest advertising agency to feature high-end artwork and colour printing.  His influence can be seen in the contemporary graphic design and aesthetics that adorned the pages, and of which the magazine was most popular for.  

Leon Gellert was a soldier and a writer.  He penned the famous Songs of a Campaign (1917) which won him literary prizes and accolades from the Bulletin.  His use of everyday language ensure that the magazine spoke to the ‘everyday-woman’, as he ensured that the magazine was full of grace, and felt personalised to the modern tastes of the growing middle-class.

 Leon Gellert became sole editor until the magazine ceased publication in 1942.

Fig. 2. Ure smith Co-editor     Fig. 3. Leon Gellert Co/Editor                                     

         1922 – 1942                                 1922 – 1939  

Implied Reader

        The readership for this magazine is a female, housewife or career woman who has easy access to finances.  While there are some fictional stories, the articles tend to focus on opinions, and social events. The age range would be 21 to 50, those who prefer experiences over academic pursuits, and would be familiar with or interested in the 8 full pages of social information that is written in dot points, and short sentences.

 Contents

        This issue is a special one as it printed a story The Sea Woman by Australian Author Vance Palmer. The magazine content is heavily weighted on advertisements as can be seen in Fig. 4.  These advertisements range from full page to sitting in the margins surrounding another article.  Articles on trends are the next biggest content filler, followed by the social pages.  There is an interesting article with a Black American performing artist, however, the article does not contain any politically motivated discourse, and is primarily to advertise a tour.

The advertisements range from vehicles, artworks, overseas, and local travel, beauty products and services, and events.

Fig. 4. Number of pages per content.

Social pages	13
Commentary	12
Articles on trends social/fashion/homes/gardens/the Arts	32
Political article
fiction	9
Interviews	2
Events	4
Advertisements	38

Format

From cover to back page this issue had 96 pages.  Printed in book style, even though it was not for literary purposes, its layout is styled like an art book with full page prints, and photos. The advertisements were either left to the margins of each page or were full page’ and reminiscent of a gallery catalogue.  The pages alternated between colour drawings, coloured photographs, and black and white prints.  Fonts were varied, which shows the publisher had wide access to printing blocks. 

Interestingly the magazine breaks articles up into blocks, that are the printed into the book with advertisements and social pages in between.   The reader must then ‘flick’ through the pages to search for the remainder of an article or story to continue their reading. 

List of Figures.

 

Fig. 1. Fig. 1.  Front cover of The Home, 1 March, 1939. Trove     https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/234012652?keyword=the%20home%20%281%20March%201939%29

 Fig. 2. Sydney George Ure Smith (1887-1949), by Max Dupain, 1948. Australian Dictionary of Biography. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/smith-sydney-george-ure-8485

 Fig. 3. Leon Maxwell Gellert 91892-1977), by May Moore, 1920s. Australian dictionary of Biography. http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/gellert-leon-maxwell-10288

 Fig. 4. Number of pages used per content.  Sarah Burke

Works Cited

"Pre-Decimal Inflation Counter." Reserve Bank of Australia, 2020. https://www.rba.gov.au/calculator/annualPreDecimal.html 

"The Home (1920-42)." State Library New South Wales, 2017. https://www.sl.nsw.gov.au/blogs/home-1920-42 

"The Home (1920-42)." Transported Imagination, 2020. http://transportedimagination.com/home_main/