PSR 1: Primary Source Report on The Australian Journal
By Maddison Grant
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 published
continuously between 1865 to 1961 and has mainly been regarded by literary historians
as a nineteenth-century periodical, however it is much more than that. The
Australian Journal was a widely read twentieth-century magazine (particularly
under editorial-ship of Ron G. Campbell), and provided one of few avenues for
popular Australian short stories to be published (Osbourne, 2017).
The
magazine begun as a weekly in 1865 but has become monthly by 1869, and under Campbell
editorship the Australian Journal
ranged between one hundred and two hundred pages (Osbourne, 2017).
Circulation of the magazine during this time rose from 30,000 to 54,000
copies per issue during the 1930s and reached a peak of 120,000 copies by 1945
(Osbourne, 2017). From Melbourne, where it was published, the Australian Journal was delivered widely throughout Australia
and New Zealand, and eventually reached subscribers across the world, to the
UK, Canada, USA, South Africa, India and Malaya (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?
One of the editors of the nineteenth-century
period of the magazine was Mary Fortune.
She was a writer of detective fiction and the first editor of the ‘Detective
Album’, a section of the journal. W.E Adcock was also the editor of the
Australian Journal prior to Campbell, and his retirement a factor contributing
to Campbell’s appointment as editor of the magazine (Osbourne, 2017).
Ron G. Campbell was the editor of the Australian
Journal for thirty years (1926-1955). Campbell was working as a teacher
during the early 1920s when he began to submit stories to various newspapers (such as the Bulletin,
Aussie, the Australasian and Smith’s Weekly), and in 1922 he
submitted a number of stories, and impressed, he was hired to write the
‘Detective Album’ (Osbourne, 2017).
In 1926 he was offered the role of assistant editor, and after a successful
four years he was appointed editor in 1930 (Osbourne,
2017). Throughout his time with the Australian
Journal Campbell wrote hundreds of stories under different pseudonyms such
as that of ‘Rex Grayson who was the most prolific author of detective fictions
in the magazine’s history (Osbourne,
2017). His career with the Australian Journal came to
an end in 1955 when A. H. Massina and Company Pty Ltd sold the building to the
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and the century-old magazine to Keith
Murdoch’s Southdown Press (Osbourne,
2017). Though Campbell did continue to write for the
magazine after the end of his editorial-ship.
Fig. 1 R. G.
Campbell, editor of the Australian Journal, 1926–1955.
R. G. Campbell’s Australian Journal, 1926–1955
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 entertained a wide variety of
readers- men, women, and children. Reading during the twentieth century was one
of the most popular leisure activities and the departmental nature of the
magazine was part of its success; it provided something for everyone and was
shared widely within households, especially during the war (Osbourne, 2017).
Quality reading for middlebrow-perhaps upper middlebrow.
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 and in its early years included authors such as 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’) (Osbourne, 2017). In the 1930s to 1950s some of the authors who regularly contributed to the magazine were Myra Morris, Jon Cleary, Robert Close, and Xavier Herbert (Osbourne, 2017).
The Australian Journal offered a mix of editorial and
advertising content. Departments devoted to fashion and the home were a
constant. Campbell’s long running ‘In Passing’ page was joined by ‘Among the
Critics’, which published letters from readers and celebrated writers who
appeared in the magazine. However, the primary content of the magazine was
stories and serials, which remained constant throughout the decades, though the
origin of the stories indicates a shift towards foreign syndicated fiction by
the 1950s (Osbourne, 2017). Nearly 750
writers contributed more than two thousand stories to the Australian Journal
between 1926 and 1955, with twenty of the writers contributing close to one
quarter of the stories (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?
As Osbourne points out, there was ‘pages and pages of
advertisements, promoting a wide variety of home products, remedies, and
personal improvement schemes, including drawing and short story writing courses’
to be found in the magazine (Osbourne, 2017, p. 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?
During Campbells editorial-ship the Australian Journal
ranged between one hundred and two hundred pages, responding to the economic
realities of the publishing business (Osbourne, 2017). It balanced advertising
revenue with circulation/demand.
References
Osbourne, R. (2017). ‘An editor regrets’ R. G. Campbell’s Australian Journal, 1926-1955. Script & Print,41(4),226-242.Retrievedfrom https://search-informit-com-au.elibrary.jcu.edu.au/documentsSummary;dn=143740445102341;res=IELL
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