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 19th 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).
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
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