Secondary Source Report 1 (Practice)

By Mark Richardson

Image Credit:

Travers, L. "Lucky 13." The BP Magazine March 1938 1938: 4. Print.

If web access: url; date accessed:

https://www-jstor-org.elibrary.jcu.edu.au/stable/pdf/10.2979/jmodelite.39.1.170.pdf Accessed:01/09/2020

Key Words: Australia / celebrity / periodicals / modernity / authorship

Brief Overview:

In this article, David Carter reviews modernity as it was represented in popular magazines and periodicals of the inter-war years. He posits that, just as Hollywood celebrities achieved fame and idolisation by an adoring public, certain authors achieved a similar level of stardom. While this phenomenon occurred to a much lesser extent, and to a fraction of writers, on the contemporary Australian literary scene than that which impacted overseas literary figures, Carter articulates this manifestation of a ‘cult of celebrity’ within the framework of modernity, which was a central theme dictating contemporaneous magazine content.

Summary of key points:

New forms of fame and celebrity emerged to encompass authors, and Australian Magazines of the 1920’s and 30’s showcased and registered these celebrities.

 Discusses how movie personalities attracted fame and celebrity status, and demonstrates a that a level of fame and celebrity also became attached to authors.

 Modern celebrity and literature value circulated in the same journals.

 Periodicals played a key role in “mediating for local readers the social and cultural transformations of modernity”

 Australia was up to date with the concepts that underpinned cultural modernity, not lagging behind.

 Acknowledges the lack of a fecund environment for the propagation of a national literary culture in early twentieth century Australia, but that general commercial magazines provided this by providing a platform for literature as a social and entertainment forum that educated its readership in cosmopolitanism.

Important Quotations:

Modern celebrity is typically associated with metropolitan centers and with the new media of radio and cinema. But Australian cultural institutions and markets were thoroughly engaged in the transnational networks of modernity (170).

 Personality and celebrity become dominant there, and artists and writers are among those featured. Yet Australia’s “pro- vincial” relations to Britain and the US meant that attaching celebrity to Australian authors remained problematic, despite editorial investments in representing local books and writing as aspects of a modern life or personality (170).

 In the Triad’s words, which almost provide a definition of celebrity, Pickford was “less a person than a Personage, less an incident than an Event” (171).

 Forms of local, Australian fame were possible, especially in the popular market: two authors in particular, Steele Rudd and C.J. Dennis, were so popular they suffered the fate of genre writers elsewhere in being consumed by their own fictional creations, as characters they invented became better-known than the authors themselves (174).

 Usefulness to our group topic or individual project:

Provides an analysis of the role of magazines in articulating modernity in Australian literature

Complete citation: References

Carter, David  "The Conditions of Fame: Literary Celebrity in Australia between the Wars." Journal of modern literature 39.1 (2015). Print.

Travers, L. "Lucky 13." The BP Magazine March 1938 1938: 4. Print.