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The functions and values of journalism and fiction were closely aligned in Australia between 1850 and 1900. These links are reflected in newspapers that printed both storytelling forms, often by the same writer. Webby dates Australia’s journalism- literature connection from the publication of its first newspaper, the Sydney Gazette

and New South Wales Advertiser (1988: 119). From its earliest issues in 1803 it

included original poetry and essays as well as stories, reviews and sketches. Most early newspapers included a “Poet’s Corner”. This is characteristic of the 19th century as press power grew both commercially and politically. As journalists acquired more freedom and authority newspapers became literature’s greatest benefactor. Contiguous with this were expanded readerships and growing numbers of periodical titles. This produced greater opportunity to publish and more competition to find and shape material for broad consumption. Increased literacy through Education Acts and urbanisation were building a critical mass of readers who hungered for information, ideas and narratives. This hunger grew with awareness that, by acting collectively, people could influence how they were governed.

Relationships between readers and writers were becoming more complex. Antecedents for this can be located in England, where an elitist 18th century “us and them” binary between information producers and consumers was being reconfigured. This binary, in part, was based on literacy rates. Between 1600 and 1800 in England literacy among adult males rose from 25 per cent to up to 70 per cent (Hunter, 1990: 65-6). In Australia an 1846 census in NSW found that, of a European population of

189,609, only 25,781 persons over the age of 13 were illiterate (Chronicle, 1993: 266).

If reportage influenced how ballots were cast, journalism’s political power increased as more people bought newspapers. Circulation increases also reflected readers’ importance to advertisers in search of customers. As newspapers’ cultural and economic standing strengthened they were better able to employee full-time writers and pay contributors. Thus, literacy and the democratisation of political systems contributed to power shifts from established elites to “the common man”. In the process newspapers became principal conduits between governments and electors and businesses and customers. These changes privileged journalists as storytellers and, as noted by Watt (1963: 36-7), parallelled the elevation of literary, the novel and the middle class. In this sense novels and newspapers were partners in influencing cultural transmission, understanding, modification and conformity. In Hartley’s view journalism not only began to connect readers with other public domains but also served as a key mechanism for different cultural domains to communicate with one another (1996: 25).

Hunter believes the novel should be seen within this broader cultural context (1990: 5). He says, “… journalism, didactic materials with all kinds of religious and ideological directions, and private papers and histories need to be seen as contributors to the social and intellectual work in which the novel emerged”. In noting many novelists formerly were journalists, Madden says novels are like newspapers in employing the “gross materials of reality” for their themes and narratives:

The expanding middle class wanted to know more about the wider world it was helping to create and in which it was rising in every sphere. The novel developed simultaneously with that other organ of middle class information: the newspaper. From the beginning, the novel competed with other media in the dissemination of facts that described the way things are. Newspapers portrayed the public life; novelists imagined the private life behind the news item. (1980: 7)

Given journalists typically have some idea of the “private life behind the news item” they might be in a better position to create verisimilitude than non-journalists in melding direct observation with imagination in their fiction.

Despite their increased authority, 19th century Australian journalists had to negotiate unstable ground between those who had the power to regulate, tax and jail them and readers and advertisers who paid their wages. Although the colony’s first independent, non-government newspaper had been published in 1824 editors were still jailed for seditious libel. Among them were the Ballarat Times editor, imprisoned in 1855 in relation to the Eureka uprising (Chronicle, 1993: 299), and the Melbourne Argus editor jailed 1866 for saying a statement by the chief secretary “bristled with falsehoods” (334). The most prominent jailings occurred in 1882 when Bulletin co- founders J.F. Archibald and John Haynes could not pay 1500 pounds in legal costs after losing a defamation case over the description of a Boxing Day picnic as an “orgy” (389).

Symbiotic relationships between governments and newspapers and editors and politicians compromised newspapers’ inform and comment functions, their fairness values and gatekeeping role. Editors and publishers were rewarded or punished through printing contracts, government advertising and access to government “paper trains” that distributed newspapers when the railways developed (Mayer, 1968: 17). These dynamics and increased readerships – together with profit imperatives for newspaper owners and political imperatives for politicians – informs why, according to Payne, journalism’s power won it “practical admission” to government (1970: vix- xv). This power is evident in printing technology. From 1820 to 1870 printing capacity for an edition increased from 4000 to 168,000 (Conley, 2002: 218). Newspapers’ growing political and economic clout also can be detected in increased titles. In New South Wales the number of newspapers grew from 10 in 1840 to 50 by 1860 (Mayer, 1968: 10).

At the same time fiction was exploiting newspapers as an avenue for publication and marketing. This accentuated its inform and educate functions through the convict novel, which can be seen as a novel of social reform. From mid-century journalists such as Dickens sought to raise the novel from its “romantic” past and failure to test the intellect to a medium of social reform, education and advocacy. For such writers and for many readers it was the novel, not journalism, which represented the low cultural ground. According to Stewart, journalism was a mainstay of 19th century colonial literary production (1988: 179). Australian book publishing did not become firmly established until the 1890s (Morrison, 1993: 63-5). Before then, and

especially from the mid-1860s to the 1870s, newspapers were the mainstay of serial fiction. Although most serials were imported, Australian writers could get fiction published in newspapers. Morrison cites several prominent novels first published in newspapers, including Rolf Boldrewood’s Robbery Under Arms. It appeared in the

Sydney Mail during 1882-83, four years before it was produced in book form.

The convict novel prospered, especially before 1850. The colony’s first novelist, Henry Savery, was a journalist and a transported convict. He was acting editor of The Tasmanian, whose editor agreed to publish Quintus Servinton (1831). Mitchell says the convict novel The Memoirs of James Hardy Vaux (1819) by Vaux initiated the transition from factual memoirs in narrative to fiction (1981: 31-43). It also introduced the convict novel as a dominant mode. He also names Caroline Leakey’s The Broad Arrow (1859) and The Forger’s Wife (1855) by John Lang. Green (1962a: 91-100; 282) adds John Boyle O’Reilly’s Moondyne (1879).

The century’s most popular convict novel was Marcus Clarke’s For the Term

of His Natural Life (1874). It was serialised from March 1870 in the Australian Journal. The same month that Clarke was named the magazine’s editor. Other 19th

century journalist-novelists such as William Lane also had their novels first appear in serial form in periodicals that they either edited or contributed to (Martin: 1998: 93- 4). These were recurrent patterns for journalist-novelists. Periodicals and newspapers to which they contributed as journalists supported them as novelists. In return they had cost-effective material to fill their columns as serialisation built circulation from issue to issue.

It is not surprising crime and transportation were popular 19th century themes. When the Sydney Gazette was published as the colony’s first newspaper in 1803 the colony had just 7000 people; 6000 were convicts. With transportation continuing until 1868 the ratio remained high. In New South Wales convicts made up 63 per cent of the population in 1828, 39 per cent in 1841 and nearly 16 per cent in 1851 (Ward: 1958: 14). It was not just that writers were targeting ex-convicts and their families as readers. They recognised Australia’s European genesis was through the convict system and, until relatively late in the century, most people were directly or indirectly affected by it.

The convict novel incorporates the inform, educate, comment and entertain functions and the conflict, prominence and proximity reader values. The conflict can be seen as between England and Australia, man and inhumanity or good and evil. Hunter has cited conflict as vital to the novel’s evolution in England (1990:7). On one side were the Protestant and capitalist interests of a self-possessed culture. On the other were hierarchical, constrictive and authoritarian forces of a “too neatly sorted past”. Hawthorn agrees the novel was concerned with conflict from its earliest days (1992: 18). Conflicts between individuals frequently had a representative quality, “pointing in the direction of larger social, historical or cultural conflicts”. Karl identifies an “adversary culture” in the novel form from the outset (1974: 5). It “stood for new and often dangerous ideas, criticised the predominant culture, and displayed what were often subversion forms of behaviour”.

Conflict can simultaneously serve other newspaper functions in drawing attention to themes seeking to inform, educate and entertain readers as well as to advocate a viewpoint. Reports of crime and wars, the most basic kinds of community and inter-cultural conflicts, were staples of 18th and 19th century newspapers (Mayer, 1968: 1, 13). Similarly, conflict is used in novels to inform, educate, entertain and advocate. Savery, for instance, said Quintus Servinton aimed to instruct and entertain according to “truly Christian principles” (Argyle, 1972: 11). In acting as gatekeepers, journalist-novelists use conflict as a gauge to select topics and formulate narratives to attract and hold readers. Transportation narratives also used conflict as a literary tool. For example, Australia is seen as a prison rife with unjust punishments in For the

Term of His Natural Life. As asserted in Chapter 6, conflict was also prominent in

Clarke’s journalism.

In summary the functions and values of literature and journalism for 19th century men of letters meant they could move easily between fiction and non-fiction. The comment function and the conflict reader value united the two genres, especially in relation to convict-based storytelling. Also, newspapers were important forums for fiction and as sources of income for those who wrote it.