Review of The Journalistic Javelin: An Illustrated History of the Bulletin by Patricia Wolfe, and The Bulletin 29 January 1980 (Centenary issue).

Abstract

Histories of the Bulletin by journalists associated with the paper during its century of survival, or continual reincarnation, have their own history by now. When founding editor J. F. Archibald left and established the Lone Hand, he began in the new magazine a projected series of articles on the Bulletin which was abruptly terminated. After the second world war, William Fitz Henry's accounts of its early decades appeared in various anniversary issues. Douglas Stewart began his 1977 Boyer lectures with the founding of the paper. At least two other staffers have been compiling their histories: and more personal and fragmentary reminiscences have been provided, most notably by Norman Lindsay whose association lasted sixty years. The wealth of legends and anecdotes that has accumulated over a century, the opportunity for evoking a more colourful, and youthful, past have made the paper's history good 'copy', and a frequent subject for hurriedly thrown together pieces, at least as far back as Henry Lawson's manuscript intended for an English audience. Yet the basic, if less colourful, history of changes in proprietorship, editors and policy, in stall"and contributors, in circulation and presumed readership have not been readily available until now.