The Provincial Muse 1888-1900

Abstract

This this is concerned mainly with the state of poetry in Australia at the end of the last century, and in particular with what was happening in the year 1888, the year in which England was surprised by no less than three anthologies of Australian poetry, all of which were a considerable success.

It also raises the question of why, at a period when Australia was emerg ing from colonialism as a society and from provincialism in the arts, painting and music almost immediately took their place in what were then the modern movements of European art, but literature remained backward, provincial and strangely anachronistic.