SOURCE: Levis, Ken. “The Role of the Bulletin in Indigenous Short-Story Writing During the Eighties and Nineties.” In The Australian Nationalists: Modern Critical Essays, edited by Chris Wallace-Crabbe, pp. 45-57. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1971.

In the following essay, originally published in 1950, Levis discusses the opportunity provided by the Bulletin to Australian short fiction writers concerned with depicting Australia and its people.

The greatest force in the development of indigenous short-story writing was the Sydney Bulletin, which provided a stimulus, developed an attitude of mind, stood firmly by its writers and supplied for them critical standards and an enthusiastic audience. Other papers and periodicals did some of these things, in some measure—especially the Age, the Australasian, the Australian Journal, the Freeman's Journal, the Boomerang, the Town and Country Journal, the Sydney Mail—but none approaches the importance of the Bulletin.

In appraising the function of the Bulletin in...