SOURCE: Stilz, Gerhard. “Nationalism before Nationhood: Overseas Horizons in the Debates of the 1880s.” Australian Literary Studies 14, no. 4 (October 1990): 476-88.

In the following essay, Stilz studies international inspiration and domestic contention in the development of an Australian national literature in the 1880s.

In 1888, the year of the Australian Centennial, the Sydney Bulletin, otherwise no mean advocate of nationalising Australian culture, observed with some sarcasm:

During the present period of high-falutin, Centennial ‘blow’, Australia has pulled herself together and carefully and categorically gone over the entirety of her attractions. She has compared her progress with that of the nations of the earth, much to her own satisfaction. Her trade, her industries, her resources (mineral and agricultural), her advancement in the various branches of science, her sport, even her literature and her art, have each and all been measured and gauged with an infinitude of self-gratulation. Members of Parliament, advocates...