Making New Readers: The Australasian Book Society and the Cold War

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This project aims to produce the first full history of one of the boldest ventures in Australian publishing. The Australasian Book Society sought to develop new readers and writers in mid-century Cold War Australia. Using a rich web of archival sources, this project shows whether and how the Society met those ambitious aims. New knowledge about the unique business model of a grassroots nationalist publisher will lead to deeper understanding of the development of Australian working-class writing and reading. This will afford new insights into Australian literary identity for a nation still committed to reading, an archive preserved for future generations and, for the determining global history of the Cold War, a revealing Australian case.