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Short story collections, cultural value, and the Australian market for books

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journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-21, 07:36 authored by Emmett StinsonEmmett Stinson
THIS ARTICLE EMPLOYS A BIBLIOMETRIC DATASET COMPRISING FORTY YEARS OF Australian sole-authored short story collections to examine the degree to which non-economic values, such as cultural value and symbolic value, regulate cultural production in Australian book publishing. While short story collections may be an unexpected and oblique measure, the variable status of the sole-authored short story collection makes it a useful barometer for examining publishers’ investments in cultural forms of value, as opposed to commercial ones. This data suggests two findings that diverge from accounts of recent Australian literary production: (1) that the flowering of Australian short fiction in booklength form occurred slightly later than commonly noted (in the mid -1980s rather than the 1970s), and (2) that there has been a significant contemporary increase in the publishing of largely non-commercial short story collections since 2012. This second finding potentially problematises narratives of literary decline in Australian publishing. In particular, the re-emergence of the short story collection suggests that debates about the disaggregation of the literary field may be overstated, since this data potentially suggests a repolarisation of the field. Rather than reinscribing hierarchies of literary value, however, this repolarisation may simply reflect trends within readerly demographics that consume different kinds of texts.

History

Publication title

Australian Humanities Review

Volume

66

Pagination

46-64

ISSN

1325-8338

Department/School

School of Humanities

Publisher

Australian National University-School of Humanities

Place of publication

Australia

Rights statement

© 2020 Australian Humanities Review

Repository Status

  • Open

Socio-economic Objectives

Literature; Publishing and print services

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