As Australia began the process of breaking away from its from status a British colony, Catherine Martin was fascinated with the meaning of Australian culture and identity. She examines these issues through the story of the independent and intelligent Stella Courtland, a young girt who marries and finds herself hampered by the social constraints of her new life. In this sensitive Late of moral and emotional growth, Martin brilliantly captures this turning point in Australian history and anticipates the values of a new generation.

Between 1870 and 1940, tens of thousands of Australian women were drawn to London, their imperial metropolis and the center of the publishing, art, musical, theatrical, and educational worlds. Even more Australian women than men made the pilgrimage "home," seeking opportunities beyond those available to them in the Australian colonies or dominion. In tracing the experiences of these women, this volume reveals hitherto unexamined connections between whiteness, colonial status, gender, and modernity.

This book examines colonial women writers who traveled to London in the modernist period, and the significance of gender to the interwoven nature of empire and modernism. Anna Snaith's wide-ranging study shows how the works of Jean Rhys, Katherine Mansfield, Una Marson and others renegotiated the position of women within the British Empire.

When we think about what it is we do in academic literary studies, we do so taking account of time – the time of the institution in which this disciplinary practice takes place, and the history of the discipline itself. Since literary studies engage contemporary issues and how they impact the reader, we must also acknowledge processes and events outside the field. The contributions to this volume engage with the idea of temporality not only in Anglophone literature studies, but in the humanities as a whole. In the first section, the literary contributions show that the humanities owe a debt to the past – new paradigms question and challenge the validity of older ones without necessarily discarding them. The second section shows how the disciplinary archive can be modified and expanded to engage its present condition, while the last deals with what that condition forebodes. Despite the range of perspectives adopted here, all contributions echo the history of the discipline of literary studies itself, its present condition, and the possibilities for its survival in an age in which the relevance of humanities is being disputed.