Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-29T04:22:06.020Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
Series:   Elements in Publishing and Book Culture

Editing Fiction

Three Case Studies from Post-war Australia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 July 2022

Alice Grundy
Alice Grundy
Affiliation:
Australian National University, Canberra

Summary

Editing Fiction considers the collaborative efforts of literary production as well as editorial practice in its own right, using case studies by Australian novelists Jessica Anderson, Thea Astley and Ruth Park. An emphasis on collaboration is necessary because literary criticism often takes books as finite, discrete works rather than the result of multiple contributors, engaged to differing degrees. The editorial process always involves a negotiation over edits for the sake of the work, taking its potential reception or projected sales into account. Through examination of the archives, this Element shows that editing can be formative, limiting, commercially directed, a literary collaboration – or a mix of all these interventions. For editors and scholars alike, the Element examines practices of the recent past, seeking to determine the responsibilities of editors and publishers to authors, the text itself and to society; and the interrelation of editorial work, social conditions and market forces.
Get access

Keywords

editingpublishingbook historyliterary criticismpost-colonial studies
Type
Element
Information
Series: Elements in Publishing and Book Culture
Online ISBN: 9781009039383
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication: 04 August 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adelaide, Debra. 1996. ‘Northern Disclosure’. Sydney Morning Herald, 28 September, sec. Spectrum.Google Scholar
Anderson, Jessica. 1978. Tirra Lirra by the River. South Melbourne: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Anderson, Jessica. 1980. The Impersonators. South Melbourne: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Anderson, Jessica. 1987a. An Ordinary Lunacy. Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Anderson, Jessica. 1987b. Stories from the Warm Zone and Sydney Stories. Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Anderson, Jessica. n.d. ‘Papers’. Mitchell Library, SLNSW.Google Scholar
Astley, Thea. 1972. The Acolyte. Sydney: Angus and Robertson.Google Scholar
Astley, Thea 1978. Being a Queenslander. Sydney: The Wentworth Press.Google Scholar
Astley, Thea 1982. An Item from the Late News. St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press.Google Scholar
Astley, Thea 1985. Beachmasters. Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Astley, Thea 1987. It’s Raining in Mango: Pictures from the Family Album. Ringwood, Vic.: Viking.Google Scholar
Astley, Thea 1988. The Well Dressed Explorer. Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin.Google Scholar
Astley, Thea 1999. Drylands: A Book for the World’s Last Reader. Ringwood, Vic.: Viking.Google Scholar
Astley, Thea 2012. Girl with a Monkey. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin House of Books.Google Scholar
Astley, Thea 2018a. The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow. Text Classics. Melbourne: Text Publishing.Google Scholar
Astley, Thea 2018b. A Kindness Cup. Melbourne: Text Publishing.Google Scholar
Astley, Thea n.d. ‘Papers’. Fryer Library.Google Scholar
Athill, Diana. 2011. Stet. London: Granta.Google Scholar
Barker, Anthony, and Vic. Society of Editors (Melbourne). 1991. One of the First and One of the Finest: Beatrice Davis, Book Editor. Carlton, Vic.: Society of Editors (Vic.).Google Scholar
Barlow, Damien. 2012. ‘The Queerness of Jessica Anderson’s Fiction’. Southerly 72(1): 136–52.Google Scholar
Barry, Elaine. 1996. Fabricating the Self: The Fictions of Jessica Anderson. New rev. ed. UQP Studies in Australian Literature. St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press.Google Scholar
Bedford, Jean. 1978. ‘Expatriate’s Return Home’. The National Times, 9 September.Google Scholar
Berg, A. Scott 2013. Max Perkins: Editor of Genius. London: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre, and Johnson, Randal. 1993. The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Brett, Mandy. 2011. ‘Stet by Me: Thoughts on Editing Fiction’. Meanjin. https://meanjin.com.au/essays/stet-by-me-thoughts-on-editing-fiction/Google Scholar
Chetwynd, Ali, Freer, Joanna and Maragos, Georgios, eds. 2018. Thomas Pynchon, Sex, and Gender. Athens: The University of Georgia Press.Google Scholar
Clark, Alex. 2011. ‘The Lost Art of Editing’. The Guardian, 12 February. www.theguardian.com/books/2011/feb/11/lost-art-editing-books-publishing.Google Scholar
Conley, David. 1986. ‘Astley Makes the Read Hard Work’. Gold Coast Bulletin. March. Fryer.Google Scholar
Cosic, Miriam. 2016. ‘How an Editor Brings the Writer’s Work Squalling into the World’. Australian Financial Review Magazine, 24 February. www.afr.com/life-and-luxury/anna-funder-christos-tsiolkas-tim-flannery-on-the-editorwriter-relationship-20160112-gm49x0.Google Scholar
Dale, Leigh. 2008. Colonial History and Post-colonial Fiction: The Writing of Thea Astley. In Sheridan, Susan and Genoni, Paul (eds.), Thea Astley’s Fictional Worlds. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.Google Scholar
Dale, Leigh. n.d. ‘Colonial History and Post-Colonial Fiction: The Writing of Thea Astley’. Australian Literary Studies 19(1): 21–30.Google Scholar
Davis, Beatrice. n.d. ‘Papers’. Mitchell Library, SLNSW.Google Scholar
Davis, Lennard J. 2013. The Disability Studies Reader. 4th ed. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dever, Maryanne, Vickery, Ann and Newman, Sally. 2009. The Intimate Archive: Journeys through Private Papers. Canberra: National Library of Australia.Google Scholar
Dixon, Robert M. W., Ramson, W. S. and Thomas, Mandy. 1992. Australian Aboriginal Words in English: Their Origin and Meaning. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Einsohn, Amy, and Schwartz, Marilyn. 2019. The Copyeditor’s Handbook: A Guide for Book Publishing and Corporate Communications. 4th ed. Oakland: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Ellison, Jennifer, ed. 1986. Rooms of Their Own. Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin.Google Scholar
English, James. 2010. ‘Everywhere and Nowhere: The Sociology of Literature After “the Sociology of Literature”’. New Literary History 41(2): v–xxiii.Google Scholar
Flann, Elizabeth, Hill, Beryl and Wang, Lan. 2014. The Australian Editing Handbook. 3rd ed. Milton, Qld: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Foley, Abram. 2021. The Editor Function: Literary Publishing in Postwar America. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Garner, Helen. 1982. ‘In the Tradition of Wake in Fright’. National Times, 17 October.Google Scholar
Genette, Gerard, and Maclean, Marie. 1991. ‘Introduction to the Paratext’. New Literary History 22(2): 261.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilbert, Pam. 1988. Coming Out from Under: Contemporary Australian Women Writers. Australian Literary Heritage. London: Pandora.Google Scholar
Ginna, Peter, ed. 2017. What Editors Do: The Art, Craft, and Business of Book Editing. Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Gottlieb, Robert. 2016. Avid Reader: A Life. 1st ed. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.Google Scholar
Greaves, Jill. 1996. ‘“The Craft So Long to Learn”: Ruth Park’s Story of Ruth Park’. Australian Literary Studies 17(3): 244–53.Google Scholar
Greenberg, Susan. 2015. Editors Talk about Editing: Insights for Readers, Writers and Publishers. Mass Communication and Journalism 11. New York: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Greenberg, Susan 2018. A Poetics of Editing. 1st ed. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Grenville, Kate, and Woolfe, Sue. 2001. Making Stories: How Ten Australian Novels Were Written. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Groenland, Tim. 2019. Art of Editing: Raymond Carver and David Foster Wallace. New York: Bloomsbury Academic USA.Google Scholar
Gross, Gerald, ed. 1993. Editors on Editing: What Writers Need to Know about What Editors Do. 3rd ed. New York: Grove Press.Google Scholar
Grossman, Michele. 2013. Entangled Subjects: Indigenous/Australian Cross-Cultures of Talk, Text, and Modernity. Cross/Cultures 158. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Hay, Louis. 2014. ‘Psychoanalytic Reading and the Avant-Texte’. In Deppman, Jed, Ferrer, Daniel, and Groden, Michael (eds.), Genetic Criticism: Texts and Avant-Textes, Material Texts. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press: 17–27.Google Scholar
Haynes, Roslynn. 1986. ‘Art as Reflection in Jessica Anderson’s Tirra Lirra by the River’. Australian Literary Studies 12(3): 316–23.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
Luc, Herman, and Krafft, John M.. 2007. ‘Fast Learner: The Typescript of Pynchon’s V. at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin’. Texas Studies in Literature and Language 49(1): 1–20.Google Scholar
Luc, Herman, and Krafft, John M. 2015. ‘Monkey Business: The Chapter “Millennium” Removed from an Early Version of V’. In Simonetti, Paolo and Rossi, Umberto (eds.), Dream Tonight of Peacock Tails: Essays on the Fiftieth Anniversary of Thomas Pynchon’s V. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015: 13–30.Google Scholar
Luc, Herman, and Krafft, John M. 2018. ‘Pynchon and Gender: A View from the Typescript of V’. In Chetwynd, Ali, Freer, Joanna, and Maragos, Georgios (eds.), Thomas Pynchon, Sex, and Gender. Athens: University of Georgia Press.Google Scholar
Irvine, Dean. 2016. Editing Modernity: Women and Little-Magazine Cultures in Canada, 1916–1956. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Jones, Jennifer. 2009. Black Writers, White Editors: Episodes of Collaboration and Compromise in Australian Publishing History. North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing.Google Scholar
Jordan, Ray. 1978. ‘A Testimony to One of Life’s Heroes’. The West Australian, 28 November.Google Scholar
Kent, Jacqueline. 2001. A Certain Style: Beatrice Davis, a Literary Life. Camberwell, Vic.: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Koch, Christopher. 2012. The Year of Living Dangerously. Pymble, NSW: HarperCollins Australia.Google Scholar
Koestenbaum, Wayne. 1989. Double Talk: The Erotics of Male Literary Collaboration. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lamb, Karen. 2015. Thea Astley: Inventing Her Own Weather. St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press.Google Scholar
Leane, Jeanine. 2014. ‘Tracking Our Country in Settler Literature’. Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature. 14 March.Google Scholar
Lever, Susan. 2008. ‘Changing Times, Changing Stories’. In Sheridan, Susan and Genomi, Paul (eds.). Thea Astley’s Fictional Worlds. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing: 126–34.Google Scholar
Mackenzie, Janet. 2011. The Editor’s Companion. 2nd ed. Port Melbourne, Vic.: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Marek, Jayne E. 1995. Women Editing Modernism: ‘Little’ Magazines & Literary History. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.Google Scholar
Max, D. T. 1998. ‘The Carver Chronicles’. New York Times Magazine, 9 August. Proquest.Google Scholar
McCormack, Thomas. 2006. The Fiction Editor, the Novel, and the Novelist. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books.Google Scholar
McGann, Jerome J. 1983. A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
McGann, Jerome J. 1991. The Textual Condition. Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
McRobbie, Diana. 1983. ‘Don’t Let the Flaws Stop You Reading’. Gold Coast Bulletin, 2 January.Google Scholar
Miner, Valerie. 1988. ‘The Brilliant Career of Thea Astley’. Los Angeles Times, 7 August.Google Scholar
David, Mitchell, and Snyder, Sharon. 2013. Narrative Prosthesis. In David, Lennard J. (ed.), The Disability Studies Reader, 4th ed. New York: Routledge: 222–35.Google Scholar
Moretti, Franco. 2009. ‘Style Inc., Reflections on Seven Thousand Titles (British Novels 1740–1850)’. Critical Inquiry 36(1): 134–58.Google Scholar
Munro, Craig. 2021. Literary Lion Tamers: Book Editors Who Made Publishing History. Brunswick, Vic.: Scribe.Google Scholar
Park, Ruth. 1955. Pink Flannel. Sydney: Angus & Robertson.Google Scholar
Park, Ruth 2009. The Harp in the South Trilogy. Camberwell, Vic.: Penguin Group Australia.Google Scholar
Park, Ruth 2012. Swords and Crowns and Rings. Text Classics. Melbourne: Text Publishing.Google Scholar
Park, Ruth 2019a. A Fence Around the Cuckoo. Text Classics. Melbourne: Text Publishing.Google Scholar
Park, Ruth 2019b. Fishing in the Styx. Text Classics. Melbourne: Text Publishing.Google Scholar
Park, Ruth n.d. ‘Papers’. Mitchell Library, SLNSW.Google Scholar
Perkins, Elizabeth. 1992. ‘Violence and Intellect: Thea Astley’s Prose Style’. Australian Book Review, no. 144 (September).Google Scholar
Prior, Renarta. 1993. Straight from the Yudaman’s Mouth: The Life Story of Peter Prior: Before, during, and after the Robert Curry Days, Never Told Before. Townsville, Qld: Dept. of History & Politics, James Cook University.Google Scholar
Riddell, Elizabeth. 1977. ‘The Lord of the Gold and Rings’. The Australian, Weekend Magazine, 5 November.Google Scholar
Rodoreda, Geoff. 2018. The Mabo Turn in Australian Fiction. Australian Studies: Interdisciplinary Perspectives 1. Oxford: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Rooney, Brigid. 2018. Suburban Space, the Novel and Australian Modernity. London: Anthem Press.Google Scholar
Sheridan, Susan. 2011. ‘Historical Novels Challenging the National Story’. History Australia 8(2): 7–20.Google Scholar
Sheridan, Susan 2016. The Fiction of Thea Astley. Cambria Australian Literature Series. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press.Google Scholar
Shoemaker, Adam. 1989. Black Words, White Page: Aboriginal Literature, 1929–1988. UQP Studies in Australian Literature. St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press.Google Scholar
Simonetti, Paolo, and Rossi, Umberto, eds. 2015. Dream Tonight of Peacock Tails: Essays on the 50th Anniversary of Thomas Pynchon’s V. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Stillinger, Jack. 1991. Multiple Authorship and the Myth of Solitary Genius. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sullivan, Hannah. 2013. The Work of Revision. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, Cheryl. 2009. ‘“This Fiction, It Don’t Go Away”: Narrative as an Index to Palm Island’s Past and Present’. Queensland Review 16(1): 35–67.Google Scholar
Taylor, Cheryl 2021. ‘The Genesis of Thea Astley’s Multiple Effects of Rainshadow’. Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature [Online] 21(1): n.p.Google Scholar
Throsby, David, Zwar, Jan and Morgan, Callum. 2017. ‘Reading the Reader: A Survey of Australian Reading Habits’. Macquarie University. www.businessandeconomics.mq.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/528030/FinalFinalReaders-Report-24-05-17-final.pdf.Google Scholar
Throsby, David, Zwar, Jan, Longden, Tom and Crosby, Paul. 2015. The Australian Book Industry: Authors, Publishers and Readers in a Time of Change. Sydney: Macquarie University. www.businessandeconomics.mq.edu.au/our_departments/Economics/econ_research/reach_network/book_project/about.Google Scholar
Christine, Togo, dir. 1997. Straight from the Yudaman’s Mouth. Film. Townsville, Qld: Big Eye Productions.Google Scholar
‘Tribute to Beatrice Davis’. 1974. Manuscript. MLMSS 2808.Google Scholar
Triesman, Deborah. n.d. ‘The New Yorker Fiction Podcast’. www.newyorker.com/podcast/fiction/anne-enright-reads-frank-oconnor.Google Scholar
Van Toorn, Penelope. 2006. Writing Never Arrives Naked: Early Aboriginal Cultures of Writing in Australia. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.Google Scholar
Venuti, Lawrence. 2010. ‘Translation, Empiricism, Ethics’. Profession: 72–81.Google Scholar
Walker, Shirley. 2009. ‘Bitter Fruit: Ruth Park’s Trilogy’. Australian Book Review 313 (August): 25–26.Google Scholar
Wrathall, Andrew. 2018. ‘For Love or Money: Employment in the Australian Publishing Industry in 2018’. Books and Publishing (November). www.booksandpublishing.com.au/articles/2018/11/21/118475/for-love-or-money-analysing-the-employment-survey/.Google Scholar

Save element to Kindle

To save this element to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Editing Fiction
  • Alice Grundy, Australian National University, Canberra
  • Online ISBN: 9781009039383
Available formats
×

Save element to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Editing Fiction
  • Alice Grundy, Australian National University, Canberra
  • Online ISBN: 9781009039383
Available formats
×

Save element to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Editing Fiction
  • Alice Grundy, Australian National University, Canberra
  • Online ISBN: 9781009039383
Available formats
×