News location:

Canberra Today 15°/19° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Arts / ‘The Bulletin’ is back – online

“STOP the presses”, said staff at the National Library of Australia because Australia’s longest running magazine, “The Bulletin” is back – online.

Photo courtesy of the NLA
The first six years of the magazine often called the “Bushman’s Bible”, which ran from 1880 to 2008, has been digitised and made accessible by the National Library through Trove.

New director-general of the National Library of Australia, Dr Marie-Louise Ayres, said: “With these first years of the magazine now available via Trove, a new generation of readers now have access to some of our finest literary content and illustrations – to say nothing of a laugh or two.”

“Banjo Paterson, CJ Dennis, Dorothea Mackellar, Steele Rudd, Katherine Susannah Pritchard were just some of the bylines that graced those early pages,” she said.

The digitisation of the first six years was possible with the support of the State Library of NSW and the online research and publishing tool, AustLit.

“Now, thanks to Federal Government assistance through its Modernisation Fund, we plan to digitise more issues of this quintessentially Australian magazine,” she said.

“The Bulletin” was the magazine of an Australia many of us would recognise. Founded by JF Archibald and John Haynes in 1880, the first magazines were a mix of political comment, news that was often not fit to print and literary content that made it an outstanding platform for young and aspiring writers.

It even rated a mention in DH Lawrence’s 1923 novel, “Kangaroo” — “It [The Bulletin] beat no solemn drums. It had no deadly earnestness. It was just stoical and spitefully humorous.”

By 1961, when it was bought by Australian Consolidated Press, it shifted to a news magazine format under the editorship of Donald Horne.

Who can be trusted?

In a world of spin and confusion, there’s never been a more important time to support independent journalism in Canberra.

If you trust our work online and want to enforce the power of independent voices, I invite you to make a small contribution.

Every dollar of support is invested back into our journalism to help keep citynews.com.au strong and free.

Become a supporter

Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

Helen Musa

Helen Musa

Share this

Leave a Reply

Related Posts

Music

Cunio takes top job at NZ School of Music

Immediate past head of the ANU School of Music, Kim Cunio, is to become head of school at Te Kōki, the NZ School of Music, part of the Victoria University of Wellington, reports HELEN MUSA.

Follow us on Instagram @canberracitynews