The story
The Bulletin was founded by J. F. Archibald and John Haynes in Sydney, New South Wales, with the first issue being published on 31 January 1880. The original content of The Bulletin consisted of a mix of political comment, sensationalised news, and Australian literature. For a short period in 1880, their first artist William Macleod was also a partner.
The publication was folio size and initially consisted of eight pages, increasing to 12 pages in July 1880, and had reached 48 pages by 1899. The first issue sold for four pence, later reduced to three pence, and then, in 1883, was increased to six pence. It is the namesake of the Sydney lane Bulletin Place, where the journal was published between 1880 and 1897, the year it moved to newer and larger offices in George Street.
During its first few decades, The Bulletin played a significant role in fostering nationalist sentiments in Australia. Its politics were also anti-imperialist, protectionist, insular, racist, republican, anti-clerical and masculinist—but not socialist. It mercilessly ridiculed colonial governors, capitalists, perceived snobs and social climbers, the clergy, wowsers (puritanical moralists), feminists and prohibitionists. It upheld trade unionism, Australian independence, advanced democracy and White Australia. It ran cartoons mocking the British, Chinese, Japanese, Indians, Jews, and Indigenous Australians. The Bulletin decried the mistreatment of Indigenous people and regretted that, apart from the perpetrators of the Myall Creek massacre, offending colonists had escaped justice. Even so, The Bulletin assumed that their "black brothers" would soon die out regardless, viewing them as an inferior race unfit "for the ordeal of civilisation", and any efforts to ameliorate their condition as futile. In the early 20th century, editor James Edmond changed The Bulletin's nationalist banner from "Australia for Australians" to "Australia for the White Man". An 1887 editorial laid out its reasons for choosing such banners:
By the term Australian we mean not those who have been merely born in Australia. All white men who come to these shores—with a clean record—and who leave behind them the memory of the class distinctions and the religious differences of the old world... all men who leave the tyrant-ridden lands of Europe for freedom of speech and right of personal liberty are Australians before they set foot on the ship which brings them hither. Those who... leave their fatherland because they cannot swallow the worm-eaten lie of the divine right of kings to murder peasants, are Australian by instinct—Australian and Republican are synonymous.
The "Bulletin School"
Temper, democratic; bias, offensively Australian.
From its outset, The Bulletin aimed to serve as a platform for young and aspiring Australian writers to showcase their works to large audiences. In 1886, it opened to submissions from all readers, calling for "original political, social or humorous matter, unpublished anecdotes and paragraphs, poems and short stories". Archibald encouraged contributors to "Make it short! Make it snappy, make it crisp, boil it down to a paragraph!" This resulted in what became known as "Bulletinese", described by P. R. Stephensen as "a clipped kind of slangy jargon [that] laid on local colour, not with a brush, but with a trowel." The Bulletin subsequently became the focal point of an emerging literary nationalism known as the "Bulletin School", characterised by colloquial Australian language, energetic verse, dry humour and hard-edged realism. Popular with people who lived in the Australian bush, The Bulletin frequently reflected the life of the bush back to them, and by 1888, it was widely referred to as "the bushman's bible". "The Bulletin brought the world to the bush, and made the bush part of the world", wrote Ann Curthoys and Julianne Schultz. It was unique for publishing the contributions of ordinary bush people side by side with those from professional writers, and among folklorists and linguists, it is said to be without comparison as a source of Australianisms and bush lore.
Critics of the Bulletin School found much of its output to be amoral, pessimistic and parochial. Vincent Buckley alleged that it was "a debilitating force in Australian culture" that "saw men as no different from, and with no more soul than, the gibber-plains, mulga, soil erosion, crows, dead sheep and withered outback mountains which regularly appeared in their poems." The journal Australian Woman's Sphere, published by suffragist Vida Goldstein, wrote that there were two types of Bulletin School verse: "one a clothes-horse on which to hang bush terms, and the other an echo from the grave, with blighted love and regret in it". While commending the Bulletin School for being "racy of the soil" and displaying "unconventional local genius", Arthur Patchett Martin considered the defects of their verse to be "an absence of lucidity and an excess of expletives". English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson read some Bulletin School poetry but declined to finish it, saying, "Unlike John the Baptist, I cannot live on locusts and wild honey."
A number of leading members of the Bulletin School, often called bush poets, have become giants of Australian literature. Notable writers associated with The Bulletin during this period include:
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Although cartooning featured in earlier Australian newspapers and journals, The Bulletin was the first to place heavy emphasis on it, and in the estimation of Bernard Smith, helped make Australia "one of the most important centres of black-and-white art in the world". Many artists contributed illustrations to The Bulletin, including:
Cultural impact
According to The Times of London, "It was The Bulletin that educated Australia up to Federation". In South Africa, Cecil Rhodes regarded The Bulletin with "holy horror" and as a threat to his imperialist ambitions, telling W. T. Stead that the Jameson raid's target was "Sydney Bulletin Australians who cared nothing for the [Union Jack]". In a piece on Rhodes, Stead wrote that "The Bulletin he thus honoured by his dread is indeed one of the most notable journals of the world": "It is brilliant, lawless, audacious, scoffing, cynical, fearless, insolent, cocksure". English author D. H. Lawrence felt that The Bulletin was "the only periodical in the world that really amused him", and often referred to it for inspiration when writing his 1923 novel Kangaroo. Like Lawrence, the novel's English narrator considers it "the momentaneous life of the continent", and appreciates its straightforwardness and the "kick" in its writing: "It beat no solemn drums. It had no deadly earnestness. It was just stoical and spitefully humorous." In The Australian Language (1946), Sidney Baker wrote: "Perhaps never again will so much of the true nature of a country be caught up in the pages of a single journal".
Bulletin School writers Henry Lawson, Mary Gilmore, and Banjo Paterson are among the four historical figures who have been commemorated on the Australian ten-dollar note.
A Woman's Letter
The Bulletin was seen to be lacking a "gossip column" such as that conducted by "Mrs Gullett" in The Daily Telegraph. W. H. Traill, part-owner of the Bulletin, was aware of the literary talents of his sister-in-law Pattie Lewis, who had been, as "Mab", writing children's stories for the Sydney Mail. He offered the 17-year-old a column to be called A Woman's Letter, which involved reporting on the comings and goings of notable Sydney socialites.
In time the column became quite popular, and reportedly the first item looked for in the magazine by both men and women.
When Lewis married, it was she who recommended her successor, Ina Wildman, the audacious "Sappho Smith".
Seven women wrote the "Woman's Letter" for The Bulletin:
1881–1888 Pattie Lewis (died 1955) as "Mab"; married James Fotheringhame in 1886
1888–1896: Ina Wildman (died 1896) as "Sappho Smith"
1896–1898: Florence Blair (died 1937), daughter of David Blair, she married Archibald Boteler Baverstock in 1898.
1898–1901: Louise Mack (1870–1935) married John Percy Creed in 1896 and Allen I. Leyland in 1927.
1901–1911: Agnes Conor O'Brien (died 1934) as "Akenehi" or "Lynette". She married artist and newspaperman William Macleod in 1911
1911–1919: Margaret Cox-Taylor (died July 1939) as "Vandorian"
1919–1934: Nora Kelly as "Nora McAuliffe"
From Wikipedia’s article on The Bulletin (Australian periodical), shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3