Education, Literature, and Art 227 



tralia in its sympathetic encouragement of 

 Australian literature and art. " There is no 

 Australian literature," wrote the editor of a seri- 

 ous London review to an Australian writer who 

 offered him an article upon that subject. This is 

 a hard saying, and of its truth or otherwise it 

 would be useless to contend. It is certain that 

 the path of literature, rough and painful as it is 

 to the beginner in any land, bristles in Australia 

 with obstacles that will disappear when the 

 country is older. 



Reference has been already made to the 

 absence of any notable Australian magazine or 

 review. Numbers of such publications have been 

 launched, and none have failed for want of 

 writers of ability, or subjects of importance or 

 interest. Their failure has been a financial one, 

 and due, in the first place, to the expense of 

 printing and publication where wages are high, 

 materials are dear, and the circle of appreciative 

 readers is small. Such publications have had to 

 compete with the magazines and reviews of Eng- 

 land and America, produced under circumstances 

 vastly more favourable to cheapness and adver- 

 tising support. One after another they have 

 dwindled and died. The Australian publishing 

 firms have contended with the same adverse 

 circumstances, heightened by the fact that the 

 Australian market is flooded by cheap "colonial" 

 editions of the newest books published in London. 

 Thus for three and sixpence one may buy in Aus- 



