Editing Fiction
Three Case Studies from Post-war Australia

Learn the surprising ways that editorial intervention impacts on novels and the varied forces that help create literary fiction.

Alice Grundy (Author)

9781009017794, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 4 August 2022

75 pages
17.7 x 12.8 x 0.5 cm, 0.09 kg

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.

Introduction
1. Editing and the markets – Representation in Ruth Park's Swords and Crowns and Rings
2. Revisioning history – The editor as social barometer in Thea Astley's The Multiple Effects of Rainshadow
3. Openings and Closing – Editing as expansive and limiting in the editing of Tirra Lirra by the River
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]