ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the particular combination of evangelical Christian domesticity with Australian fictional domesticity occurring in the popular fiction of Maud Jean Franc. A distinctive feature of Franc's fiction, as compared to that of her Australian female contemporaries, is that it was published and marketed in serial and volume form in Australia and in Britain. Maud Jean Franc's career was consistent with theirs, but also distinct, both in the particularly Australian forms of local domestic evangelicalism she promulgated and in some of the genre-bending this involved. Franc repeatedly used the domestic garden as a metaphor and sign for aesthetic and Christian growth and cultivation. Colonial reader records, however, indicate that Franc's work was read in the context of secular romance as well as other evangelical and Christian fiction, which justifies a wider contextualization, and also highlights the significance and impact of the plot variations in her work.
