ABSTRACT
Australian fairy tale was collaboration and contest to create an Australian tradition that only rarely relied upon adapting traditional, European tales. Clare Bradford asserts that such “[f]airies introduced into the Australian landscape reassure readers about their status as inheritors of ancient traditions of fantasy transposed into a new land”. Children’s books and newspapers weren’t the sole medium for Australian fairy tales. Pantomimes were as popular in Australia as in England and along with performances of traditional fairy-tale fare like Cinderella, original pantomime material with a distinctly nationalistic flavor was produced. The negotiation of national identity occurring in the tales, however, largely overlooks Indigenous peoples. Indigenous storytelling existed long before the formation of the Australian nation, but it is a distinct and unique storytelling tradition. The competing inventions of Australian fairies nevertheless reveal the contested identity of that emerging nation and its gender, class, and racial prejudices.
