ABSTRACT
Domestic Fiction in Colonial Australia and New Zealand brings together a series of essays that explores the representation of settler homes in colonial Australian and New Zealand writing, reading it vis-a-vis the antipodes changing function in Victorian culture. A startling number of domestic narratives by Australian and New Zealand writers eschewed imperialism's appropriation of domestic ideology. The transportation of convicts to parts of Australia as arguably the continent's first systematic mass settlement was itself in reaction to the loss of Britain's American colonies in the late eighteenth century. The identification of female settlers with the bringing of civilization a slippery concept and hence a slippery identification as well alone already reminds the people how vital it is to acknowledge women's complicity in various forms of cultural imperialism throughout the British Empire and beyond, throughout the settler world. This chapter also presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of the book.
