The Bulletin - Early History

Early History

The Bulletin was founded by two Sydney journalists, J.F. Archibald and John Haynes, and the first edition appeared on 31 January 1880. It was intended to be a journal of political and business commentary, with some literary content. Its politics were nationalist, anti-imperialist, protectionist, insular, racist, republican, anti-clerical and masculist - but not socialist. It mercilessly ridiculed colonial governors, capitalists, snobs and social climbers, the clergy, feminists and prohibitionists. It upheld trade unionism, Australian independence, advanced democracy and White Australia. It ran savagely racist cartoons attacking Chinese, Indians, Japanese and Jews, and mocking Indigenous Australians. The paper's masthead slogan, "Australia for the White Man," became a national political credo.

This mix of radicalism and xenophobia was popular in the frontier districts of late 19th century Australia, and The Bulletin soon became known as "the bushman's bible," with a circulation reaching 80,000 by 1900. Archibald's masterstroke was to open The Bulletin 's pages to contributions from its readers in 1886, running pages of poetry, short stories and cartoons contributed by miners, shearers and timber-workers from all over Australia. Some of this material was of high quality, and over the years many of Australia's leading literary lights had their start in The Bulletin 's pages. At the same time, The Bulletin ran well-informed political and business news.

The Bulletin 's literary editor, Alfred Stephens, was the main inspiration for the "Bulletin school." Among the better-known contributors were the writers Henry Lawson, Banjo Paterson, Bernard O'Dowd, Joseph Furphy, Miles Franklin, Harrison Owen, Robert Kaleski and Vance and Nettie Palmer, the cartoonists Livingston Hopkins ("Hop"), David Low, Phil May, D. H. Souter, Norman "Heth" Hetherington, and the illustrator and novelist Norman Lindsay.

Archibald retired in 1907, and thereafter The Bulletin became steadily more conservative, and by World War I had become openly Empire-loyalist. This marked its break with the political left and the end of its real influence, although it retained its place in Australian literary life well into the 1920s. In 1927, managing director William Macleod sold his stake in the magazine to Samuel Prior, long term financial editor, senior editor and, since buying Archibald's shares some years earlier, major shareholder. Macleod had earlier invited Prior's third child, Henry, to manage the magazine. The Prior family owned and operated The Bulletin Newspaper company for the following decades, introducing new ventures such as the Wild Cat Monthly in 1923, the Australian Woman's Mirror in 1924, and, in a joint venture with Norman Lindsay designed to publish Australian writers, the Endeavour Press in 1932. Ultimately, however, the magazine gradually declined, losing circulation steadily. Its pre-war attitudes came to seem increasingly reactionary, and its cult of the bushman increasingly anachronistic in what was already an urbanised country. By the 1940s The Bulletin was regarded as a sad relic, filled with racist and antisemitic bile, and with political commentary so right-wing as to seem almost comic.

In his novel Kangaroo the English novelist D H Lawrence wrote favourably about The Bulletin and quoted from it.