Settlers and their good press: Helena Goodwyn, Reviewing The New Journalism, the New Imperialism and the Fiction of Empire, 1870–1900 by Andrew Griffiths, Settlers, War, and Empire in the Press: Unsettling News in Australia and Britain, 1863–1902 by Sam Hutchinson, and Dreamworlds of Race: Empire and the Utopian Destiny of Anglo-America by Duncan Bell, Modern Language Review, 121, 2026, pp. 260-267 | settler colonial studies blog

Settlers and their good press: Helena Goodwyn, Reviewing The New Journalism, the New Imperialism and the Fiction of Empire, 1870–1900 by Andrew Griffiths, Settlers, War, and Empire in the Press: Unsettling News in Australia and Britain, 1863–1902 by Sam Hutchinson, and Dreamworlds of Race: Empire and the Utopian Destiny of Anglo-America by Duncan Bell, Modern Language Review, 121, 2026, pp. 260-267

03Apr26

Excerpt: Read together or alone, these three valuable contributions to nineteenth-century studies provide us with insights into how Victorian journalism in particular influenced imperial narratives and shaped public opinion on war, race, and empire. Settlers, War, and Empire in the Press: Unsettling News in Australia and Britain, 1863–1901 examines Australian colonist conflicts in New Zealand (1863–64), the Sudan (1885), and South Africa (1899–1902) via their representation in newspapers. In his opening remarks Sam Hutchinson makes the claim that the ‘Anzac legend’, or ‘Anzac spirit’ (the set of courageous characteristics said to be demonstrated by Australian and New Zealanders during the First World War), as articulated by the newspaper press, can be pieced together from different elements in the reporting of each of the aforementioned conflicts. The Anzac spirit is, as such, one example of the main preoccupation of Hutchinson’s thesis: the formation of a settler character, forged out of the negotiation between representations of Australia as colony and an increasingly independent set of states, moving towards federation and commonwealth. This negotiation, as indicated by the title of Hutchinson’s book, emerges via close readings of the periodical press in Britain and Australia. Indeed, one of the key revelations of Settlers is the interpretative interplay — the dynamic, reciprocal relationship — between newspapers in Australia and Britain revealed by Hutchinson’s analysis. This analysis uncovers how the news reported in one location shaped the perspective and content of the news in the other.

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