The Archibald Paradox

The early Sydney Bulletin, 'a parade of expressive tricks and marvels', came out of the vociferous clamour that was the late nineteenth-century press-British radical weeklies, battling American dailies, lively news sheets from bush towns and goldfields. Turning up every week in its violent pink cover-'half Australia writes it', they said, 'all Australia reads it'-the Bulletin was the Great Print Circus- 'a better book' said one of its veterans 'than any of the books that came out of it'. In this remarkable study of the Bulletin and its founding editor , J. F. Archibald, Sylvia Lawson provides a provocative re-interpretation of the legendary 1880s and 1890s, looking at the dark side of the circus as well as its high entertainment.