Rejected by America? Some tensions in Australian-American literary relations

![CDATA[This chapter focuses on the period from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s, a watershed period in Australia-US literary relations, which saw the publication in the US of Australian novelists Peter Carey, David Malouf, Jessica Anderson, Thea Astley, Elizabeth Jolley, Helen Garner, Tim Winton and Beverley Farmer among others, but which was also crossed by tensions and contradictions which led to confusion, disappointment, lost opportunities and sometimes the outright rejection of important Australian authors and their books. Among these tensions, we look at three in particular: the promising but limited role played by the multinational publisher (in this case Penguin Books) offering Australian titles through its US affiliate (Viking Penguin); the intervention by literary agents in Australia-US publishing relations; and the difference in values between the two cultures, which served to hinder the appreciation of important works of Australian writing.]]