Claiming Territorial Rights: Peter Carey’s Novels in a Global Literary Marketplace

Abstract This article engages with and builds upon scholarship that positions Peter Carey as a global novelist by examining the history and bibliographical detail of the majority of Carey’s Australian, US and UK first editions. Paul Eggert has described the production of True History of the Kelly Gang (2000), as “one of the last significant works of literature to appear in a century that had seen remarkable advances in the technology of book production” and demonstrates “the difficulties faced by authors and publishers in attempting to produce identical editions for different markets” (Eggert 2006, 195–98). Stuart Glover extends Eggert’s account to argue that, more broadly, such difficulties “introduced a tension into the previously cohesive triad of author, editor, and the single authorized text” (Glover 2011, 54). This article also extends Eggert’s account of the editing and production of True History of the Kelly Gang by examining in more detail the production history of Carey’s previous and subsequent novels to validate Eggert’s claims, but, also, to acknowledge the many occasions when “identical editions” were achieved. In doing so, I will examine the conceptual space that emerges in the transnational negotiations between publishers, agents, editors, authors and other stakeholders, a space where the legal, cultural and logistical demands of distinct territories play out in the process of book production for each territory at different periods of time. This is significant in the case of Peter Carey’s novels, because the University of Queensland Press (UQP) also played a role in contesting that space to assert the rights and cultural identity of Australian writers. The following account of Peter Carey and UQP in a global marketplace for books will serve as a touchstone for future research on the influence of territorial rights on the careers of Australian authors and their Australian publishers, and the subsequent distribution of books across established territorial boundaries.