Naughty and Gay? Revisiting the Nineties in the Australian Colonies

Abstract

In this article I show that aspects of what was called the ‘Gay’ or ‘Naughty Nineties’ in other parts of the world were experienced in Australia, in spite of the depression and industrial upheaval taking place in most Australian colonies during the 1890s. My focus is two tours by companies from London’s Gaiety Theatre — one in 1893, the other in 1895 — but might just as easily have been the development of vaudeville, the arrival of cinema, or the expansion of spectator sport in the decade. By drawing attention to these modernising influences on leisure and popular culture, my aim is to expand the way the decade is imagined in Australian historiography. It is also, more ambitiously, to grapple with some of the disparities between social and cultural approaches to history. Mindful of the fact that social historians have focused on the material hardships caused by the depression, while cultural scholars have paid them less heed, I suggest ways in which we might bring together these different perspectives in accounts of Australia’s 1890s.This article has been peer-reviewed.