Roger Osborne

Roger’s research program concentrates on Australian and British literature seen through the lens of book history, print culture, and scholarly editing.   

He is a contributing editor to the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Joseph Conrad, an award-winning series producing the most up-to-date and authoritative scholarly texts of Conrad's publications. Roger completed his first edition, Under Western Eyes , as co-editor in 2013. His second edition, Nostromo, widely considered Conrad's modernist masterpiece was published in July 2023. Both volumes have received the seal of the MLA Committee on Scholarly Editions.

Roger’s work on the trans-national nature of Australian print culture has been published widely, and his co-authored book, Australian Books and Authors in the American Marketplace 1840s-1940s, the first of two projected volumes, was published by Sydney University Press in 2018 and shortlisted for the AUHE Prize and the Walter McCrae Russell Award for literary scholarship. The second volume, covering the years 1950s–2000s, is scheduled for publication in 2026.

Roger has worked at the forefront of digital scholarly editing and has an international reputation for this work. His Joseph Furphy Digital Archive was launched in 2015 and continues to grow with new modules added each year. Sydney University Press published The Life of Such is Life: A Cultural History of an Australian Classic, in 2022. This volume was shortlisted for the AUHE Prize, and was joint-winner of the 2023 Walter McRae Russell Award for literary scholarship.

Roger is a Chief Investigator on the ARC-funded Special Research Initiative, “Read all about it: Digital participation in Australian Newspapers” (SR200200521, 2021–24). The Project aims to transform understandings of Australian literary history by using innovative digital methods to discover, curate and investigate tens of thousands of unrecorded novels, novellas and short stories in 20th-century Australian newspapers. The results of the project can be seen at The Australian Newspaper Fiction Database.

Digital Projects

To Be Continued (in the twentieth century): https://readallaboutit.com.au/

Joseph Furphy Digital Archive: https://www.austlit.edu.au/furphy

Tom Collins and Company: https://tomcollinsandcompany.github.io/annotate/

Australian Journal Story Book: https://ajstorybook.wordpress.com/