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Philip Benson reassesses Australian writer Chester Cobb’s stream of consciousness style in Mr. Moffatt to argue for its innovative and distinctive contribution to modernist literary styles.

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Screenshot of journal article. Title: Australia’s First Modernist Novel: Mr. Moffatt, Chester Cobb and Stream of Consciousness Narrative Style. Author: Philip Benson (University of Sydney). Abstract: Chester Cobb was an Australian modernist writer who published two novels as an expatriate in England, Mr. Moffatt (1925) and Days of Disillusion (1926). Cobb’s experimental narrative style was praised by his contemporaries, but his name is now virtually absent from critical work on Australian literary modernism. This article reassesses Cobb’s contribution to the modernist novel of the 1920s by examining the narrative style of Mr. Moffatt. The unique contribution of Mr. Moffatt lay in its use of variations in the forms of (free) direct thought to stage the conflict between involuntary and voluntary processes in the flow of everyday consciousness. In this way, Cobb uses stream of consciousness style to advance a plot focused on the spiritual growth of the novel’s protagonist as he navigates the complexities of capitalist modernity. In this respect, Cobb deserves attention not simply as a follower of James Joyce, Dorothy Richardson and other early 20th-century modernists but also as an Australian innovator who made a distinctive contribution to modernist literary styles.

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