Women writers shaped Australia’s story. Help us to share theirs.

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Judith Wright is one of Australia's most celebrated literary figures, nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature on several occasions, and named a National Living Treasure in her lifetime.

Born in 1915 in the Northern Tablelands of New South Wales, Wright spent her early childhood exploring the landscape surrounding her family's property on horseback. These experiences were the seed of a deep and abiding connection to the Australian landscape that came to life on the page.

Wright's passion for the land extended far beyond her poetry. As president and co-founder of the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland and in helping establish the Australian Conservation Foundation, she was a fierce environmental advocate.

Judith Wright’s work was also informed by her awareness of the history and impacts of colonisation on First Nations people in Australia. A close friend of poet and Quandamooka woman Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Wright’s book The Cry for the Dead (1981) acknowledged her ancestors’ role in the “great pastoral invasion” of eastern Australia, and she was a passionate advocate for a Treaty.

With your help, we can bring Judith Wright’s poetry and activism to life on Trove for the very first time.

Dame Mary Jean Gilmore was a poet, journalist, and tireless social campaigner. Through her long editorship of the Australian Worker’s women’s page and her advocacy for causes ranging from women’s suffrage to Aboriginal rights, her work gave voice to the struggles of ordinary Australians.

A co-founder of the Fellowship of Australian Writers, a mentor to emerging writers, and a beloved public figure, Gilmore was the first writer in a generation to receive a state funeral after her death in 1962.

The National Library is proud to be the custodian of many of Mary Gilmore’s manuscripts. With your support, we can bring her records to Trove and share her words with a new generation.

Christina Stead was one of Australia’s most significant novelists, and her Sydney upbringing informed her internationally acclaimed fiction. Novels such as The Man Who Loved Children (1940) and For Love Alone (1944) combined bold narrative experimentation with unflinching social commentary in works that were defining for Australian literary modernism.  

Stead’s novel Letty Fox: Her Luck (1946) was banned in Australia until the 1950s, and though long slighted for her expatriate status, left-wing and gender politics, several of Stead’s novels now enjoy classic status.

Christina Stead’s draft manuscripts, diaries, and extensive correspondence with other Australian writers can currently only be accessed in person at the National Library. Your support of our 2026 Appeal will help us to bring them online for the whole world to see on Trove.

Stories waiting to be rediscovered

Mary Gilmore and Christina Stead are iconic writers, as are others in our collection such as Judith Wright, Stella Miles Franklin, and Louisa Lawson. But there are also many less-heralded Australian women writers in the National Library’s collections whose voices have the potential to inspire.

Among these figures are the political activist Jennie Scott Griffiths, an American-born writer who in 1916 spearheaded the opposition to conscription and famously believed that women should “take over control of State affairs and put men in the kitchen to cook”. Another is Rosa Praed, whose unflinching examinations of the Australian upper classes made her, in critic Elizabeth Webby’s words, “the first Australian-born novelist to achieve a significant international reputation”.  

We are also excited to add to Trove the records of Perth-born novelist, journalist and playwright Henrietta Drake-Brockman, chronicler of Australia’s north-west frontier and one of the four co-discoverers of the Dutch shipwreck Batavia near the Abrolhos Islands off the coast of Western Australia.

Help us to write the next chapter

This project to digitise the records of these incredible women and make a lasting contribution to Australian history by making their records accessible on Trove will cost $1 million in total.  

Thanks to generous commitments from the McLean Foundation, Sally White OAM, the WeirAnderson Foundation, Trawalla Foundation, Kathryn Favelle and Distinguished Professor Larissa Behrendt AO FASSA FAHA FAAL, we have already raised $250,000 towards this goal. The National Library will also contribute funds to this important project.

Your support will allow us to deliver this ambitious project, bringing the collections of Australian women writers online to inspire and educate contemporary audiences about the rich legacy of Australian women writers. 

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Australia’s history at your fingertips

Our online library, Trove, is used by millions of people each year.

With over 14 million sessions on the Trove website in the past year, Trove remains the most significant publicly funded online cultural resource after the ABC and SBS.

With donor support, we were proud to share the papers of Miles Franklin, a towering figure in the development of Australian literary fiction, for the first time on Trove.  

Franklin’s papers joined the records of women who shaped our history, including those of Dr Lowitja O’Donoghue, Dame Enid Lyons, the Australian Federation of Women Voters and many more, on our online Library. None of these projects would have been possible without philanthropic support.

With your help, we can add even more incredible stories to this living online resource.

Thank you for your generous support.