How to search the catalogue for Australian literature

Quick search

Use the Catalogue standard search to find titles or authors.

• If you get too many results, use the Narrow search options (at the right of the page of the search results page) to display only the items you’re interested in
• If you need to widen your search, click on subject headings in an item’s Catalogue record to find other material related to that subject.

Online resources for Australian literature

There are a number of free websites and subscription databases containing online material, some full-text, for Australian literature works, biographies and criticism.

Key items are:

• AustLit: the resource for Australian literature - a key resource for information about Australian writers and writing covering the 1780s to the present. You can find AustLit by visiting our eResources portal and searching for this database under the Browse eResources tab. It is available to registered users of the National Library of Australia, Australian State Libraries and the Northern Territory Library. AustLit is also freely available to staff and students of all Australian schools. See the AustLit help page when using the database for the first time.
• Australian Literary and Historical Texts - a collection of digitised, full text 19th and early 20th century Australian literary, historical and political works from the Sydney Electronic Text and Image Service (SETIS).
• The Project Gutenberg Library of Australiana - etexts by Australian authors, about Australia and works of interest to Australians.

Manuscripts at the Library

Manuscripts are unpublished papers of people and organisations. The Library holds the personal papers of many Australian writers.

Examples are:

• Papers of Matthew Condon, 1983-1997
• Papers of Christina Stead, 1919-1996

Correspondence may appear in the papers of other manuscript collections.

Examples (see under 'summary) are:

• Papers of Alec Derwent Hope, 1914-1991
• Papers of Eleanor Dark, 1910-1974

See the Library web page Using the Manuscripts collection for information about accessing manuscripts

National Library collections

The Whelan Collection contains about 1050 books by Australian authors, nearly all of them autographed and many containing lengthy annotations.

The Palmer Collection contains about 2500 books and pamphlets. Most are Australian works published in the period 1900–60 and many of them are inscribed by the authors.

Featured resource

Jose, Nicolas (ed),  Macquarie PEN anthology of Australian literature, Crows Nest, N.S.W. : Allen & Unwin, 2009.

Jose, Nicolas (ed), Macquarie PEN anthology of Australian literature, Crows Nest, N.S.W. : Allen & Unwin, 2009.

This rich, informative and entertaining collection charts the formation of an Australian voice that draws inventively on Indigenous words, migrant speech and slang, with a cheeky, subversive humour always to the fore (publisher's note).

Find this book in a library near you

For authors and publishers

• National Library of Australia services - information about Legal Depost, ISBN/ISSN, copyright in Library items, and other topics
• The Australian Society of Authors - The professional association for Australia's literary creators
• Australian Writers' Guild - The professional association for Australian performance writers including film, television, theatre, radio and digital media
• The Australian Copyright Council - Find information sheets and FAQs for copyright creators and users