Key databases
- AustLitAustLit is an authoritative database of Australian literature and storytelling, indexing and describing Australian content published in a range of print and electronic information sources. AustLit provides information on creative and critical Australian literature works relating to Australian authors and literary organisations, with biographical and bibliographical information, full text, exhibitions and rich online content. AustLit is also the host of BlackWords, providing access to a vast record of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers and their publications, as well as a range of other datasets.
- Australian public affairs full text (APAFT)Includes journal articles from published material on the social sciences and humanities.
- Informit literature and culture collectionOffers a full text collection of every issue of Australia's best known literary and cultural magazines.
- Australasian literature: Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific IslandsAustralasian Literature brings together creative works from throughout Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands. Starting in the 1930s and spanning up to the present, it includes works from Indigenous Australians, Maori, Pacific Islanders, and female voices. It pairs primary-source literature with supplementary materials - including author interviews, documentaries, scholarly writings, and other related multimedia.
Coverage: from 1930s onwards
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writing and authors
Find texts by First Nations authors in the Library's curated collections:
- BlackWords (via AustLit)BlackWords records information about the lives, careers, and works of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers and storytellers and the literary cultures and traditions that formed and influenced them.
Introductory texts
The Routledge Companion to Australian Literature by ISBN: 9781000281705Publication Date: 2020This Companion emerges as a part of that reinvigoration, considering anew the history and development of Australian literature and its key themes, as well as tracing the transition of the field through those critical debates. It considers works of Australian literature on their own terms, as well as positioning them in their critical and historical context and their ethical and interactive position in the public and private spheres.
A Companion to Australian Aboriginal Literature by ISBN: 1580468217Publication Date: 2013This international collection of eleven original essays on Australian Aboriginal literature provides a comprehensive critical companion that contextualizes the Aboriginal canon for scholars, researchers, students, and general readers.
The Cambridge Companion to the Australian Novel by ISBN: 9781316514481Publication Date: 2023The Cambridge Companion to the Australian Novel provides a clear, lively, and accessible account of the novel in Australia. The book begins with novels by literary visitors to Australia and concludes with those by refugees. In between, the reader encounters the Australian novel in its splendid contradictoriness, from nineteenth-century settler fiction by women writers through to literary images of the Anthropocene, from sexuality in the novels of Patrick White to Waanyi writer Alexis Wright's call for a sovereign First Nations literature.
Australian literature and writing publications
- ABR online editionAustralian Book Review online publishes reviews, essays, commentaries, interviews and new creative writing. The magazine is national in readership, authorship, distribution, events and partners.
- Australian Poetry JournalBased at Melbourne’s The Wheeler Centre. Brings together state-based poetry collectives, publishes the country’s national poetry journal.
- MeanjinPublished by Melbourne University Publishing. Primarily as a literary magazine, Meanjin reflects the breadth of contemporary thinking, be it on literature, other art forms, or the broader issues of the times.
- The MozzieSmall press poetry magazine.
- WesterlyPublished by University of Western Australia. Publishes fiction, poetry and intellectual articles with special emphasis on Australia and the Asian region.
- Writing QueenslandPublished by Queensland Writers' Centre. Explores literature, publishing and writing in the age of digital media. With articles written by bloggers, publishers and authors, Writing Queensland is the publication for the aspiring writer.
Websites
- Project Gutenberg Library of AustralianaThis site has many ebooks by Australian writers, or books about Australia. There is a diverse range; from the journals of the land and sea explorers; to the early accounts of white settlement in Australia; to the fiction of 'Banjo' Paterson, Henry Lawson and many other Australian writers.
- Magabala BooksMagabala Books is committed to nurturing and celebrating the talent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander storytellers, writers, artists and illustrators.