Australian literature is thewritten or literary work produced in the area or by the people of theCommonwealth of Australia and its preceding colonies. During its earlyWestern history, Australia was a collection of British colonies; as such, its recognised literary tradition begins with and is linked to the broader tradition ofEnglish literature. However, the narrative art of Australian writers has, since 1788, introduced the character of a new continent into literature—exploring such themes asAboriginality,mateship,egalitarianism,democracy, national identity, migration, Australia's unique location and geography, the complexities of urban living, and "the beauty and the terror" of life in theAustralian bush.
Australian writers who have obtained international renown include theNobel-winning authorPatrick White, as well as authorsChristina Stead,David Malouf,Peter Carey,Thomas Keneally,Colleen McCullough,Nevil Shute andMorris West. Notable contemporary authors include novelistsAlexis Wright,Michelle de Kretser andRichard Flanagan.
Among the important authors of classic Australian works are the poetsHenry Lawson,Banjo Paterson,C. J. Dennis andDorothea Mackellar. Dennis wrote in the Australian vernacular, while Mackellar wrote the iconic patriotic poemMy Country. Lawson and Paterson clashed in the famous "Bulletin Debate" over the nature of life in Australia with Lawson considered to have the harder edged view of the Bush and Paterson the romantic.[1] Lawson is widely regarded as one of Australia's greatest writers of short stories, while Paterson's poems remain amongst the most popular Australian bush poems. Significant poets of the 20th century included DameMary Gilmore,Kenneth Slessor,A. D. Hope,Les Murray andJudith Wright. Among the best known contemporary poets areJohn Kinsella andJennifer Maiden, whose poems are often studied in Australian high schools.
Novelists of classic Australian works includeMarcus Clarke (For the Term of His Natural Life),Miles Franklin (My Brilliant Career),Henry Handel Richardson (The Fortunes of Richard Mahony),Joseph Furphy (Such Is Life),Rolf Boldrewood (Robbery Under Arms) andRuth Park (The Harp in the South). In terms of children's literature,Norman Lindsay (The Magic Pudding),Mem Fox (Possum Magic), andMay Gibbs (Snugglepot and Cuddlepie) are among the Australian classics, whileMelina Marchetta (Looking for Alibrandi) is a modernYA classic. Eminent Australian playwrights have includedRay Lawler,David Williamson,Alan Seymour andNick Enright. Among prominent short story writers areSteele Rudd,Henry Lawson,Beverley Farmer,Kate Grenville, andHelen Garner.
Although historically only a small proportion of Australia's population have lived outside the major cities, many of Australia's most distinctive stories and legends originate in theoutback, in thedrovers and squatters and people of the barren, dusty plains.[2]
David Unaipon is known as the first Aboriginal author.Oodgeroo Noonuccal was the firstAboriginal Australian to publish a book of verse.[3] A ground-breaking memoir about the experiences of theStolen Generations can be found inSally Morgan'sMy Place.
Charles Bean,Geoffrey Blainey,Robert Hughes,Manning Clark,Claire Wright, andMarcia Langton are authors of important Australian histories.
Writing by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
While his father,James Unaipon (c.1835-1907), contributed to accounts of Aboriginal mythology written by the missionary George Taplin,[4]David Unaipon (1872–1967) provided the first accounts of Aboriginal mythology written by an Aboriginal person:Legendary Tales of the Aborigines. For this he is known as the first Aboriginal author.Oodgeroo Noonuccal (1920–1993) was a famous Aboriginal poet, writer and rights activist credited with publishing the first Aboriginal book of verse:We Are Going (1964).[5]Sally Morgan's novelMy Place was considered a breakthrough memoir in terms of bringing indigenous stories to wider notice. Leading Aboriginal activistsMarcia Langton (First Australians, 2008) andNoel Pearson (Up from the Mission, 2009) are active contemporary contributors to Australian literature.
The voices ofIndigenous Australians are being increasingly recognised and include theplaywrightJack Davis andKevin Gilbert. Writers coming to prominence in the 21st century includeKim Scott,Alexis Wright,Kate Howarth,Tara June Winch,Yvette Holt andAnita Heiss. Indigenous authors who have won Australia's high prestigeMiles Franklin Award includeKim Scott who was joint winner (withThea Astley) in 2000 forBenang and again in 2011 forThat Deadman Dance.Alexis Wright won the award in 2007 for her novelCarpentaria.Melissa Lucashenko won the award in 2019 for her novelToo Much Lip, which was also short-listed for theStella Prize for Australian women's writing.
Letters written by notable Aboriginal leaders likeBennelong and SirDouglas Nicholls are also retained as treasures of Australian literature, as is the historicYirrkala bark petitions of 1963 which is the first traditional Aboriginal document recognised by theAustralian Parliament.[6]AustLit's BlackWords project provides a comprehensive listing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Writers and Storytellers.
Writing about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples
At the point of the first colonization,Indigenous Australians had not developed a system of writing, so the first literary accounts of Aboriginal people come from the journals of early European explorers, which contain descriptions of first contact, both violent and friendly.[7] Early accounts by Dutch explorers and by the English buccaneerWilliam Dampier wrote of the "natives ofNew Holland" as being "barbarous savages", but by the time of CaptainJames Cook andFirst Fleet marineWatkin Tench (the era ofJean-Jacques Rousseau), accounts of Aborigines were more sympathetic and romantic: "these people may truly be said to be in the pure state of nature, and may appear to some to be the most wretched upon the earth; but in reality they are far happier than ... we Europeans", wrote Cook in his journal on 23 August 1770.[8]
Many notable works have been written by non-indigenous Australians on Aboriginal themes. Examples include the poems ofJudith Wright;The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith byThomas Keneally,Ilbarana byDonald Stuart, and the short story byDavid Malouf: "The Only Speaker of his Tongue".[9] Histories covering Indigenous themes includeWatkin Tench (Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay et Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson); Roderick J. Flanagan (The Aborigines of Australia, 1888);The Native Tribes of Central Australia bySpencer and Gillen, 1899; the diaries ofDonald Thomson on the subject of theYolngu people ofArnhem Land (c.1935-1943);Alan Moorehead (The fatal Impact, 1966);Geoffrey Blainey (Triumph of the Nomads, 1975);Henry Reynolds (The Other Side of the Frontier, 1981); andMarcia Langton (First Australians, 2008). Differing interpretations of Aboriginal history are also the subject of contemporary debate in Australia, notably between the essayistsRobert Manne andKeith Windschuttle.
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For centuries before the British settlement of Australia, European writers wrote fictional accounts of an imagining of aGreat Southern Land. In 1642Abel Janszoon Tasman landed inTasmania and after examining notches cut at considerable distances on tree trunks, speculated that the newly discovered country must be peopled by giants. Later, the British satirist,Jonathan Swift, set the land of theHouyhnhnms ofGulliver's Travels to the west of Tasmania.[10] In 1797 the BritishRomantic poetRobert Southey—then a youngJacobin—included a section in his collection, "Poems", a selection of poems under the heading, "Botany Bay Eclogues," in which he portrayed the plight and stories of transported convicts inNew South Wales.
Among the first true works of literature produced in Australia were the accounts of the settlement of Sydney byWatkin Tench, a captain of the marines on theFirst Fleet to arrive in 1788. In 1819, poet, explorer, journalist and politicianWilliam Charles Wentworth published the first book written by an Australian:A Statistical, Historical, and Political Description of the Colony of New South Wales and Its Dependent Settlements in Van Diemen's Land, With a Particular Enumeration of the Advantages Which These Colonies Offer for Emigration and Their Superiority in Many Respects Over Those Possessed by the United States of America, in which he advocated an elected assembly for New South Wales, trial by jury and settlement of Australia by free emigrants rather than convicts.
The first novel to be published in Australia was a crime novel,Quintus Servinton: A Tale founded upon Incidents of Real Occurrence[11][12] byHenry Savery published in Hobart in 1830.[13] Early popular works tended to be the 'ripping yarn' variety, telling tales of derring-do against the newfrontier of the Australianoutback. Writers such asRolf Boldrewood (Robbery Under Arms),Marcus Clarke (For the Term of His Natural Life),Henry Handel Richardson (The Fortunes of Richard Mahony) andJoseph Furphy (Such Is Life) embodied these stirring ideals in their tales and, particularly the latter, tried to accurately record thevernacular language of the common Australian. Thesenovelists also gave valuable insights into thepenal colonies which helped form the country and also the early rural settlements.
In 1838The Guardian: a tale byAnna Maria Bunn was published in Sydney. It was the first Australian novel printed and published in mainland Australia and the first Australian novel written by a woman. It is aGothic romance.[14]
Miles Franklin (My Brilliant Career) andJeannie Gunn (We of the Never Never) wrote of lives of European pioneers in the Australian bush from a female perspective.Albert Facey wrote of the experiences of the Goldfields and ofGallipoli (A Fortunate Life).Ruth Park wrote of the sectarian divisions of life in impoverished 1940s inner city Sydney (The Harp in the South). The experience of AustralianPoWs in thePacific War is recounted byNevil Shute inA Town Like Alice and in the autobiography of SirEdward Dunlop.Alan Moorehead was an Australian war correspondent and novelist who gained international acclaim.
A number of notable classic works by international writers deal with Australian subjects, among themD. H. Lawrence'sKangaroo. The journals ofCharles Darwin contain the famous naturalist's first impressions of Australia, gained on his tour aboard the Beagle that inspired his writing ofOn the Origin of Species.The Wayward Tourist: Mark Twain's Adventures in Australia contains the acclaimed American humourist's musings on Australia from his 1895 lecture tour.
In 2012,The Age reported that Text Publishing was releasing an Australian classics series in 2012, to address a "neglect of Australian literature" by universities and "British dominated" publishing houses—citing out of print Miles Franklin award winners such asDavid Ireland'sThe Glass Canoe andSumner Locke Elliott'sCareful, He Might Hear You as key examples.[15]
Ethel Turner'sSeven Little Australians, which relates the adventures of seven mischievous children in Sydney, has been in print since 1894, longer than any other Australian children's novel.[16]The Getting of Wisdom (1910) byHenry Handel Richardson, about an unconventional schoolgirl in Melbourne, has enjoyed a similar success and been praised byH. G. Wells andGermaine Greer.[17]
Other perennial favourites of Australian children's literature includeDorothy Wall'sBlinky Bill,Ethel Pedley'sDot and the Kangaroo,May Gibbs'Snugglepot and Cuddlepie,Norman Lindsay'sThe Magic Pudding,Ruth Park'sThe Muddleheaded Wombat andMem Fox'sPossum Magic. These classic works employanthropomorphism to bring alive the creatures of theAustralian bush, thus Bunyip Bluegum ofThe Magic Pudding is a koala who leaves his tree in search of adventure, while inDot and the Kangaroo a little girl lost in the bush is befriended by a group ofmarsupials. May Gibbs crafted a story of protagonists modelled on the appearance of youngeucalyptus (gum tree) nuts and pitted thesegumnut babies, Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, against the antagonistBanksia men. Gibbs' influence has lasted through the generations – contemporary children's authorUrsula Dubosarsky has citedSnugglepot and Cuddlepie as one of her favourite books.[18]
In the middle of the twentieth century, children's literature languished, with popular British authors dominating the Australian market. But in the 1960sOxford University Press published several Australian children's authors, andAngus & Robertson appointed their first specialist children's editor. The best-known writers to emerge in this period wereHesba Brinsmead,Ivan Southall,Colin Thiele,Patricia Wrightson,Nan Chauncy,Joan Phipson andEleanor Spence, their works primarily set in the Australian landscape.[19] In 1971, Southall won theCarnegie Medal forJosh.[20] In 1986, Patricia Wrightson received the internationalHans Christian Andersen Award.[21]
TheChildren's Book Council of Australia has presented annual awards for books of literary merit since 1946 and has other awards for outstanding contributions to Australian children's literature. Notable winners and shortlisted works have inspired several well-known Australian films from original novels, including theSilver Brumby series, a collection byElyne Mitchell which recount the life and adventures of Thowra, aSnowy Mountainsbrumby stallion;Storm Boy (1964), by Colin Thiele, about a boy and his pelican and the relationships he has with his father, the pelican, and an outcast Aboriginal man called Fingerbone; the Sydney-based Victorian era time travel adventurePlaying Beatie Bow (1980) byRuth Park; and, for older children and mature readers,Melina Marchetta's 1993 novel about a Sydney high school girlLooking for Alibrandi.Robin Klein'sCame Back to Show You I Could Fly is a story about the beautiful relationship between an eleven-year-old boy and an older, drug-addicted girl.[22]
Jackie French, widely described as Australia's most popular children's author, has written about 170 books, including twoCBCA Children's Book of the Year Award winners. One of them, the critically acclaimedHitler's Daughter (1999), is a "what if?" story that explores mind-provoking issues about what would have happened ifAdolf Hitler had had a daughter. French is also the author of the highly praisedDiary of a Wombat (2003), which won awards such as the 2003COOL Award and 2004BILBY Award, among others. It was also named an honour book for theCBCAChildren's Book of the Year Award for picture books.
Paul Jennings is a prolific writer of contemporary Australian fiction for young people whose career began with collections of short stories such asUnreal! (1985) andUnbelievable! (1987); many of the stories were adapted as episodes of the award-winning television showRound the Twist.[23]
The world's richest prize in children's literature has been received by two Australians,Sonya Hartnett, who won the 2008Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award[24] andShaun Tan, who won in 2011. Hartnett has a long and distinguished career, publishing her first novel at 15. She is known for her dark and often controversial themes. She has won several awards, including the Kathleen Mitchell Award and the Victorian Premier's Award forSleeping Dogs, Guardian Children's Fiction Prize and the Aurealis Award, Best Young Adult Novel (Australian speculative fiction) forThursday's Child and the CBCAChildren's Book of the Year Award: Older Readers forForest.[25] Tan won this for his career contribution to "children's and young adult literature in the broadest sense".[26] Tan has been awarded various literary awards, including theDeutscher Jugendliteraturpreis in 2009 forTales from Outer Suburbia and a New York Times Best Illustrated Children's Books award in 2007 forThe Arrival.[26] Alongside his numerous literary awards, Tan's adaption of his bookThe Lost Thing also won him an Oscar for best animated short film.[27] Other awards Tan has won include aWorld Fantasy Award for Best Artist,[28] and aHugo Award forBest Professional Artist.[29]
A generation of leading contemporary international writers who left Australia for Britain and the United States in the 1960s have remained regular and passionate contributors of Australian themed literary works throughout their careers including:Clive James,Robert Hughes,Barry Humphries,Geoffrey Robertson andGermaine Greer. Several of these writers had links to theSydney Push intellectual sub-culture in Sydney from the late 1940s to the early 1970s; and toOz, a satirical magazine originating in Sydney, and later produced in London (from 1967 to 1973).
After a long media career, Clive James remained a leading humourist and author based in Britain whose memoir series was rich in reflections on Australian society (including his 2007 bookCultural Amnesia). Robert Hughes has produced a number of historical works on Australia (includingThe Art of Australia (1966) andThe Fatal Shore (1987)).
Barry Humphries took hisdadaistabsurdist theatrical talents and pen to London in the 1960s, becoming an institution on British television and later attaining popularity in the USA. Humphries' outlandish Australian caricatures, including DameEdna Everage,Barry McKenzie andLes Patterson have starred in books, stage and screen to great acclaim over five decades and his biographer Anne Pender described him in 2010 as the most significant comedian sinceCharles Chaplin. His own literary works include the Dame Edna biographiesMy Gorgeous Life (1989) andHandling Edna (2010) and the autobiographyMy Life As Me: A Memoir (2002). Geoffrey RobertsonKC is a leading international human rights lawyer, academic, author and broadcaster whose books includeThe Justice Game (1998) andCrimes Against Humanity (1999). Leading feminist Germaine Greer, author ofThe Female Eunuch, has spent much of her career in England but continues to study, critique, condemn and adore her homeland (recent work includesWhitefella Jump Up: The Shortest Way to Nationhood, 2004).
Martin Boyd (1893–1972) was a distinguished memoirist, novelist and poet, whose works included social comedies and the serious reflections of a pacifist faced with a time of war. Among his Langton series of novels—The Cardboard Crown (1952),A Difficult Young Man (1955),Outbreak of Love (1957)—earned high praise in Britain and the United States, though despite their Australian themes, were largely ignored in Australia.[30]
Patrick White (1912–1990) became the first Australian to be awarded theNobel Prize in Literature in 1973 "for an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature".[31] White'sfirst novel,Happy Valley (1939) was inspired by the landscape and his work as ajackaroo on the land atAdaminaby in the Snowy Mountains, but became an international success and won the Australian Literary Society's gold medal.[32][33] Born to a conservative, wealthy Anglo-Australian family, he later wrote of conviction in left-wing causes and lived as a homosexual. Never destined for life on the land, he enrolled at Cambridge where he became a published poet. White developed as a novelist, but also had major theatrical success—includingThe Season at Sarsaparilla. White followedThe Tree of Man withVoss, which became the first winner of theMiles Franklin Award. A subsequent novel,Riders in the Chariot also received a Miles Franklin award—but White later refused to permit his novels to be entered for literary prizes. He turned down a knighthood, and various literary awards—but in 1973 accepted the Nobel prize.David Marr wrote of biography of White in 1991.[32]
J. M. Coetzee, who was born in South Africa and was resident there when awarded theNobel Prize in Literature in 2003,[34] now lives in Adelaide, South Australia, and is an Australian citizen.[35]Colleen McCullough'sThe Thorn Birds, 1977, is Australia's highest selling novel and one of the biggest selling novels of all time with around 30 million copies sold by 2009.[36]Thomas Keneally wroteThe Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, 1972 andSchindler's Ark, 1982. This latter work was the inspiration for the filmSchindler's List. Other notable Australian novels converted to celluloid include:Paul Brickhill'sThe Great Escape;Pamela Lyndon Travers'Mary Poppins;Morris West'sThe Shoes of the Fisherman andBryce Courtenay'sThe Power of One.
Careful, He Might Hear You bySumner Locke Elliott won the Miles Franklin Award in 1963, and was the subject ofa 1983 Australian film. AuthorDavid Ireland won the Miles Franklin Award three times, including forThe Glass Canoe (1976).[37]Peter Carey has also won the Miles Franklin Award three times (Jack Maggs 1998;Oscar and Lucinda 1989; andBliss 1981). He has twice won theBooker Prize with 1988'sOscar and Lucinda and 2001'sTrue History of the Kelly Gang.DBC Pierre'sVernon God Little won the Booker Prize in 2003. Other notable writers to have emerged since the 1970s includeKate Grenville,David Malouf,Helen Garner,Janette Turner Hospital,Marion Halligan,Susan Johnson,Christopher Koch,Alex Miller,Shirley Hazzard,Richard Flanagan,Gerald Murnane,Brenda Walker,Rod Jones andTim Winton.
James Clavell inThe Asian Saga discusses an important feature of Australian literature: its portrayal of fareastern culture, from the admittedly even further east, but neverthelesswestern cultural viewpoint, asNevil Shute did. Clavell was also a successfulscreenwriter and along with such writers asThomas Keneally (see above), has expanded the topics of Australian literature far beyond that one country. Other novelists to use international themes areDavid Malouf,Beverley Farmer andRod Jones.The Secret River (2005) is an historical fiction byKate Grenville imagining encounters between Aboriginal and colonial Australia which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.The Slap (2008) was an internationally successful novel byChristos Tsiolkas which was adapted for television byABC1 in 2011, and was described in a review byGerard Windsor as "something of an anatomy of the rising Australian middle class".[38]
Grunge lit (an abbreviation for "grunge literature") is an Australianliterary genre usually applied tofictional orsemi-autobiographical writing concerned with dissatisfied and disenfranchised[39]young people living in suburban or inner-city surroundings. It was typically written by "new, young authors"[40] who examined "gritty, dirty, real existences",[40] of lower-income young people, whose lives revolve around anihilistic pursuit of casualsex,recreational drug use andalcohol, which are used to escapeboredom or a general flightiness. Romantic love is seldom, as instant gratification has become the norm.[41] It has been described as both a sub-set ofdirty realism and an offshoot ofGeneration X literature.[42] The term "grunge" is from the 1990s-eramusic genre of grunge.
The genre was first coined in 1995 following the success ofAndrew McGahan's first novelPraise which had been released in 1991 and became popular with sub-30-year-old readers, a previously under-investigateddemographic.[40] Other authors considered to be "grunge lit" includeLinda Jaivin,Fiona McGregor andJustine Ettler. Since its invention, the term "grunge lit" has been retrospectively applied to novels written as early as 1977, namelyHelen Garner'sMonkey Grip.[42] Grunge lit is often raw, explicit, and vulgar, even to the point of Ettler'sThe River Ophelia (1995) being called pornographic.
The term "grunge lit" and its use to categorize and market this diverse group of writers and authorial styles has been the subject of debate and criticism. Linda Jaivin disagreed with putting all these authors in one category, Christios Tsiolkas called the term a "media creation", andMurray Waldren denied grunge lit even was a new genre; he said the works actually are a type of the pre-existingdirty realism genre.
Post-grunge lit is a genre of Australian fiction from the late 1990s, 2000s and 2010s. It is called "post-grunge lit" to denote that this genre appeared after the 1990s Australian literary genre known asgrunge lit. Michael Robert Christie's 2009 PhD dissertation, "Unbecoming-of-Age: Australian Grunge Fiction, the Bildungsroman and the Long Labor Decade" states that there is a genre called "post Grunge [lit]" which follows the grunge lit period. Christie names three examples of Australian "post-grunge lit":Elliot Perlman'sThree Dollars (1998),Andrew McCann'sSubtopia (2005) andAnthony Macris'Capital. Christie's dissertation interprets and explains these three post-grunge lit works "as responses to the embedding ofNeoliberalism in Australian and global political culture".
Kalinda Ashton (born 1978) has been called a post-grunge writer, in part due to influences from grunge lit authorChristos Tsiolkas. Ashton is the author of the novelThe Danger Game. Samantha Dagg's 2017 thesis on grunge lit and post-grunge lit states thatLuke Carman is a post-grunge writer.[43] Carman's first work, a collection of interlinked semi-autobiographical short stories, explores the authentic experiences of working-class Australians in the suburbs, including issues such as drug addiction and a sense of disillusionment.
Australia has migrant groups from many countries, and members of those communities (not always of the first generation) have produced Australian writing in a variety of languages. These includeItalian,Greek,Arabic,Chinese,Vietnamese,Lao,Filipino,Latvian,Ukrainian,Polish,Russian,Serbian,Yiddish andIrish.[44]
Comparatively little attention has been devoted to such writing by mainstream critics. It has been argued that, in relation to the national literary landscape, such literary communities have a quite separate existence, with their own poetry festivals, literary competitions, magazine and newspaper reviews and features, and even local publishers.[45] Some writers, like the Greek AustralianDimitris Tsaloumas, have published bilingually. There are now signs that such writing is attracting more academic interest.[46] Some older works in languages other than English have been translated and received critical and historical attention long after their first publication; for example, the first Chinese-language novel to be published in Australia (and possibly the West),The Poison of Polygamy (1909–10) byWong Shee Ping, was published in English for the first time in 2019, in a bilingual parallel edition.[47]
History has been an important discipline in the development of Australian writing.Watkin Tench (1758–1833) - a British officer who arrived with theFirst Fleet in 1788 - later published two books on the subject of the foundations of New South Wales:Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay andComplete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson. Written with a spirit of humanity his accounts are considered by writers includingRobert Hughes andThomas Keneally to be essential reading for the early history of Australia/Charles Bean was the official war historian of the First World War and was influential in establishing the importance ofANZAC in Australian history and mythology, with such prose as "Anzac stood, and still stands, for reckless valor in a good cause, for enterprise, resourcefulness, fidelity, comradeship and endurance, that will never own defeat".[48] (see works includingThe Story of ANZAC: From the Outbreak of War to the End of the First Phase of the Gallipoli Campaign 4 May 1915, 1921).
Australia in the War of 1939–1945 is a 22-volume official history dedicated to Australia's Second World War efforts. the series was published by theAustralian War Memorial between 1952 and 1977. The main editor wasGavin Long. A significant milestone was thehistorianManning Clark's six-volumeHistory of Australia, which is regarded by some as the definitive account of the nation. Clark had a talent for narrative prose and the work (published between 1969 and 1987) remains a popular and influential work. Clark's one time studentGeoffrey Blainey stands as another to have deeply influenced Australian historiography. His important works includeThe Tyranny of Distance (1966) andTriumph of the Nomads: A History of Ancient Australia (1975).Robert Hughes' much-debated historyThe Fatal Shore: The epic of Australia's founding (1987) is a popular and influential work on early Australian history.Marcia Langton is one of the principal contemporaryIndigenous Australian academics and her 2008 collaboration withRachel Perkins chronicles Australian history from an Indigenous perspective:First Australians. An Illustrated History.
A complicated, multi-faceted relationship to Australia is displayed in much Australian writing, often through writing about landscape.Barbara Baynton's short stories from the late 19th century/early 20th century convey people living in the bush, a landscape that is alive but also threatening and alienating.Kenneth Cook'sWake in Fright (1961) portrayed the outback as a nightmare with a blazing sun, from which there is no escape.Colin Thiele's novels reflected the life and times of rural and regional Australians in the 20th century, showing aspects of Australian life unknown to many city dwellers.
In Australian literature, the termmateship has often been employed to denote an intensely loyal relationship of shared experience, mutual respect and unconditional assistance existing between friends (mates) in Australia. This relationship of (often male) loyalty has remained a central subject of Australian literature from colonial times to the present day. In 1847, Alexander Harris wrote of habits of mutual helpfulness between mates arising in the "otherwise solitary bush" in which men would often "stand by one another through thick and thin; in fact it is a universal feeling that a man ought to be able to trust his own mate in anything".Henry Lawson, a son of the Goldfields wrote extensively of an egalitarian mateship, in such works asA Sketch of Mateship andShearers, in which he wrote:
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What it means to be Australian is another issue that Australian literature explores.Miles Franklin struggled to find a place for herself as a female writer in Australia, fictionalising this experience inMy Brilliant Career (1901).Marie Bjelke Petersen's popular romance novels, published between 1917 and 1937, offered a fresh upbeat interpretation of the Australian bush. The central character inPatrick White'sThe Twyborn Affair tries to conform to expectations of pre–World War II Australian masculinity but cannot, and instead, post-war, tries out another identity—and gender—overseas.Peter Carey has toyed with the idea of a national Australian identity as a series of 'beautiful lies', and this is a recurrent theme in his novels.Andrew McGahan'sPraise (1992),Christos Tsiolkas'sLoaded (1995),Justine Ettler'sThe River Ophelia (1995) andBrendan Cowell'sHow It Feels (2010) introduced agrunge lit, a type of'gritty realism' take on questions of Australian identity in the 1990s, though an important precursor to such work came some years earlier withHelen Garner'sMonkey Grip (1977), about a single mother living on and off with a male heroin addict in Melbourne share housing.
Australian literature has had several scandals surrounding the identity of writers. In the 1930s, a misunderstanding with a printer caused Maude Hepplestone's bush poetry collection "Songs of the Kookaburra" to be mistakenly lauded internationally as a modernist masterpiece. The 1944Ern Malley affair led to an obscenity trial and is often blamed for the lack ofmodernist poetry in Australia. To mark the 60th anniversary of the Ern Malley affair, another Australian writer,Leon Carmen, set out to make a point about the prejudice of Australian publishers against white Australians.[citation needed] Unable to find publication as a white Australian he was an instant success using the false Aboriginal identity of "Wanda Koolmatrie" withMy Own Sweet Time. In the 1980s Streten Bozik also managed to become published by assuming the Aboriginal identity ofB. Wongar. In the 1990s,Helen Darville used the pen-name "Helen Demidenko" and won major literary prizes for herHand that Signed the Paper before being discovered, sparking a controversy over the content of her novel, a fictionalised and highly tendentious account of the Nazi occupation of Ukraine.Mudrooroo—previously known as Colin Johnson—was acclaimed as an Aboriginal writer until his Aboriginality came under question (his mother was Irish/English and his father was Irish/African-American, however he has strong connections with Aboriginal tribes); he now avoids adopting a specific ethnic identity and his works deconstruct such notions.
Poetry played an important part in early Australian literature. The first poet to be published in Australia wasMichael Massey Robinson (1744–1826), convict and public servant, whoseodes appeared inThe Sydney Gazette.[50] The first book of verse by a native-born Australian poet,Australasia, was published by explorer and authorWilliam Charles Wentworth in 1823, espousing his ideals of Australian identity.[51][52]Charles Harpur andHenry Kendall were the first poets of any consequence.
Henry Lawson, son of a Norwegian sailor born in 1867, was widely recognised as Australia's poet of the people and, in 1922, became the first Australian writer to be honoured with a state funeral. Two poets who are amongst the great Australian poets areChristopher Brennan andAdam Lindsay Gordon; Gordon was once referred to as the "national poet of Australia" and is the only Australian with a monument inPoets' Corner ofWestminster Abbey in England. Both Gordon's and Brennan's (but particularly Brennan's) works conformed to traditional styles of poetry, with many classical allusions, and therefore fell within the domain of high culture.
However, at the same time Australia had a competing, vibrant tradition offolk songs andballads.Henry Lawson andBanjo Paterson were two of the chief exponents of these popular ballads, and 'Banjo' himself was responsible for creating what is probably the most famous Australian verse, "Waltzing Matilda". At one point, Lawson and Paterson contributed a series of verses toThe Bulletin magazine in which they engaged in a literary debate about the nature of life in Australia. Lawson said Paterson was a romantic and Paterson said Lawson was full of doom and gloom.[1] Lawson is widely regarded as one of Australia's greatest writers of short stories, while Paterson's poems "The Man From Snowy River" and "Clancy of the Overflow" remain amongst the most popular Australian bush poems. Romanticised views of the outback and the rugged characters that inhabited it played an important part in shaping the Australian nation'spsyche, just as thecowboys of theAmerican Old West and thegauchos of the Argentinepampa became part of the self-image of those nations.
Other poets who reflected a sense of Australian identity includeC J Dennis andDorothea McKellar. Dennis wrote in the Australian vernacular ("The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke"), while McKellar wrote the iconic patriotic poem "My Country". Prominent Australian poets of the 20th century include DameMary Gilmore,A. D. Hope,Judith Wright,Gwen Harwood,Kenneth Slessor,Les Murray,Bruce Dawe and more recentlyRobert Gray,Jennifer Maiden,John Forbes,John Tranter,John Kinsella,Richard James Allen, andJudith Beveridge.
Contemporary Australian poetry is mostly published by small, independent book publishers. However, other kinds of publication, including new media and online journals, spoken word and live events, and public poetry projects are gaining an increasingly vibrant and popular presence. 1992–1999 saw poetry and art collaborations in Sydney and Newcastle buses and ferries, including Artransit fromMeuse Press. Some of the more interesting and innovative contributions to Australian poetry have emerged from artist-run galleries in recent years, such as Textbase which had its beginnings as part of the 1st Floor gallery in Fitzroy. In addition, Red Room Company is a major exponent of innovative projects.Bankstown Poetry Slam has become a notable venue for spoken-word poetry and for community intersection with poetry as an art form to be shared.[53] With its roots in Western Sydney it has a strong following from first and second generation Australians, often giving a platform to voices that are more marginalised in mainstream Australian society.
TheAustralian Poetry Library was an online resource that contained a wide range of Australian poetry as well as critical and contextual material relating to it, such as interviews, photographs and audio/visual recordings. Begun in 2004 by leading Australian poetJohn Tranter, it was a joint initiative of theUniversity of Sydney and theCopyright Agency Limited (CAL) with funding by theAustralian Research Council.[54] By 2018 it contained over 42,000 poems, from more than 170 Australian poets. As of 2025[update], the Australian Poetry Library is "currently unavailable".[55]
European traditions came to Australia with theFirst Fleet in 1788, with the first production being performed in 1789 by convicts :The Recruiting Officer byGeorge Farquhar.[56] Two centuries later, the extraordinary circumstances of the foundations of Australian theatre were recounted inOur Country's Good byTimberlake Wertenbaker: the participants were prisoners watched by sadistic guards and the leading lady was under threat of the death penalty. The play is based onThomas Keneally's novelThe Playmaker.[56] AfterAustralian Federation in 1901, plays evidenced a new sense of national identity.On Our Selection (1912) bySteele Rudd, told of the adventures of a pioneer farming family and became immensely popular. In 1955,Summer of the Seventeenth Doll byRay Lawler portrayed resolutely Australian characters and went on to international acclaim. A new wave of Australian theatre debuted in the 1970s with the works of writers includingDavid Williamson,Barry Oakley andJack Hibberd. TheBelvoir St Theatre presented works byNick Enright andDavid Williamson. Williamson is Australia's best known playwright, with major works including:The Club,Emerald City, andBrilliant Lies.
InThe One Day of the Year,Alan Seymour studied the paradoxical nature of theANZAC Day commemoration by Australians of the defeat of theBattle of Gallipoli.Ngapartji Ngapartji, byScott Rankin andTrevor Jamieson, recounts the story of the effects on thePitjantjatjara people of nuclear testing in the Western Desert during theCold War. It is an example of the contemporary fusion of traditions of drama in Australia with Pitjantjatjara actors being supported by a multicultural cast of Greek, Afghan, Japanese and New Zealand heritage.[57] Eminent contemporary Australian playwrights includeDavid Williamson,Alan Seymour,Stephen Sewell, the lateNick Enright andJustin Fleming.[58] The Australian government supports a website (australianplays.orgThe Home of Australian Playscripts | AustralianPlays.org) that aims to combine playwright biographies and script information. Scripts are also available there.
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Australia, unlike Europe, does not have a long history in the genre of science fiction. Nevil Shute'sOn the Beach, published in 1957, andfilmed in 1959, was perhaps the first notable international success. Though not born in Australia, Shute spent his latter years there, and the book was set in Australia. It might have been worse had the imports of American pulp magazines not been restricted during WWII, forcing local writers into the field. Various compilation magazines began appearing in the 1960s and the field has continued to expand into some significance. Today Australia has a thriving SF/Fantasy genre with names recognised around the world. In 2013 a trilogy by Sydney-bornBen Peek was sold at auction to a UK publisher for a six-figure deal .[59]
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Thecrime fiction genre is currently thriving in Australia, most notably through books written byKerry Greenwood,Shane Maloney,Peter Temple,Barry Maitland,Arthur Upfield andPeter Corris, among others.
High-profile, highly publicised court cases and murders have seen a significant amount of non-fiction crime literature, perhaps the most recognisable writer in this field beingHelen Garner. Garner's published accounts of three court cases:The First Stone, about a sexual harassment scandal at the University of Melbourne,Joe Cinque's Consolation, about ayoung man murdered by his girlfriend in Canberra, andThis House of Grief, about Victorian child-killerRobert Farquharson. Each of Garner's works incorporates the style reminiscent of a fictional narrative novel, a stylistic device known as thenon-fiction novel.
Chloe Hooper publishedThe Tall Man: Death and Life on Palm Island in 2008 as a response to the death of an Aboriginal man,Cameron Doomadgee, in police custody inPalm Island, Queensland.
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The first periodical that could be called a literary journal in Australia wasThe Australian Magazine (June 1821 - May 1822).[60] It featured poetry, a two-part story and articles on theology and general topics. Most of the others that followed in the 19th century were based in either Sydney or Melbourne. Few lasted long due to difficulties that included a lack of capital, the small local market and competition from literary journals from Britain.
Most recent Australian literary journals have originated from universities, and specifically English or Communications departments. They include:
Other journals include:
A number of newspapers also carry literary review supplements:
Current literary awards in Australia include:
Australian authors are also eligible for a number of other literary awards, such as the:
