Biography

In the depths of grief, Indira Naidoo turns to the natural world around her for answers.

It is 100 years since the famous writer and chronicler of bush life died.

Sport — including boxing — has long been one arena where First Nations talent has been celebrated.

Rose de Freycinet, a nineteenth-century French woman, stowaway and diarist, unites a writer and an archivist 200 years later.

Alexandra Christie is the new editor of HEAT, an illustrious literary publication in its third incarnation

As she finalises work for her landmark exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia, Sydney artist Cressida Campbell invites Openbook into her studio.

Science writer Jackson Ryan travels to Antarctica, via Mars, distant asteroids and tardigrades.

The challenges of bringing a hangman known as ‘Nosey Bob’ back to life.

Fifty years ago, the Beat poet and living symbol of the counterculture toured Australia, during a time of personal, spiritual and political awakening.

A biographer reflects on the serendipity of finding traces of her subjects’ intimate lives in the archive.

As an advocate for and chronicler of women's cricket in Australia, Lorna Thomas fitted more than a lifetime into three boxes.

Emily Bitto's second novel raises compelling questions about writing and living.

A life, as much as a gathering of words, is a story of places. It begins and ends with soil beneath feet, water within heart.

A true crime writer shows how she uses the archives to reveal histories that rarely come to light.

A biographer faces withdrawal symptoms as she leaves behind an immense archive.

Writer and actor Kate Mulvany defies the neat stories people write about her.

Of all the Australian stage performers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Nellie Stewart was the best known and most universally loved.

Australian nurse Muriel Knox Doherty recorded her experiences and insights after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. 

A collection of papers traces one family’s escape from the Armenian genocide.

The well-known conservationist Myles Dunphy’s romantic side is beautifully illustrated in a new acquisition.

Sugar and slavery are intertwined in the hidden story of Australia’s early industry.

Intimate letters from 100 years ago paint a detailed self-portrait of a young Australian woman.

A feminist newspaper from the early 1980s brings back memories of lively co-op meetings, nutritious sandwiches and high ideals.

From 1863 to 1865, over 100 robberies are attributed to Ben Hall and his various associates

Sifting through the ‘glorious clutter’ of the Thompson family papers offers a sense of early Sydney life and insights into several significant local families.

Bushwalker, feminist and pacifist Marie Byles helped to shape Buddhism in Australia.

To mark the centenary of the peace year, 1919, we take an intimate look at the lives of children during the ‘war to end all wars’.

The interviews delve into the personal stories of recently arrived migrants and their new lives in New South Wales, starting from birth and childhood and covering the (often harrowing) reasons they were compelled to leave their homes and seek safety in another country.

Buried deep down in the cool darkness of the Library’s framed picture store hangs a beautiful portrait of the young Mrs F O’Brien. It was painted in mid-1841 by naval surgeon-turned artist Maurice Felton from a death mask.

Henry Marshall was working in the Grace Brothers photographic studio in Sydney when war was declared. 

'There'll be so much to be done when this is all finished…So many big subjects to be covered where the right kind of film will be useful.' Damien Parer (1943)

Louis Vasco enlisted as a Sapper, or engineer, but his calling was art.

A historian shares her delight in the recently acquired Fairfax Media Business Archive.

A Library fellowship uncovered an archive of emotion in the correspondence of Henry Parkes and Thomas Woolner.

Among the papers of the Scott brothers, who settled in the Hunter Valley in the 1820s, is a manual for frontier living.

Flinders proved that Tasmania was an island, traced the coasts of the Australian continent and was the first person to use ‘Australian’ to describe the inhabitants of this land. He named nothing after himself.

The Library celebrates International Women's Day by honouring the legacy of female Librarians.

‘Heaven could be no more magical and mystical than unspoiled Australia' - the brilliant career of Miles Franklin.

The continuing boom in family history research is having a far-reaching impact on how people understand themselves and the world. 

In the current era of instant digital communication, letters between long-distance lovers have a particular poignancy.

Australia played an important role in Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

An eccentric French nobleman, a letter about Cook’s Endeavour voyage and an enduring bibliographic mystery come together in the Library’s Banks collection. 

Stylish and talented architect-designer Douglas Snelling introduced modern American living styles to aspirational Sydneysiders after the Second World War.

Between 1919 and 1930  Andre Breton published experimental texts that defined the Surrealist movement.

French literature and Pre-Raphaelite works 1800-1950

In 1854, William Henry Hudson ran a small carpentry business from Regent Street, Redfern. 25 years later Hudson Brothers was one of Australia's biggest companies. 

Hurley's photographs of the western front in 1917 and the Middle East in 1918 are arresting and iconic.

From tales of colonial adventure to moralising educational tracts, children’s literature in nineteenth-century Australia played a significant role in educating children as the nation’s future citizens. 

Alec Chisholm (1890–1977) was once famous in Australia. Although that’s no longer so, he’s a man worth remembering.

In 25 years at the State Library, our Curator of Photographs has seen four people cry.

The Australian Red Cross NSW Division archive spans over 100 years of humanitarian aid.

The photographs of George Caddy are an astonishing modernist record of Bondi Beach and its people during a remarkable era. 

The 1970s were a transformative time for northern New South Wales, especially in the regional town of Nimbin.  The 1973 Aquarius Festival changed the small country town and the surrounding region forever.

Caergwrle (pronounced Ka-girlie) is situated on the Allyn River, in one of the most beautiful rural areas of the Hunter Valley.

Aviation in Australia traces the history of flight from its infancy through to the twentieth century. 

The Jewish community in Australia has made a significant contribution to the development of Australian society and culture since the establishment of the colony in 1788. 

First hand accounts of the ANZAC landing at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915.

May Gibbs, author, illustrator and cartoonist, has captured the hearts and imaginations of generations of Australians with her lovable bush characters and fairytale landscapes.

The Tichborne Case has everything; a shipwreck, a massive reward, an English inheritance, a grieving mother and an outlandish butcher from Wagga Wagga.

Thoroughly modern Miss Emily Chambers of Burwood, NSW, was always eager to try the latest fad.

A larger-than-life character whose passions included the study of fossils, poetry and the mechanical and scientific arts, Mitchell looms large in Australian colonial history.

In 1868, 13 cricketers from Victoria's western districts sailed from Sydney to become the first Australian team to tour England.

Members of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are advised that this story contains names and images of deceased people.

Francis Greenway (1777- 1837) produced some of the finest colonial buildings in Australia.

A great inventor, an Indigenous rights advocate and Australia's first published Aboriginal writer.

"We have decided to go to Lindfield. It will be like being buried alive to live in a quiet little country place after the bustle and excitement of town life."

"I love a sunburnt country": Learn the history of one of Australia's best loved poems.

"I thought they’d bowl lobs, but by Jove, they can play."

The controversial cricket series where England introduced an aggressive bowling style.

As white settlement in Australia progressed, rumours abounded in the coastal cities as to what lay in the country’s largely unexplored centre.

Nothing captures the Australian imagination quite like the thought of striking it lucky. So it’s no surprise one of our greatest legends involves a search for a mysterious vein of gold.

On an expedition to cross the Australian continent from East to West, the celebrated explorer Ludwig Leichhardt (1813-1848) and his party disappeared.

In nineteenth century England, the sentence for a variety of crimes was transportation to Australia, a harsh punishment with many convicts never seeing their homeland again.

With its convict beginnings, it’s hardly surprising that New South Wales has produced more than its fair share of villains.

The stories and songs of the bushrangers shine a light on Australia’s early attitude to crime, family, race and justice.

A writer wrote of the hearts of men, and he followed their tracks afar;

For his was a spirit that forced his pen to write of the things that are.

Eric Thompson’s career as an architect, artist and filmmaker highlights the close connection between architecture and design in the development of the film industry.

Wesley Choat and his two brothers enlisted in 1915.

George Bell was a bank officer from Port Headland, Western Australia.

Adventure, patriotism, or the call of friendship: many people who had experience in Antarctic exploration volunteered to serve in the World War I.

In Sydney in 1918 a shy, one-armed man from the tiny town of Gunbar was selling kisses for 5 shillings each.

During the First World War nearly 7000 ‘enemy aliens’, mainly of German and Austro-Hungarian origin, were interned in camps in Australia. The Library’s collection of papers of ‘enemy aliens’ interned in Australia during WW1 contains around 40 handwritten diaries written by internees.

In the days before digital and film photography, images were often taken on glass. But from the 1880s, development of ready-to-use 'dry plate' negatives and simpler cameras saw the rise of amateur photography.