Sydney
Sydney is the setting for two very different Australian classics: Ethel Turner's Seven Little Australians, which turns a middle-class family into a comedy with a genuinely sad ending, and Miles Franklin's My Brilliant Career, in which a young woman in the bush refuses the life that has been arranged for her.
The State Library holds the major collection of Australian manuscripts, newspapers and pictures, including material on colonial family life. Its digitised newspapers are free to search, which makes it possible to check what a novel's first readers would have seen in the press.
A library to check
- State Library of New South Wales — catalogues and digital collections, open to readers online
Books connected to Sydney
- Seven Little Australians — Ethel Turner, 1894. The Australian children's classic that refuses to be charming about children.
- My Brilliant Career — Miles Franklin, 1901. The first great Australian novel about a woman who wants work more than marriage.
A note on accuracy
We describe literary connections and public collections, not street addresses, opening hours or ticket prices. Those change and we cannot verify them for every reader. Follow the institution's own site for current visiting information.