PagineBush ballads and drovers’ wives, The Magic Pudding and Seven Little Australians, Patrick White’s explorers and Tim Winton’s Perth families — Australian classics are shaped by the land itself. Here are 51 essential Australian books, from colonial novels and First Nations writing to modern favourites, with short guides to the great Australian authors and many free to read online.
New to Australian literature? Begin with one of these — or follow our step-by-step guide, What to Read for Australian Classics →
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Short biographies, what to read first, and every book of theirs on this list.
Henry Lawson, born on a New South Wales goldfield and partly deaf from childhood, became the great short-story writer of the Australian bush. Stories such as “The Drover’s Wife” (1892), collected in While the Billy Boils (1896), and his ballads gave a plain, unsentimental voice to shearers, swagmen and lonely selectors. He was the first Australian writer to be given a state funeral.
Where to start: While the Billy Boils
On this list: While the Billy Boils · Joe Wilson and His Mates
Andrew Barton “Banjo” Paterson was a Sydney solicitor and war correspondent who wrote the best-loved bush ballads in Australia. The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses (1895) sold out edition after edition, and in 1895 he wrote the words of “Waltzing Matilda,” the country’s unofficial anthem. His face is on the Australian ten-dollar note.
Where to start: The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses
On this list: The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses
Miles Franklin wrote My Brilliant Career (1901) as a teenager — the defiant story of Sybylla Melvyn, a bush girl who refuses to marry and wants to be a writer. Henry Lawson helped get it published. She left her money to found the Miles Franklin Award, now Australia’s most prestigious literary prize.
Where to start: My Brilliant Career
On this list: My Brilliant Career
Henry Handel Richardson was the pen name of Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson, who trained as a pianist in Leipzig and lived most of her life in England. The Getting of Wisdom (1910) satirises a Melbourne girls’ school, and her trilogy The Fortunes of Richard Mahony (1917–1929), based on her father’s life on the goldfields, is one of the great Australian novels.
Where to start: The Getting of Wisdom
On this list: The Getting of Wisdom · The Fortunes of Richard Mahony
Patrick White is the only Australian to have won the Nobel Prize in Literature (1973). His demanding, visionary novels — The Tree of Man (1955), Voss (1957), about a doomed German explorer crossing the continent, and Riders in the Chariot (1961) — set out to describe the Australian spirit. He used his Nobel prize money to found the Patrick White Award for older writers.
Where to start: Voss
On this list: The Tree of Man · Voss · Riders in the Chariot
Ruth Park moved from New Zealand to Sydney and wrote about the slums of Surry Hills in The Harp in the South (1948), the story of the Irish-Australian Darcy family, which has never been out of print. She also wrote the time-travel children’s classic Playing Beatie Bow (1980) and the radio series The Muddle-Headed Wombat.
Where to start: The Harp in the South
On this list: The Harp in the South · Playing Beatie Bow
Oodgeroo Noonuccal, a Noonuccal woman of Minjerribah, was a poet, activist and educator. We Are Going (1964), published under the name Kath Walker, was the first book of poetry by an Aboriginal Australian woman and became a bestseller. She campaigned for the 1967 referendum that counted Aboriginal people in the national census.
Where to start: We Are Going
On this list: We Are Going
Tim Winton writes about the coast, families and working-class life in Western Australia in rich, salty prose. Cloudstreet (1991), the story of two families sharing a big old house in Perth over twenty years, is regularly voted Australia’s favourite novel; Dirt Music and Breath followed. He has won the Miles Franklin Award four times.
Where to start: Cloudstreet
On this list: Cloudstreet
3 of these are free to read in Pagine right now (📖 Read free). The rest link to a free public-domain edition or to Open Library, where many can be borrowed free.
Print it, save it as a PDF, email it to yourself or share it with a friend, book club or class. Every copy links back to pagineapp.com, and the free Pagine app tracks every book you finish.
iPhone & iPad
Android10 free books by Australian authors in Pagine — including titles beyond this list.
Every title on the list links to the free sources that may have it. Public-domain books are free to read and download; newer books can often be borrowed free.
Many Australian classics published in 1930 or earlier — Lawson, Paterson, Franklin, Turner, Pedley, Furphy, Gunn, Dennis, Lindsay and Gibbs — are free online (Project Gutenberg Australia is a good source too). Pagine’s library has thousands more free picture books; track every book in the free Pagine app.
Banjo Paterson’s bush ballads, Henry Lawson’s While the Billy Boils, Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career, Ruth Park’s The Harp in the South and Tim Winton’s Cloudstreet.
Banjo Paterson wrote the words in 1895, set to a tune adapted by Christina Macpherson.
Yes — Patrick White, in 1973, the only Australian so far.
Seven Little Australians, Dot and the Kangaroo, The Magic Pudding, Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, Blinky Bill, Storm Boy, Playing Beatie Bow and Possum Magic.
Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Mikhail Lermontov and more
Explore →🎩William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley and more
Explore →🗽Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville and more
Explore →🥖Molière, Voltaire, Stendhal and more
Explore →💃Miguel de Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Pedro Calderón de la Barca and more
Explore →🌎Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Machado de Assis, Rubén Darío and more
Explore →🌍Olaudah Equiano, Sol Plaatje, Chinua Achebe and more
Explore →🏰Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Brothers Grimm and more
Explore →🛶Hans Christian Andersen, Søren Kierkegaard, Henrik Ibsen and more
Explore →🍝Dante Alighieri, Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio and more
Explore →🏛️Homer, Aesop, Sophocles and more
Explore →🏮Confucius, Laozi, Cao Xueqin and more
Explore →☘️Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker and more
Explore →🍁Susanna Moodie, L. M. Montgomery, Stephen Leacock and more
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