5 June - 29 September 2003
Reading fiction set in Australia from the early nineteenth-century to the present is a way of understanding our pre-occupations and national characteristics. It presents a rich field of study and research and is also a still-affordable field for collecting.
The exhibition covers our national output of fiction from 1845 to 2000 and includes such rarities as Ned Kelly, the ironclad Australian bushranger, published in 1881, less than a year after his execution; Henry Lawson's first book, Short stories in prose and verse (1894); and Melbourne and Mars (1889), an early example of Australian science fiction.