The Western Australian Literature subset contains information by and about writers who were born in, lived in, visited or wrote about Western Australia. It also includes details about Western Australian publishers and other figures and organisations important to the cultural life of the state.

The University of Western Australia takes special responsibility for recording this field of Australian literature, under the direction of Professor Dennis Haskell , Associate Professor Delys Bird and Dr Toby Burrows. The major responsibility for maintaining the currency of this subset rests with Charles McLaughlin at UWA.

Search the Western Australian Literature Subset

The Western Australian Literature subset includes biographical information about writers associated with Western Australia by birth, residence or visits, and bibliographical information about their works. While the WA subset concentrates on creative and critical literature, some non-creative works are included. In 2003 Western Australian Writing: An On-line Anthology was launched and incorporated within the subset. It enables access to over 300 complete works and extracts from the longer works of almost 200 writers. AustLit users can move directly from citation within AustLit to the full text.

In 2008, the University of Western Australia began work on a specially focused dataset The Goldfields Bards of Western Australia recording the literary material published in the numerous newspapers that flourished in Goldfields towns in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when the discovery of fabulously rich gold deposits in Western Australia's outback regions sparked a rush of people of diverse social and intellectual backgrounds from all over Australia and the world.

The UWA Library Scholars' Centre also provides the Guide to Australian Literary Manuscripts service, which facilitates sophisticated searches across a wide range of guides to Australian literary manuscript collections. The guides are encoded using the Encoded Archival Description format, and the service's search functions allow users to simultaneously search for names, titles or keywords in one or many guides.

The Western Australian Literature subset of records originated in the publication of Western Australian Literature: A Bibliography in 1981 and its revised 1990 edition, Western Australian Writing: A Bibliography. Its original compilers were Bruce Bennett, with Peter Cowan, John Hay and Susan Ashford. Bruce Bennett and John Hay are General Editors of AustLit, representing UNSW@ADFA and The University of Queensland respectively.

Representing writers who are aligned with Western Australia by birth, residence or other eligible association, these were the first bibliographies to systematically record works by Western Australians and works relating to that state. The bibliographies were converted to electronic form in the late 1990s, and all records are now incorporated into AustLit.

The Western Australian Literature subset contains thousands of records migrated from the original Western Australian bibliographies. Many other records about Western Australian writers and writing created by other AustLit contributors are included in AustLit. All AustLit contributors continue to provide information about this segment of Australian literary culture, with the University of Western Australia taking special responsibility for the development of resources in this area.

Western Australian Literature information is sourced from the full range of AustLit information sources, including the the National Bibliographic Database via Kinetica, and a number of specialist sources, including:

• the J.S. Battye Library
• the Library and Information Service of Western Australia
• the University of Western Australia Library
• personal collections
• publishers' archives
• direct authorial assistance

Many individuals, groups and organisations have assisted in the development of the Western Australian Literature subset. We particularly thank the following individuals and organisations for their support:

• Ray Coffey at the Fremantle Arts Centre Press
• Julie Ham and the staff at the Library and Information Service of Western Australia
  and


• the staff of the University of Western Australia Library