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History

Explore our history through the Library's unrivalled collections.

History

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18th Century and before

All well & good

by Elise Edmonds

Twenty-first-century notions of wellness have a long lineage.

Medical botany : containing systematic and general descriptions

Mutiny & murder

The horrific tale of the Batavia shipwreck became one of the first true crime bestsellers.

Ongeluckige voyagie

Voyages of discovery

Europeans had been searching for rich new lands in the Southern Hemisphere long before Captain James Cook arrived on the east coast of Australia in 1770. Explore the State Library's incredible maps, journals, drawings and books.
Map of the world

The Art of the Title page

A title page has always told readers what the book is about, but sometimes with an artistic flourish.

Vlyssis Aldrovandi patricii Bononiensis Serpentum, et draconu[m] historiae libri duo, 1640, by Vlyssis Aldrovandi

The world in a book: the first atlases

by Maggie Patton

In the Golden Age of Cartography, the first atlases combined the skills of the mapmaker with the ingenuity of the publisher.

Eight Days in Kamay

On 29 April 1770, the Gweagal people of Kamay (Botany Bay) discovered James Cook and his crew. 250 years later, those eight days and their impact are still being debated, contested, felt.

The real secret river: exploring Dyarubbin

by Grace Karskens

A list of Aboriginal placenames was a trigger for seeking the ‘real secret river’.

A landscape photograph depicting a misty river as viewed through a break in tree cover.

19th Century

The writer & the archivist

by Suzanne Falkiner and Meredith Lawn

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

Flower patterns

How to colour in a ghost

by Rachel Franks

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

Reimagining the Pacific

by Ian Hoskins

While the Pacific has loomed large in Australia’s history, there is a riddle at the heart of our relationship with the region.

Burns Philp Pacific cruise advertisement, The Home magazine, 2 January 1936

Shanty town

by Mark Dapin

A recent online boom in sea shanties is a welcome surprise for longtime converts.

Joe Hillel and Daniel Bornstein, The Grubby Urchins, photo supplied

Finding Charlotte

by Kate Forsyth

Two writers’ search for their mysterious and talented forebear was full of archival riches.

View at Oldbury, c 1826, by Charlotte Atkinson

The spreading fire of fake news

by Margaret Van Heekeren

Detail from The Fin de Siècle Newspaper Proprietor, an illustration featured in an 1894 issue of Puck magazine (source: Library of Congress)

Deeper history

by Rebecca Hamilton

Science and history come together in conserving the swamplands of southern Sydney.

Swamp paperbark trees (Melaleuca quinquenervia), Lachlan Swamp, Centennial Park, Sydney, 2019, photo by Rebecca Hamilton

20th Century onward

Send for Nellie

by Alana Valentine

Singer, performer, toast of the town.

The Flying Pieman of Sydney, en pointe

by Anna Corkhill

Rediscovering costume drawings for a ballet that never was.

Billycart boys

by Megan Hicks

A researcher finds that the catalogue doesn’t always get it right.

I feel like a Tooheys ... or two

by Lisa Murray

Research in the Library’s manuscripts collection can be thirsty work.

Inside cover of report with picture of two bottled beers and a stemmed glass full of beer, in the background two women sit on sun-terrace.

Fit for a queen

by Phillipa McGuinness

A luncheon inspired by the Queen’s 1954 visit.

Photo of table set with meringues and tea cups

The long history of the power of positive thinking

by Alexandra Roginski

Self-help enterprises that advise how to be you — but better — aren’t as new as you might think.

Drawing of a man holding a face mask. Text read 'Dare to be yourself. The Motto of the Masters'.

Calling the Koori Knockout

by Brad Cooke

One of the most important sporting and cultural events on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander calendar returns.

Group of players celebrate with arms in the air. One player is lifted on their shoulders.