'You can’t think of everything'. Opera in one act, after Alfred de Musset. Typescript with amendations, 9 leaves, [David Malouf’s 2017 note: Chamber opera libretto for Diana Blom. Ca. 1977. Music unwritten]

Voss is an opera in two acts based on the novel by Patrick White. The score is by Richard Meale and the libretto by David Malouf. This subseries includes a handwritten outline of Voss, a typescript of the libretto with many handwritten corrections, and a photocopy of the music score, inscribed by Richard Meale to David Malouf.

Unpublished typescripts by David Malouf.

The Prowler, a short story, was first published in 1982 with the novella Child's Play and short story Eustace. Further editions were published in 1983 and 1999, and The Prowler was included in Malouf’s The Complete Stories published in 2007. There are three drafts in this subseries. Possibly the first draft is: typescript, on 25 x 20.5 cm paper, 11 leaves, extensive handwritten emendations in biro, unnumbered pages, incomplete, and undated. Second draft: typescript, on 23.5 x 14.5 cm, extensive handwritten emendations in biro, unnumbered pages, last page has word count and note '2nd draft Sept 12-13-14 '79). Draft typescript: 34 leaves, first leaf has handwritten title 'The Prowler', handwritten emendations, 29.5 x 22 cm, and undated.

In The Great World Malouf enters familiar Australian territory with a story of war experience and mateship. The narrative contrasts the personalities of two men and their experiences in the Second World War, Digger Keen, the archetypal, taciturn Australian, gifted with a photographic memory, and Vic Curran, whose ambition and drive take him from poverty to the top of the business world. The Great World was first published in 1990 and won the Miles Franklin Award in 1991, the Adelaide Festival Award and two international awards, the 1991 Commonwealth Prize for fiction and the Prix Femina Etranger in France for the best foreign novel. This subseries consists of a draft early version of the novel, originally titled ‘The Memorialists’, the first handwritten draft of the novel, and a typescript draft in five parts with many handwritten corrections and additions.

The Fox and the Magpie. A divertissement for two voices and four instruments. By David Malouf. Music by Kurt Schwertsik, 24 pages, spiral bound.

'The year is 1827, and in a remote hut on the high plains of New South Wales, two strangers spend the night in talk. One, Carney, an illiterate Irishman, ex-convict and bushranger, is to be hanged at dawn. The other, Adair, also Irish, is an officer of the police who has been sent to supervise the hanging. As the night wears on, the two discover unexpected connections between their lives, and learn new truths. Outside the hut, Adair's troopers sit uneasily, reflecting on their own pasts and futures, waiting for the morning to come. With ironic humour and in prose of starkly evocative power, the novel moves between Australia and Ireland to explore questions of nature and justice, reason and un-reason. , the workings of fate, and the small measure of freedom a man may claim in the face of death.' Source: Publisher's blurb (Vintage reprint).
This sub-series contains handwritten and typescript drafts, with emendations.

Comprised of two drafts:

1. 'The Aspern Papers', opera in one act from the story by Henry James, typescript with extensive emendations and cut and paste inserts, 21 leaves, [David Malouf’s 2017 note: First written for the Canadian composer Owen Underhill. Commission fell through. Set by Melbourne composer Eve Duncan. Not yet commissioned for performance].
2. 'The Aspern Papers : a chamber opera. Scene One'. Libretto by David Malouf. Based on a story by Henry James, 82 pages, with letter from Eve Duncan, 6 Aug 2013. Spiral bound.

Comprises: The Long View. For male choir. Music by Noel Ancell. The Crab Feast. For piano and percussion. Music by Eve Duncan. An die Musik. For SATB choir. By Andrew Ford. The text is based on Malouf’s poem of the same name, poems by Gwen Harwood and Thomas Shapcott as well as folk poems from Malaysia, the Pueblo Indians and Finland.

Remembering Babylon, set mainly in a mid-nineteenth-century settlement in Queensland, is a compressed epic, centering on the theme of exile and the strange challenge posed by one who, like William Buckley, had lived with the Aborigines, becoming ‘a white black man.’ It was first published in 1993. This subseries consists of six folders of notes, handwritten drafts, three typescripts with many handwritten corrections and additions, publishers’ proofs with many corrections, and a re-typed transcript with corrections throughout.