This collection of David Malouf contains corrected manuscript and typescript drafts of Bicycle and Other Poems, Johnno, An Imaginary Life, Child's Play, Eustace, The Prowler, Fly Away Peter, Harland's Half Acre, Antipodes : Stories, 12 Edmonstone Street, The Great World, Remembering Babylon, The Conversations at Curlow Creek, Every Move You Make, and Ransom.

There are draft typescripts and related documents for Opera Libretti by David Malouf (both published and unpublished): Voss : Opera in Two Acts After the Novel by Patrick White, Invocation to Earth, Remembering Babylon, 'The Aspern Papers', 'You can't think of everything', 'A Winter's Tale', The Fox and the Magpie. In addition there are two versions of 10,000 Miles Away, written by David Malouf for theatre.

This collection has over 1700 letters written to David Malouf from an extensive number of correspondents: Glenda Adams, Luciana Arrighi, Murray Bail, Bruce Beaver, John Bell, Bruce Beresford, Michael Berkeley, John Blight, Michael Brennan, David Brooks, Bille Brown, Felicity Bryan, Carmen Callil, Ian Callinan, Felix Calvino, Nancy Cato, Clem Christesen [writing to Judith Green, later Rodriguez], John Clanchy, Alison Clark, Dymphna Clark, Manning Clark, John Coetzee, Adele Cohen, Matthew Condon, Jim Davidson, Robyn Davidson, Bruce Dawe, Robert Dessaix, Rosemary Dobson, Espie Dods, Eve Duncan, Don Dunstan, Geoffrey Dutton, Nin Dutton, Christopher Edwards, Nick Enright, Michele Field, Helen Garner, Marea Gazzard, Clem Gorman, Lisa Gorton, Kate Grenville, Elizabeth Harrower, Kenneth J Harvey, Dennis Haskell, Ihab Hassan, Shirley Hazzard (Shirley and Francis Steegmuller), Janette Turner Hospital, Brian Howard, Barry Humphries, Ivor Indyk, Elizabeth Jolley, Gail Jones, Nicholas Jose (Nick Jose), Beate Josephi and Andrew Taylor, Nancy Keesing, Thomas Keneally, John Kinsella, Manoly Lascaris, David Leavitt, Gerard Lee, Geoffrey Lehmann, Kathy Lette, Alan Lightman, Stephen McClymont, Mark McKenna, Robert Macklin, Tony Maniaty, David Marr, Mandy Martin, Gillian Mears, Drusilla Modjeska, Frank Moorhouse, Mal Morgan, Les Murray, Philip Neilson, Cees Nooteboom, Mark O’Connor, Carlo Olivieri, Margaret Olley, Michael Ondaatje, Tony Page, Peter Porter, Pixie Pratt [Pixie O’Harris], Judith Rodriguez, David Rowbotham, Ethel Rowbotham, Lilian Roxon, John Ralston Saul, Jaya Savige, Scripsi (Michael Heyward and Peter Craven], Penelope Seidler, Tom Shapcott, Lidija Simkus-Pocius (Lidija Simkute), Ian Sinnamon, Norah Smallwood, Jeffrey Smart, Christina Stead, Lurline Stuart, John Tranter, James Tulip (Jim Tulip), UQP [Frank W Thompson, Roger McDonald, Craig Munro], Christopher Wallace-Crabbe (Chris Wallace-Crabbe), Robin Wallace-Crabbe, Jacki Weaver, Peter Weir, Gough Whitlam, Phyllis Webb, Patrick White, and many others.

Antipodes is a collection of short stories published by Malouf in 1985. This subseries consists of corrected typescripts of twelve of the thirteen stories in the collection. Some stories have more than one draft.

10,000 Miles Away (1969-70) was commissioned in 1969 for performance in 1970 for Cook Bicentenary Year by Adult Education Department, Sydney University. Performed around New South Wales with 3 actors and directed by Rex Cramphorne. This subseries has 2 different versions that have been extensively edited with cut and paste inserts (stuck with sticky tape which have fallen apart).
There are two photocopies of each version which are to be used as access copies

Correspondence from Bruce Beaver – 22 letters
Comprises:
[File 1]: 1975 to 1999

The central figure of Harland’s Half Acre, Frank Harland, is another study of the artist-figure which continues to intrigue Malouf. Partly structured like Johnno and An Imaginary Life around two opposite individuals, the novel returns to the lush, exotic world of Queensland with a chronological narrative covering several decades. From his youth Harland is obsessed with the need to reclaim his family’s lost inheritance, the pastoral land with the nostalgic name Killarney. The dream turns sour when tragedy intervenes but Harland grows to understand that he has created another unexpected but more real legacy in his art. Harland’s Half Acre was first published in 1984. This subseries consists of two notebooks of 200 pages each with background material, notes and drafts, correspondence, various typescript drafts with handwritten corrections and additions, and a complete typescript of the finished novel.

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

Correspondence from Chatto & Windus / Carmen Callil – 60 letters (1978 to 1991)
[File 1]: 1978 to 1991.
Letters from editors at Chatto & Windus.
1978 to 1982: Norah Smallwood and D J Enright (6)
1982 to 1991: Carmen Callil.
A few letters by others at Chatto & Windus, including Andrew Motion

Fly Away Peter is a novella, set in Queensland before the First World War, the story of Jim Sadler, a dedicated bird watcher, Ashley Crowther, his employer and Imogen Harcourt, an eccentric English photographer. It was first published in 1981 with Child’s Play under the title The Bread of Time to Come. It was republished in 1982 as Fly Away Peter. This subseries includes “original first hand-written drafts of Fly Away Peter (usually referred to as Birds)” [D.M.]; rewritten first draft in Brisbane; first typescript draft; second typescript draft; rewritten passages in second typescript draft; chapters 8, 10, 15 of first typescript reworked and replaced and afterword to Fly Away Peter.

Fly Away Peter was the winner of the 1982 Age Book of the Year Award.

'Jane or The Bride of Thornfield' (Jane Eyre), typescript, 18 leaves, a few emendations. [David Malouf’s 2017 note: First draft, 1996/8. Performed Cheltenham Festival. Toured London, Canberra, St Louis, USA.]. With associated letter by Malouf to Michael Berkeley. Accompanied by the published libretto, Jane Eyre, from cover 'A libretto by David Malouf for an opera by Michael Berkeley', 27 pages, published by Vintage in 2000.

Correspondence from Jeffrey Smart – 26 letters (undated, 1978 to 2012)
[File 1]: 1978 to 1991; 1999; 2012. In a letter of 13 Sep 1980 Smart writes: ‘Dear David, It’s midnight. I’ve come down to the studio to look again at your portrait […] it is, I feel sure, the best picture I have ever painted.’