'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.

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.

Correspondence from Manning Clark – 13 letters.
Comprises:
[File 1]: 1974 to 1991. Includes: 17 Jan 1990 – enclosing a typescript with manuscript emendations; 21 May 1991 – two days before his death – writing ‘David, I will miss you. […]. Manning’.

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

Correspondence from Patrick White – 7 letters
Comprises:
[File 1]: 1976 to 1990

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.

'A Winter’s Tale (The Round of Time). After William Shakespeare'. Three versions of draft for libretto, [ca. 30 leaves each], [David Malouf’s 2017 note: Commissioned by the English National Opera, 1988/9. Michael Berkeley set part of the text (Paulina) in a song-cycle. The commission fell through.] With two associated pieces of correspondence by Malouf and Berkeley

Comprises two drafts of Invocation to Earth by Diana Blom. Libretto by David Malouf.

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.

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.