The Burning Library explores the lives and work of Australian novelists, many of whom haveunjustly disappeared from the public imagination. Alarmed by the increasingly marginal status ofAustralian literature in the academy, Williamson has set out to reintroduce us to those key writerswhose works we may have forgotten or missed altogether. His focus is on fiction that givespleasure, and he is ardent in defence of books that for whatever reason sit uneasily in thepresent moment.
Among the writers Williamson discusses are Dymphna Cusack, Elizabeth Harrower, DavidIreland, Olga Masters and Gerald Murnane. The Burning Library is a dynamic act of reclamationinspired by Miles Franklin's claim that a nation that fails to acknowledge its literary treasures is'neither preserved nor developed, but only defaced'.