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English resources
Discover databases, eBooks, news archives, collections and stories from State Library for your study of English.
Recommended subjects
These resources are recommended for students studying the following subjects in Queensland classrooms:
- Year 7 to 10 English (Australian Curriculum)
- Year 11 and 12 English (QCAA Syllabus)
- Year 11 and 12 English and Literature Extension (QCAA Syllabus)
- Year 11 and 12 English as an Additional Language (QCAA Syllabus)
- Year 11 and 12 Essential English (QCAA Syllabus)
- Year 11 and 12 Literacy (QCAA Syllabus)
- Year 11 and 12 Literature (QCAA Syllabus)
Featured databases
News archives
Explore State Library's collections
Free live-streamed workshops for English classes
QCAA prescribed texts (2023 - 2025)
Discover resources to help you with your study of the QCAA prescribed texts for English/EAL and Literature subjects.
External assessment texts
English / EAL
Never Let Me Go — Kazuo Ishiguro
The White Earth — Andrew McGahan
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves — Karen Joy Fowler
Pride and Prejudice — Jane Austen
All the Light We Cannot See — Anthony Doerr
Literature
King Lear — William Shakespeare
That Deadman Dance — Kim Scott
The Tempest — William Shakespeare
The Poisonwood Bible — Barbara Kingsolver
Wuthering Heights — Emily Brontë
Terra Nullius — Claire G Coleman
Film and television / multimodal texts
English / EAL
2001: A Space Odyssey — Stanley Kubrick
Ali’s Wedding — Jeffrey Walker
Australian Story (documentary series) — ABC
Cleverman (TV series) — Ryan Griffen
Four Corners (documentary series) — ABC
Good Night and Good Luck — George Clooney
Hidden Figures — Theodore Melfi
Howl’s Moving Castle — Hayao Miyazaki
Little Miss Sunshine — Jonathon Dayton and Valerie Faris
Mabo (TV film) — Rachel Perkins
Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream (documentary) — Alex Gibney
Rear Window — Alfred Hitchcock
Reindeer in my Saami Heart — Janet Merewether
Sherlock (TV series) — Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffatt
Stranger Things season one (TV series) — the Duffer Brothers
The Australian Dream — Daniel Gordon
The King’s Speech — Tom Hooper
Literature
Elementary (TV series) — Robert Doherty
Glitch (TV series) — Emma Freeman
Interstellar — Christopher Nolan
Mad Max: Fury Road — George Miller
Pan’s Labyrinth — Guillermo del Toro
Picnic at Hanging Rock — Peter Weir
Raise the Red Lantern — Zhang Yimou
Sweet Country — Warwick Thornton
Ten Canoes — Rolf de Heer and Peter Djigirr
The Gods of Wheat Street (TV series) — Wayne Blair, Catriona McKenzie and Adrian Russell Wills
True Grit — Ethan Coen and Joel Coen
Novels and prose texts
English / EAL
After Darkness — Christine Piper
Behind the Beautiful Forevers — Katherine Boo
Do Not Say We Have Nothing — Madeleine Thien
Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia — Anita Heiss
Growing Up Asian in Australia — Alice Pung
Island: The complete stories (collection of short stories) — Alistair MacLeod
Nineteen Eighty-Four — George Orwell
Persepolis: The story of a childhood (graphic novel) — Marjane Satrapi
Schindler’s Ark (also known as Schindler’s List) — Thomas Keneally
Short stories by Frank O’Connor
Short stories by Katherine Mansfield
Talking to My Country — Stan Grant
The Cellist of Sarajevo — Steven Galloway
The Color of Water — James McBride
The Great Gatsby — F Scott Fitzgerald
The Hound of the Baskervilles — Arthur Conan Doyle
The Turning (collection of short stories) — Tim Winton
Literature
Art Objects (essay collection) — Jeanette Winterson
Collections of essays by John Gardner
Foreign Soil (collection of short stories) — Maxine Beneba Clarke
Heart of Darkness — Joseph Conrad
Life After Life — Kate Atkinson
Like a House on Fire (collection of short stories) — Cate Kennedy
My Uncle Napoleon — Iraj Pezeshkza
Only the Animals (linked collection of short stories) — Ceridwen Dovey
Short stories by Edgar Allan Poe
Short stories by George Saunders
Short stories by Ursula K Le Guin
Snow Falling on Cedars –— David Guterson
Swallow the Air — Tara June Winch
The Complete Maus (graphic novel — two volumes) — Art Spiegelman
The Man in the High Castle — Philip K Dick
The Meursault Investigation — Kamel Daoud
The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus — Margaret Atwood
The Picture of Dorian Gray — Oscar Wilde
The Quiet American — Graham Greene
The Remains of the Day — Kazuo Ishiguro
The Sound of Things Falling — Juan Gabriel Vasquez
The White Tiger — Aravind Adiga
Things Fall Apart — Chinua Achebe
Plays and drama texts
English / EAL
As You Like It — William Shakespeare
Counting and Cracking — S Shakthidharan
Lady Windermere’s Fan — Oscar Wilde
Switzerland — Joanna Murray-Smith
The 7 Stages of Grieving — Wesley Enoch and Deborah Mailman
The Appleton Ladies’ Potato Race — Melanie Tait
The Drover’s Wife — Leah Purcell
Literature
A Man for All Seasons — Robert Bolt
A Taste of Honey — Shelagh Delaney
Black is the New White — Nakkiah Lui
By the Bog of Cats — Marina Carr
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof — Tennessee Williams
Death and the Maiden — Ariel Dorfman
Hotel Sorrento — Hannie Rayson
Shafana and Aunt Sarrinah — Alana Valentine
Terror — Ferdinand von Schirach
The Winter's Tale — William Shakespeare