Queensland is known in the Australian imagination as the frontier, a place of barren land and wild politics - and, conversely, as Australia's playground, with its sub-tropical weather, beaches and natural wonders. It's a place that has long had an image of difference to the rest of the country, both within and without its borders- an image based in the reality of a different sense of distance, a different apprehension of time, different architecture. By the Book presents a wide-ranging history of the literature of Queensland from European settlement to the present day, a period of immense change for this state. The state is broken up into geographic regions, with each chapter building a rich sense of the regional specificity of its literary culture. Thematic chapters are also included, covering travel writing, writing for children, and indigenous writing. By the Book also covers the role of institutions such as schools, public libraries, the press and publishers in shaping the writing and reading of books in Queensland.