World of the Book 2022 – State Library till February 2023
Dates: Thursday, 27 January 2022 – 10:00am–Sunday, 19 February 2023 – 5:00pm
Cost: Free
Venue: Dome Galleries, Level 4
About the exhibition
Explore the rare, the sacred and the iconic in World of the book, a one-of-a-kind exhibition showcasing the history of book design, production and illustration from the Middle Ages to today.
Chart the rise, and restyling, of the beloved book – from a 4000-year-old clay tablet inscribed with the first written language, to early texts on Jewish mysticism and a 19th-century boxed set of the complete works of Jane Austen.
From books that break the mould to books that changed the world, World of the book features more than 300 never-before-exhibited items, including works linked to Dante Alighieri, Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Margaret Atwood, Jack Kerouac, Shaun Tan and more.
The exhibition explores five themes:
- Books and ideas
- Books and imagination
- Exploring the world
- Art and nature
- Artists and books
This exhibition opened in 2005 as Mirror of the world: books and ideas. In 2017, it was renamed World of the book.
Explore our past exhibition
The yellow book an illustrated quarterly. 1894/1897
View the online galleries of the past iteration of the World of the book exhibition.