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Monday 10am - 6pm Tuesday 10am - 6pm Wednesday 10am - 8pm Thursday 10am - 6pm Friday 10am - 4pm Saturday 10am - 2pm

Melbourne Athenaeum Library

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Melbourne Athenaeum Library

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The Athenaeum Library is a subscription-based oasis offering more than 30,000 volumes of biography, science fiction, fantasy, history, current best sellers, journals and popular magazines, detective fiction and classics.

16/10/2026

Another challenge for you and this time we also want to find out if you ever work out the answer before you finish reading all four options. Let us know in the comments!

13/10/2026

The Athenaeum Theatre has joined dozens of historic theatres and cinemas in 'Australian Theatres & Cinemas' by Gavin John, which pays homage to the intricate design, craftsmanship and storied histories of venues around Australia.

Gavin John is a photographer and author who says “Australian theatre and cinemagoers have an exceptional array of venues to patronise”. Gavin spent more than two decades documenting extreme environments in many of the world’s most remote locations. In recent years he has focused on history, heritage and the built environment, and has written several books, including Australia’s Historic Pubs.

https://www.gavinjohnphotography.com

09/10/2026

Congratulations if you got this one as it was a little tricky. These are all names that authors chose to represent only as initials when publishing their works. There were a few more that we thought might be a little too obvious to include, like C.S. (Clive Staples) Lewis, P.L. (Pamela Lyndon) Travers, and J.R.R. (John Ronald Reuel) Tolkein - how many more can you think of?

07/10/2026

‘Tis the Season for Crime Fiction Awards 🔪

2026 Davitt Awards winners presented by Sisters in Crime
(celebrating excellence in crime writing by Australian women)
Best Adult Fiction: Joanna Jenkins, The Bluff
Best Nonfiction: Kate Wild, The Red House
Best Debut: Angie Faye Martin, Melaleuca
Kerry Greenwood Readers’ Choice Award: Sally Hepworth, Mad Mabel

2026 Bloody Scotland awards
The McIlvanney Prize is Bloody Scotland’s annual prize awarded to the best Scottish crime book of the year. It provides Scottish crime writing with recognition and aims to raise the profile and prestige of the genre as a whole. Frances Crawford won the 2026 McIlvanney Prize for her debut novel, A Bad, Bad Place, making history as the first-ever double winner by also capturing the Bloody Scotland Debut Prize at the festival in Stirling. Librarian Katy reviewed A Bad, Bad Place in the July 2026 eNews.

2026 Ned Kelly Awards presented by Australian Crime Writers Association
Best Crime Fiction: Sally Hepworth, Mad Mabel
Best Debut Crime Fiction: Liz Allan, In Bloom
Best True Crime: Charlotte Grieve, Duty to Warn
Best International Crime Fiction: Abigail Dean, The Death of Us

If you'd like to place a hold on any of the award winners, head to our catalogue:
https://library.melbourneathenaeum.org.au

05/10/2026

This month we're recommending stories of Friendship, and Myths and Legends Retold. So get Hooked by Asako Yuzuki, relax with Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout, and take a trip to the Three Secert Cities by Matthew Reilly.

03/10/2026

Some more names for this challenge, they may not look too familiar but chances are you know them anyway. Can you find the literary connection between them?

01/10/2026

Athenaeum Archives Go Live!

The integration of the Melbourne Athenaeum Library website and the eHive collection management system is complete, and people can now explore our terrific archives collection: https://melbourneathenaeum.org.au/history/archives/

This search capability via our website is in addition to the online access provided through eHive: https://ehive.com/collections/205605/melbourne-athenaeum

The cataloguing and digitisation of the archives is an ongoing project so items continue to be added. We were extremely grateful to recently receive another grant of $5000 from the Stuart Leslie Foundation to continue work to make the collection accessible online. Thank you to the Foundation for its continuing support.

Online access to the archives has also been generously supported by the Local History Grants Program and the Public Record Office Victoria supported by the Victorian Government, and the Estate of Marjorie Dalvean.

Photo: Metal Sign, Edison Electric Light, c. 1882, Melbourne Athenaeum Archives

29/09/2026

A look at our events this year, from soaring music to thoughtful insights, what has been your favourite 2026 Ath moment so far?

26/09/2026

Congratulations to everyone who knew that these are all fictional universities. Although both Oxford and Cambridge Universities are over 800 years old, Thackeray's use of the portmanteau for a fictional university in the 1840s is the first recorded use of 'Oxbridge' and the term wouldn't be used to collectively refer to the two actual universities until Virginia Woolf used it in 1920 in 'A Room of One's Own'.

24/09/2026

New in Non-Fiction 🛎

Take Me to Your Leader by Neil deGrasse Tyson

If you met an alien, what might it be like? Would an alien really be a humanoid with a pointy head, or might it look more like a worm, a roving cloud of gas, or perhaps a ‘testicle monster’? How should you communicate with an alien who didn’t speak English, and what does it have to do with the Pythagorean Theorem? Why has no alien (apparently) ever contacted us, and what does that say about our species’ likeability? And if an alien did demand ‘Take me to your leader!’, who are you actually meant to take it to?

Touching on Star Wars and Spielberg, UFOs and Area 51, Take Me to Your Leader is both a romping work of popular science and a love letter to our as-yet-uncontacted extraterrestrial friends. It is the most entertaining book ever written by one of the best-loved scientists in the world, and perhaps in the galaxy.

How England Began by Nicholas J. Higham

In 410 CE, Roman rule of Britain collapsed, bringing a centuries-long occupation to an end. A century later, Britain was dividing into two areas with contrasting cultures, an expansive "Anglo-Saxon" south and east, and a shrinking Celtic west and north. How did this transition happen? And why did the customs of the Germanic incomers prevail in England, unlike elsewhere in Europe?

In this deeply researched account, Nicholas J. Higham draws on archaeological evidence and contemporary literature, including the writings of Gildas, to reconsider the accepted narrative. We see anew the importance of culture, warfare, and language―as the arrival, spread, and dominance of incomers irrevocably changed the country. This period marked the beginnings of Englishness, and of such insular identities as Welsh and Cornish. Offering surprising new insights, Higham provides a penetrating account of how, as Roman Britain ended, Anglo-Saxon England emerged.

Address

Level 1, 188 Collins Street
Melbourne, VIC
3000

Opening Hours

Monday	10am - 6pm
Tuesday	10am - 6pm
Wednesday	10am - 8pm
Thursday	10am - 6pm
Friday	10am - 4pm
Saturday	10am - 2pm

Telephone

+61396503100

Website

http://www.melbourneathenaeum.org.au/

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