Normally, Australia’s Writers could be expected to attract the special attention of critics. However, by sensible use of his preface and the quality of his book’s contents, Graeme Kinross Smith has minimised the possibility of adverse comment. Carefully, he sets out the guidelines adopted for the fifty­four essays that range from two to ten pages each, starting with Captain Arthur Phillip and closing with Rosemary Dobson. Stressing ‘the distinctive and fascinating’ tradition of Australian literature and the book’s purpose in giving an insight into that tradition, Graeme Kinross Smith writes:

As far as possible I have tried to allow Australia's writers to give their own accounts of what it is like to be artists in this southern continent. When their stories are put together they encompass virtually every part of Australian life – geography, history, politics and economics, social patterns and national characteristics. If one thing comes to the fore in almost all these profiles of writers, it is the places that meant a great deal to them, places that have been immortalised in our literature and which, with their particular atmosphere, are about us still if we know where to look...