This paper takes up the central question of the role of literature in the inclusive education of the public. It draws on the theoretical orientation of literary sociability which conceptualizes the literary field through attending to the assumptions, relations, associations and interpretive practices of particular communities of readers. The concept of literary sociability reflects an understanding of reading and writing as a set of interrelated practices that are shaped and sustained by individuals within communities, rather than by the idea of ‘literature’ as simply an abstract entity (Kirkpatrick & Dixon 2012; Rubin 2007). The aim of this presentation is to investigate the nature of reading publics framed by a corpus of historical literary curricula in Australia. Its theoretical framework also lies in Raymond Williams’ (1976/1988; 1977/2009) presentation of two key moves in the history of the term ‘literature’ – one of which is the shift into the idea of a nation having ‘a literature’ and the notion of ‘literature’ being attached to ‘polite learning’. The latter, of course, sits behind Kitzhaber’s (1966) and Muller’s (1967) description of literary education as an elegant pastime, as the purview of an elite - and also forms part of the conceptual background of Williams’ own notion of ‘culture as ordinary’. Literature, of course, has been a central site of the ‘culture wars’, framed as a battle for hearts and minds In Australian public policy and sitting behind the development of Australia’s first national curriculum. The place of a literary education in a democracy, questions of ‘entitlement’ and ‘access’ to a cultural heritage – and hence of literary education as a gesture towards a more socially just society– are questions that will be taken up here in discussing the reading publics historically envisaged as being the products of a literary education. The question of literary knowledge is fundamental here - what knowledge empowers a public and what role might literature play in that? Discourse analytic techniques will be applied to the corpus of curricula at the centre of this presentation, the scholarly significance of which lies in its bringing together these questions of literature, curricula, and reading publics as lenses into a more inclusive education.

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