The Littleton Groom Collection includes around 200 books and 260 pamphlets. Many of the books are inscribed and cover topics such as Australian history, law, literature and religion. Examples include:

• JA Cockburn, Australian Federation (1901)
• Andrew Crombie, After Sixty Years or Recollections of an Australian Bushman (1927)
• George Essex Evans, Collected Verse (1928)
• George Essex Evans, The Secret Key and Other Verses (1906)
• Thomas Hall, The Early History of Warwick District and Pioneers of the Darling Downs (n.d.)
• John Bernard O’Hara, A Book of Sonnets (1902)
• John Bernard O’Hara, Calypso and Other Poems (1912)
• John Bernard O’Hara, Odes and Lyrics (1906)
• Henry Stuart Russell, The Genesis of Queensland (1888)
• J Brunton Stephens, Convict Once and Other Poems (1885).

The pamphlets, published mostly between 1900 and 1930, include speeches and newspaper cuttings. They cover topics such as:

• federal politics
• the Constitution
• elections
• referenda
• federalism
• socialism
• imperial relations
• the federal capital
• World War I
• the League of Nations
• the Nationalist Party
• the River Murray Waters question
• irrigation
• the Anglican Church
• the Empire Parliamentary Association.

The papers cover Groom’s adult life and include:

• family and political correspondence
• subject files
• reports
• legal opinions
• notes
• manuscripts
• speeches
• newspaper cuttings
• printed items. 

They touch on most matters of importance that came before the Federal Government and Parliament including:

• the High Court
• the Commonwealth Arbitration Court
• federal and state finance
• Papua and the Pacific Islands
• imperial conferences
• sugar
• the River Murray Commission
• the transcontinental railway
• World War I
• recruiting
• the establishment of Canberra
• and referenda and elections. 

There are also extensive papers on the League of Nations and the Anglican Church.

The Groom Collection includes:

• Several portraits of Littleton Groom
• Six albums of photographs, including:
  • Four presentation albums showing:
    • Mount Morgan mines
    • The British Parliamentary Association’s visit to Australia (1911)
    • The Australian exhibition at Wembley, London (1924)
    • An album from the Toowoomba branch of the Church of England Men’s Society (1929)
  • Two general and personal albums (circa 1905–1920) featuring:
    • Family groups and politicians
    • Houses, ships, and planes
    • Burrunjuck Dam, Werribee Gorge, and Sherbrooke Forest
    • The search for the federal capital site
    • The River Murray Commission
    • Visits by Lord Kitchener and the Prince of Wales
    • Army camps and troop ships
• Many annotations are in Groom’s handwriting

Additionally, the Library holds the silver and wood spade used by Groom to start construction of the first weir and lock on the River Murray at Torrumbarry on 14 June 1919.

The books, pamphlets, personal papers and photographs of Groom were donated by Lady Groom to the Commonwealth National Library in 1937. They constituted the first large personal archive acquired by the Library. 

In 2006, further personal papers of both Groom and Lady Groom were donated under the Cultural Gifts Program by Marie Pearce and other members of Groom’s family.

The books in the Littleton Groom Collection have been catalogued individually and integrated in the Australian Collection, whereas the pamphlets have been retained as a formed collection. The pamphlets were originally in nine volumes; one volume has been retained and the remainder of the pamphlets are filed in eight boxes. The pamphlets have also been catalogued individually and the call numbers have the prefix SR N LEG 080.

The Manuscripts Collection holds: 

• original collection of personal papers
• 2006 addition with the papers of Lady Jessie Groom
• newspaper cuttings

The photographs, photograph albums and spade are held in the Pictures Collection. The albums are numbered 258, 279, 360, 360A, 378 and 542. Most of them have been individually catalogued.

This guide was prepared using these references:

• David Carment, Groom, Sir Littleton Ernest (1867–1936), Australian Dictionary of Biography online
• Jessie Groom (ed.), Nation Building in Australia: The Life and Work of Sir Littleton Ernest Groom, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1941.
• Stuart Macintyre, The Library and the Political Life of the Nation, in Peter Cochrane (ed.), Remarkable Occurrences: The National Library of Australia’s First Hundred Years 1901–2001, National Library of Australia, Canberra, 2001, pp. 123–43.