The Australian literary journal Overland was spawned in 1954 from the Realist Writer, which in turn was the official organ of the Melbourne Realist Writers Group, one of the cultural organizations sponsored by the Communist Party of Australia. The Realist Writers Group had been founded after the war to promote the discussion and production of socialist realism in literature, and nurtured such writers as John Morrison, Frank Hardy, Ralph de Boissière and Judah Waten. Overland and the Australasian Book Society reflected the experience of Frank Hardy and his colleagues in publishing and distributing his first novel, Power Without Glory.

In the early 1950s, Hardy, then probably Australia's best-known Communist writer, came to the conclusion that the contents and political commentary in the Party's newspapers did not reflect the actual interests of the worker. To remedy this, he proposed that worker correspondents should be appointed in each workplace to write reports of what they and their fellows were actually doing and discussing. Those correspondents who developed an interest in writing should be encouraged to join groups that would nurture their talents and produce a national journal to publish the best of their work. Finally, a publishing co-operative would be established to bring their completed work to a national audience of their fellow workers. Thus the Party would build a network of readers and writers whose books and journals would provide the sinews of a working-class culture which would develop revolutionary zeal among workers until they seized the government of Australia.