Patrick White

For other people named Patrick White, see Patrick White (disambiguation).

Patrick White
White, c. 1940s
Born	Patrick Victor Martindale White (1912-05-28)28 May 1912 Knightsbridge, London, UK
Died	30 September 1990(1990-09-30) (aged 78) Sydney, Australia
Language	English
Nationality	Australian
Period	1935–1987
Notable works	The Tree of Man (1955) Voss (1957) The Eye of the Storm (1973) The Twyborn Affair (1979)
Notable awards	Miles Franklin Award (1957, 1961) ALS Gold Medal (1941, 1955, 1965) Australian of the Year (1973) Nobel Prize in Literature (1973)
Partner	Manoly Lascaris (1941–1990)

Patrick Victor Martindale White (28 May 1912 – 30 September 1990) was an Australian novelist and playwright who explored themes of religious experience, personal identity and the conflict between visionary individuals and a materialistic, conformist society. Influenced by the modernism of James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, he developed a complex literary style and a body of work which challenged the dominant realist prose tradition of his home country, was satirical of Australian society, and sharply divided local critics. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1973, the only Australian to have been awarded the literary prize.

Born in London to affluent Australian parents, White spent his childhood in Sydney and on his family's rural properties. He was sent to an English public school at age 13 and went on to read modern languages at Cambridge. On his graduation in 1935, he embarked on a literary career. His first published novel, Happy Valley (1939), was awarded the Gold Medal of the Australian Literature Society. In World War Two, he served as an intelligence officer in the Royal Air Force. While stationed in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1941, he met Manoly Lascaris who was to become his life companion and, as White later wrote, "the central mandala in my life's hitherto messy design."

White returned to Australia in 1948 where he bought a small farm on the outskirts of Sydney. There he wrote the two novels, The Tree of Man (1955) and Voss (1957), which brought him critical acclaim in the United States and the United Kingdom. In the 1960s, he wrote the novels Riders in the Chariot (1961) and The Solid Mandala (1966) and a series of plays including The Season at Sarsaparilla and A Cheery Soul which had a major impact on Australian theatre.

White and Lascaris moved to Sydney's Centennial Park in 1964. From the late 1960s, White became increasingly involved in public affairs, opposing the Vietnam war and supporting Aboriginal self-determination, nuclear disarmament and various environmental causes. His later work includes the novels The Eye of the Storm (1973) and The Twyborn Affair (1979) and the memoir Flaws in the Glass (1981).

Childhood and adolescence

White was born in Knightsbridge, London, to Victor Martindale White and Ruth (née Withycombe), both Australians, in their apartment overlooking Hyde Park, London on 28 May 1912. His family returned to Sydney, Australia, when he was six months old. As a child he lived in a flat with his sister, a nanny, and a maid while his parents lived in an adjoining flat. In 1916 they moved to a house in Elizabeth Bay that many years later became a nursing home, Lulworth House, the residents of which included Gough Whitlam, Neville Wran, and White's partner Manoly Lascaris.

At the age of four White developed asthma, a condition that had taken the life of his maternal grandfather. White's health was fragile throughout his childhood, which precluded his participation in many childhood activities.

He loved the theatre, which he first visited at an early age (his mother took him to see The Merchant of Venice at the age of six). This love was expressed at home when he performed private rites in the garden and danced for his mother's friends.

At the age of five he attended kindergarten at Sandtoft in Woollahra, in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs. Followed by 2 years at Cranbrook School

At the age of ten White was sent to Tudor House School, a boarding school in Moss Vale in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, in an attempt to abate his asthma. It took him some time to adjust to the presence of other children. At boarding school, he started to write plays. Even at this early age, White wrote about palpably adult themes. In 1924 the boarding school ran into financial trouble, and the headmaster suggested that White be sent to a public school in England, a suggestion that his parents accepted.

Lulworth, White's childhood home in Elizabeth Bay, Sydney

White struggled to adjust to his new surroundings at Cheltenham College, England, describing it later as "a four-year prison sentence". He withdrew socially and had a limited circle of acquaintances. Occasionally, he would holiday with his parents at European locations, but their relationship remained distant. But he did spend time with his cousin Jack Withycombe during this period, and Jack's daughter Elizabeth Withycombe became a mentor to him while he was writing his first book of poems, Thirteen Poems between the years 1927–29.

While at school in London White made one close friend, Ronald Waterall, an older boy who shared similar interests. White's biographer, David Marr, wrote that "the two men would walk, arm-in-arm, to London shows; and stand around stage doors crumbing for a glimpse of their favourite stars, giving a practical demonstration of a chorus girl's high kick ... with appropriate vocal accompaniment". When Waterall left school White again withdrew. He asked his parents if he could leave school to become an actor. The parents compromised and allowed him to finish school early if he came home to Australia to try life on the land. They felt he should work on the land rather than become a writer, and hoped his work as a jackaroo would temper his artistic ambitions.

White spent two years working as a stockman at Bolaro, a 73-square-kilometre (28 sq mi) station near Adaminaby on the edge of the Snowy Mountains in southeastern Australia. Although he grew to respect the land, and his health improved, it was clear that he was not suited to it.

Travelling the world

From 1932 to 1935 White lived in England, studying French and German literature at King's College, Cambridge. During his time at Cambridge he developed a romantic attraction to a young man who had come to King's College to become an Anglican priest. White dared not speak of his feelings for fear of losing the friendship and, like many other gay men of that period, he feared that his sexuality would doom him to a lonely life. Then, one night, the student priest, after an awkward liaison with two women, admitted to White that women meant nothing to him sexually. That became White's first love affair.

In 1934 White published a collection of poetry titled The Ploughman and Other Poems. The volume was published by P. R. Stephenson and Co., a newly established publishing firm in which his parents had invested £300 (equivalent to $17,000 in 2022). He also wrote a play named Bread and Butter Women, which was later performed by an amateur group (which included his sister Suzanne) at the tiny Bryant's Playhouse in Sydney. After being admitted to the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1935, White briefly settled in London in an area frequented by artists. There, the young author thrived creatively for a time, writing several unpublished works and reworking Happy Valley, a novel that he had written while jackarooing. In 1937 White's father died, leaving him ten thousand pounds in inheritance. The fortune enabled him to write full-time in relative comfort. Two more plays followed before he succeeded in finding a publisher for Happy Valley. The novel was received well in London but poorly in Australia. He began writing another novel, Nightside, but abandoned it before its completion after receiving negative comments, a decision that he later admitted regretting.

In 1936, White met the painter Roy De Maistre, 18 years his senior, who became an important influence in his life and work. The two men never became lovers but remained firm friends. In White's own words, "He became what I most needed, an intellectual and aesthetic mentor". They had many similarities: both were gay and felt like outsiders in their own families, for whom both harboured ambivalent feelings yet maintained close lifelong links with them, particularly their mothers. They also both appreciated the benefits of social standing and its connections. Christian symbolism and biblical themes are common to both artists' work.

White dedicated his first novel Happy Valley to De Maistre, and acknowledged De Maistre's influence on his writing. In 1947 De Maistre's painting Figure in a Garden (The Aunt) was used as the cover for the first edition of White's The Aunt's Story. White bought many of De Maistre's paintings, all of which in 1974 he gave to the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Toward the end of the 1930s White spent time in the United States, including Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and New York City – artistic hotbeds at the time, where he wrote The Living and the Dead. By the time World War II broke out he had returned to London and joined the British Royal Air Force. He was accepted as an intelligence officer, and was posted to the Middle East. He served in Egypt, Palestine, and Greece before the war was over. While in the Middle East he had an affair with a Greek army officer, Manoly Lascaris, who was to become his life partner.

White and Lascaris lived together in Cairo for six years before moving in 1948 to a small farm purchased by White at Castle Hill, now a Sydney suburb but then semi-rural. He named the house "Dogwoods", after trees he planted there. They lived there for 18 years, selling flowers, vegetables, milk, and cream as well as pedigree puppies. After the death of White's mother in 1963, they moved into a large house, Highbury, in Centennial Park, where they lived for the rest of their lives.

Growth of writing career

White's house in Castle Hill, Sydney

After the war, when White had settled down with Lascaris, his reputation as a writer increased with publication of The Aunt's Story and The Tree of Man in the United States in 1955 and shortly after in the United Kingdom. The Tree of Man was released to rave reviews in the United States, but in what had become a typical pattern, it was panned in Australia. White had doubts about whether to continue writing after his books were largely dismissed in Australia (three of them having been called 'un-Australian' by critics), but decided to persevere, and a breakthrough in Australia came when his next novel, Voss, won the inaugural Miles Franklin Literary Award.

In 1961, White published Riders in the Chariot, a bestseller and a prizewinner, garnering a second Miles Franklin Award. In 1963, White and Lascaris decided to sell the Castle Hill house. A number of White's books from the 1960s depict the fictional town of Sarsaparilla; his collection of short stories, The Burnt Ones, and the play, The Season at Sarsaparilla. Clearly established in his reputation as one of the world's great authors, he remained a private person, resisting opportunities for interviews and public appearances, though his circle of friends widened significantly.

In 1968, White wrote The Vivisector, a searing character portrait of an artist. Many people drew links to the Sydney painter John Passmore (1904–84) and White's friend, the painter Sidney Nolan, but White denied the connections. Patrick White was an art collector who had, as a young man, been deeply impressed by his friends Roy De Maistre and Francis Bacon, and later said he wished he had been an artist. By the mid-1960s, he had also become interested in encouraging dozens of young and less established artists, such as James Clifford, Erica McGilchrist, and Lawrence Daws. A portrait of White by Louis Kahan won the 1962 Archibald Prize. White was later friends with Brett Whiteley, the young star of Australian painting, in the 1970s. That friendship ended when White felt that Whiteley, a heroin addict, was deceitful and pushy about selling his paintings.

Deciding not to accept any more prizes for his work, White declined both the $10,000 Britannia Award and another Miles Franklin Award. Harry M. Miller proposed to work on a screenplay for Voss but nothing came of it. He became an active opponent of literary censorship and joined a number of other public figures in signing a statement of defiance against Australia's decision to participate in the Vietnam War. His name had sometimes been mentioned as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, but in 1971, after losing to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, he wrote to a friend: "That Nobel Prize! I hope I never hear it mentioned again. I certainly don't want it; the machinery behind it seems a bit dirty, when we thought that only applied to Australian awards. In my case to win the prize would upset my life far too much, and it would embarrass me to be held up to the world as an Australian writer when, apart from the accident of blood, I feel I am temperamentally a cosmopolitan Londoner".

Nobel laureate

Patrick White's home Highbury, in Centennial Park, Sydney

In 1970, White had begun working on a new novel, The Eye of the Storm, about the meaning of his mother's death. He sent the completed work to his British publishers in December 1972. He delayed sending it to his American publishers, Viking, because The Vivisector had sold poorly in America and he hoped positive reviews of the new work in Britain would increase interest in the United States.

The novel was published in August 1973 and White was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in October. The Nobel citation praised him "for an epic and psychological narrative art, which has introduced a new continent into literature". White, pleading delicate health, declined to travel to Sweden to accept the award. Nolan attended the ceremony on his behalf.

The Nobel prize increased worldwide interest in White's work. Eye of the Storm was widely reviewed in the United States and sold 25,000 copies by March 1974. New editions of his previous novels were published and translation rights sold well. White, however, refused to have Happy Valley republished as he considered it an inferior early work and he was afraid that some of the people on whom characters were based might sue for defamation.

According to White's biographer, "From the time of the prize his work became saturated with a late, relaxed sensuality." White himself was less relaxed about the effects of the award, telling a supporter: "the Nobel Prize is a terrifying and destructive experience."

White was made Australian of the Year for 1973. In his acceptance speech, he said that Australia Day should be "a day of self-searching rather than trumpet blowing" and that historian Manning Clark, comedian Barry Humphries and communist trade union leader Jack Mundey were more worthy of the award.

In May 1974, White gave a speech in support of the re-election of the Whitlam Labor government, stating that it was necessary for Australia to create: "an intellectual climate from which artists would no longer feel the need to flee." Following a trip to Fraser Island to do research for a new novel A Fringe of Leaves, he became a supporter of the campaign to stop sand mining on the island. He wrote to the re-elected prime minister Gough Whitlam on the issue and the campaign eventually forced the government to suspend its approval of mining and hold an inquiry on the matter.

White was among the first group of the Companions of the Order of Australia in 1975 but resigned in June 1976 in protest against the dismissal of the Whitlam government in November 1975 by the Governor-General Sir John Kerr and the subsequent reintroduction of knighthoods as part of the order. White later wrote that Kerr's behaviour "moved me farther to the Left and made me a convinced Republican." Over the following years, he would break with numerous long-term friends because he thought they supported the conservative establishment or had compromised their personal or artistic integrity.

In November 1975, the young theatre director Jim Sharman approached White to discuss a revival of The Season at Sarsaparilla. They also agreed to film his story "The Night the Prowler" and White began working on a script. The meeting sparked a revival in White's interest in theatre and a long-term working relationship between the two men.

In 1976, White was working on a new novel, TheTwyborn Affair, partly based on aspects of his own life and that of male Antarctic explorer Herbert Dyce-Murphy (1879–1971) who had lived as a woman for several years. In researching his novel, White revisited the regions of New South Wales where White had lived and worked as a youth, and significant locations in London, France and Greece. In October, A Fringe of Leaves was published to generally favourable reviews and sold well. Sharman's production of A Season at Sarsaparilla in Sydney was also a critical success and attracted good audiences.

In 1977, a project to film Voss with Joseph Losey as director collapsed when the promoter Harry Miller failed to gain finance. Miller eventually sold the film rights to Nolan. The success of The Season at Sarsaparilla had inspired White to write his first play in over 12 years, Big Toys, about plutocracy and corruption in Sydney. The play, directed by Sharman, premiered in Sydney in October but attracted generally unfavourable reviews and moderate audiences.

White in 1972

The film of The Night the Prowler, directed by Sharman, premiered at the Sydney Film Festival in June 1978. Reviews were generally unfavourable and the film failed at the box office. However, Sharman's 1979 production of A Cheery Soul for the Sydney Theatre Company broke box office records for the drama theatre of the Opera House despite mixed reviews. The Twyborn Affair was published in Britain in November, 1979 to very positive reviews and became a best seller. The response from critics and the public in the United States was more subdued.

In October 1979, White started work on a memoir, Flaws in the Glass, in which he planned to write publicly for the first time about his homosexuality and his relationship with Manoly Lascaris. The book was published in Britain in October 1981 to great publicity and became his biggest seller in his life time. Much of the publicity stemmed from his scathing character portraits of Nolan, Kerr and Joan Sutherland. Nolan considered suing White for defamation and their friendship ended.

The 1982 Adelaide Festival was directed by Sharman who had commissioned a new play by White, Signal Driver. The festival also featured a short excerpt from an opera based on Voss. The opera had been commissioned by Opera Australia with Richard Meale as composer and David Malouf the librettist. Critics were generally lukewarm towards Signal Driver, but encouraging towards the fragment of Voss. White, in contrast, disliked Meade's approach to Voss but was enthusiastic about the production of Signal Driver. White was encouraged to write a new play for Sharman, Netherwood, "about the sanity in insanity and the insanity in sanity". The play premiered in Adelaide in May 1983 but attracted hostile reviews which White considered a deliberate media campaign to sabotage his work.

By 1984, White had become disillusioned with the Hawke Labor government and publicly and financially supported the new Nuclear Disarmament Party. White had been publicly campaigning for nuclear disarmament since 1981, calling it: "the most important moral issue in history."

Late work and declining health

In late 1984, White was hospitalised due to osteoporosis, crumbled vertebrae and glaucoma resulting from his long-term use of cortisone to treat his asthma and chest infections. Although he was still mentally agile, his physical health and mobility were declining.

He had recovered sufficiently by January 1985 to recommence work on a new novel, Memoirs of Many in One, which he described as a "religious" and "bawdy" novel about senility. Posing as the editor of the memoirs of Alex Xenophon Demirjian Gray, White felt free to explore various aspects of his own character. The novel was published in Britain on 1 April 1986 and sharply divided critics.

The completed opera Voss opened at the Adelaide Festival in March 1986 to general critical acclaim. White, however, boycotted the premiere because the festival had invited the Queen to attend. He attended the Sydney premiere later that year and judged it: "a stupendous occasion."

In April 1987, White's new play, Shepherd on the Rocks, opened at Adelaide in a production directed by Neil Armfield. White attended and deemed it a success. He had also written three short prose poems which were published as Three Uneasy Pieces in late 1987. White was determined that none of his works would be published or performed in 1988 which was the bicentenary of British settlement in Australia. He also urged a boycott of all official celebrations of the event, stating: "circuses don't solve serious problems."

White was hospitalised with pneumonia in August 1988. A nurse stayed at his home for the remainder of his life and he no longer had the strength to attend protest rallies. In June 1989, a selection of his public statements, speeches and interviews was published as Patrick White Speaks. In October, the Sydney Theatre Company staged a successful revival of The Ham Funeral directed by Neil Armfield. White attended the premiere in his last public appearance.

In July 1990, White contracted pleurisy and suffered a bronchial collapse. He refused to be hospitalised and died at home at dawn on 30 September.

Religious and political views

Religion

White was raised an Anglican but stated, "I… went through my youth believing in nothing but my own ego." In late 1951, he experienced a religious conversion:

If I say I had no religious tendencies between adolescence and The Tree of Man, it’s because I was sufficiently vain and egotistical to feel one can ignore certain realities. (I think the turning point came during a season of unending rain at Castle Hill when I fell flat on my back one day in the mud and starting cursing a God I had convinced myself didn’t exist. My personal scheme of things until then at once seemed too foolish to continue holding.)

As the 1950s progressed, White became disillusioned with the Anglican church and his religious beliefs became more eclectic. He once described himself as a "lapsed Anglican egotist agnostic pantheist occultist existentialist would-be though failed Christian Australian." White stated in 1981 that he didn't call himself a Christian because he couldn't follow Christ's injunction to forgive. In 1969, however, he had affirmed the importance of religion in his work: "Religion. Yes, that’s behind all my books. What I am interested in is the relationship between the blundering human being and God."

Politics

In the 1930s, White was not politically engaged, but was sympathetic to the Francoist cause in the Spanish Civil War and supported Britain's policy of appeasing Hitler. He later regretted his complacency regarding European fascism. On his return to Australia after the Second World War he had little interest in politics but routinely voted for the conservative coalition in elections. He became involved in politics in 1969 when he joined protests against the Vietnam war and conscription of Austrians troops for the conflict. He also supported Trade Union Green Bans against development proposals which threatened the urban environment. He publicly supported the Australian Labor Party in the federal elections of 1972, 1974 and 1975 despite a falling out with the prime minister Gough Whitlam over sand mining on Fraser Island. Following the dismissal of the Whitlam government in November 1975, he became a prominent advocate for an Australian republic. He was a public supporter of Aboriginal self-determination and privately donated money towards Aboriginal education. From 1981, he became a leading public figure in campaigns for nuclear disarmament and continued his support for various environmental causes. David Marr states that a common thread running through his political interventions was his opposition to plutocracy. Thomas argues that White was acutely aware of his own privileged upbringing and this drove his later concern about social injustice.

Critical reception

White's first published novel, Happy Valley (1939), received favourable reviews in Britain and Australia, although some critics noted that it was too derivative of Joyce, Lawrence and Woolf. The novel was awarded the Gold Medal of the Australian Literature Society. The Living and the Dead (1941) and The Aunt's Story (1948) attracted little critical attention in Australia, although the latter was favourably reviewed in the New York Times Review of Books.

The Tree of Man (1955) was White's first major international success, attracting positive reviews in the United States and the United Kingdom. James Stern, writing in the New York Times Book Review, praised the novel as "a timeless work of art." Australian reviewers were more divided, poet A. D. Hope calling White's prose "pretentious and illiterate verbal sludge." The novel sold eight thousand copies in Australia in the first three months and was awarded the Gold Medal of the Australian Literature Society.

Voss (1957) was reviewed favourably in the United Kingdom but critics in the United States and Australia were more ambivalent. The novel was a best seller in the United Kingdom and won the inaugural Australian Miles Franklin literary award. Riders in the Chariot (1961) also achieved critical and commercial success in the United Kingdom. The novel won the Miles Franklin Award but divided Australian reviewers. A significant body of critics continued to fault White's prose style and some objected to his rejection of the realist prose tradition which depicted the common Australian man as egalitarian and unpretentious.

By 1963, White was widely accepted as the major Australian literary novelist. A. D. Hope called him "unquestionably the best known and most discussed novelist of the day" and thought his success was "indicative of a break with the naturalistic tradition which has dominated Australian fiction since the turn of the century, and may well be a portent of a more imaginative and a more intellectual sort of fiction." White was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1973. Academic Elizabeth Webby states that many critics consider The Twyborn Affair the best of his subsequent work.

Katherine Brisbane states that the reception of White's plays has been ambivalent as they mix realism, expressionism and poetic and vernacular dialogue in a way which has challenged audiences and directors. The Ham Funeral (1947) was successfully produced in 1962 after it was rejected by the Adelaide Festival for obscenity. It was successfully revived in 1989. The Season at Sarsaparilla (1962) has been his most produced play.

Themes and style

Themes

According to critic Brian Kiernan, "the basic situation in his [White's] fiction is the attempt of individuals, most often individuals alienated from society, to grasp some higher, more essential reality that lies beyond or behind social existence." The search for a higher reality is most often presented as an exploration of various forms of religious or mystical experience and the "seers" are variously pioneer-settlers (The Tree of Man), explorers (Voss), artists (The Vivisector), the simple-minded (The Solid Mandala), those fleeing into the self (The Aunt's Story) or those on the margins of society. Sexual ambivalence and the search for personal identity is also a recurrent theme which becomes more prominent in the later novels.

Society, in particular Australian society, is mostly portrayed as materialistic, conformist and life-inhibiting. White satirises what he called, in 1958, "The Great Australian Emptiness"

in which the mind is the least of possessions, in which the rich man is the important man, in which the schoolmaster and the journalist rule what intellectual roost there is, in which beautiful youths and girls stare at life through blind blue eyes, in which human teeth fall like autumn leaves, the buttocks of cars grow hourly glassier, food means cake and steak, muscles prevail, and the march of material ugliness does not raise a quiver from the average nerves."

The academic Mark Williams argues that White places the religious impulse at the centre of the human condition and his work, adding that "religion is one of the central values, along with art and love, which he considers to be denigrated in his homeland." Kiernan notes a division among critics over whether "he is essentially a simple and traditional writer who affirms a religious, even mystical view of life, or one who is distinctively modern, sophisticated and ironic, continually exploring transcendent possibilities but with detachment and even scepticism." Greg Clarke argues that Christian discourse is central to White's writing. Marr, Williams and Kiernan, however, state that White drew on various religious and mystical traditions in his work including Judaism, Jungian archetypes and gnosticism.

Style

White's early novels were heavily influenced by the modernism of Eliot, Joyce, Lawrence and Woolf. Kiernan has called his mature work "complex, ambiguous and ironic verbal structures". His narratives shift seamlessly between past and present, inner experience and outer awareness, and the point of view of different characters. According to Williams, "the point of view of the narrative in any White novel changes continually, rapidly and disconcertingly. The narrative voice ... is a voice composed of many voices, a slippery, complex, fluent medium."

White frequently shifts between tones, styles and linguistic registers. According to Kiernan, "A self-conscious play with conventions, a parodic playfulness, is apparent through White’s adoption of various modes in his work from the first." His transitions between realist, expressionist, symbolist and romantic modes were a conscious attempt to demonstrate that "the Australian novel is not necessarily the dreary, dun-coloured offspring of journalistic realism." Kiernan states that in Voss the theme of the outsider as visionary explorer of the human condition is undercut by ironic comedy and parodies of the "gothic excess" of romantic literature. Williams argues that White's tendency for parody and playfulness become more prominent in later works such as The Twyborn Affair and Memoirs of Many in One. The tone becomes less portentous and more relaxed, and the works more self-referential.

Influence and legacy

Critic Susan Lever considers White a pivotal figure in Australian literature, stating that he made the novel, rather than poetry, the pre-eminent literary form. He "transformed the possibilities of the Australian novel by demonstrating that it was a place to test ideas against complex spiritual, psychological and emotional experience, not only an avenue for national storytelling."

Australian novelists influenced by White include Thomas Keneally, Thea Astley, Randolph Stow and Christopher Koch. Lever argues that following generations of novelists were more influenced by recent trends in world literature. Novelist David Malouf states that White's "High Modernism" is a literary form that has become unfashionable but that this could change. Writing in 2024, critic Martin Thomas noted that critical and public interest in White had declined.

The Patrick White Lawns with temporary stage, March 2015.

The Patrick White Award is an annual literary prize which White founded in 1975 with the prize money from his Nobel prize. It is awarded to writers who have made a significant contribution to Australian literature. The Patrick White Indigenous Writers Award is for Indigenous students in New South Wales from Kindergarten to year 12. It is run by the Aboriginal Education Council which was a beneficiary of Patrick White's estate. The Sydney Theatre Company sponsors the Patrick White Playwrights Award and Fellowship in honour of White's contribution to Australian theatre.

In 2006, the National Library of Australia acquired a large quantity of White's manuscripts. These included an unfinished novel, The Hanging Garden, which was published in 2012. The Art Gallery of New South Wales owns a 1940 portrait of White by de Maistre and Parliament House, Sydney, a 1980 portrait by Brett Whiteley. White donated much of his collection of Australian art to the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

As at 2024, there is no museum or institution dedicated to White's life and work. His former residence, "Dogwoods", at Castle Hill is privately owned but has a commemorative plaque and the surrounding streets are named after him. His former Sydney residence at Centennial Park is privately owned but is heritage listed. White is commemorated by the Patrick White Lawns adjacent to the National Library of Australia in Canberra.

In 2006 a hoaxer submitted a chapter of White's novel The Eye of the Storm to a dozen Australian publishers under the name Wraith Picket (an anagram of White's name). All of the publishers rejected the manuscript and none recognised it as White's work.

In 2010, White's novel The Vivisector was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize for 1970. In 2011, Fred Schepisi's film adaptation of the novel The Eye of the Storm won The Age Critics Award for the best Australian feature at the Melbourne International Film Festival.

List of works

Novels

• Happy Valley (1939)
• The Living and the Dead (1941)
• The Aunt's Story (1948)
• The Tree of Man (1955)
• Voss (1957)
• Riders in the Chariot (1961)
• The Solid Mandala (1966)
• The Vivisector (1970)
• The Eye of the Storm (1973)
• A Fringe of Leaves (1976)
• The Twyborn Affair (1979)
• Memoirs of Many in One (1986)
• The Hanging Garden (2012) (Unfinished, posthumous)

Short story collections

• The Burnt Ones (1964)
• The Cockatoos (1974)
• Three Uneasy Pieces (1987)

Poetry

• Thirteen Poems / under the pseudonym Patrick Victor Martindale. – Sydney : Privately printed, (ca. 1929)
• The Ploughman and Other Poems. – Sydney: Beacon Press, (1935)

Plays

• Bread and Butter Women (1935) Unpublished.
• The School for Friends (1935) Unpublished.
• Return to Abyssinia (1948) Unpublished.
• The Ham Funeral (1947) prem. Union Theatre, Adelaide, 1961.
• The Season at Sarsaparilla (1962)
• A Cheery Soul (1963)
• Night on Bald Mountain (1964)
• Big Toys (1977)
• Signal Driver: a Morality Play for the Times (1982)
• Netherwood (1983)
• Shepherd on the Rocks (1987)

Screenplay

• The Night the Prowler (1978)

Autobiography

• Flaws in the Glass (1981)

Honours and awards

White's numerous honours and awards include:

• 1941: Gold Medal of the Australian Literature Society for Happy Valley
• 1955: Gold Medal of the Australian Literature Society for The Tree of Man
• 1957: Miles Franklin Literary Award for Voss
• 1959: W. H. Smith Literary Award for Voss
• 1961: Miles Franklin Literary Award for Riders in the Chariot
• 1973: Nobel Prize in Literature
• 1973: Australian of the Year, National Australia Day Council
• 1975: Companion of the Order of Australia (AC, civil division). (Resigned in 1976)

In 1970, White was offered a knighthood but declined it.

Sources

• Barnes, John (2014). "Australia's Prodigal Son". In vanden Driesen, Cynthia; Ashcroft, Bill (eds.). Patrick White Centenary : The Legacy of a Prodigal Son. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN 9781443860406.

• Brisbane, Katherine (2009). "Theatre from 1950". In Pierce, Peter (ed.). The Cambridge History of Australian Literature. Port Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521881654.

• Kiernan, Brian (1980). Patrick White. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0312598076.

• Lever, Susan (2009). "The challenge of the novel: Australian fiction since 1950". In Pierce, Peter (ed.). The Cambridge History of Australian Literature. Port Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521881654.

• Marr, David (1991). Patrick White: A Life. Sydney: Random House Australia. ISBN 0091825857.

• Marr, David (2 April 2008). "Patrick White: The final chapter". The Monthly.

• Thomas, Martin (2024). "Patrick White and the path to Sarsaparilla: How a great novelist became a great unread". Australian Journal of Biography and History. 8 (8): 155–170. doi:10.22459/AJBH.08.2024.

• Webby, Elizabeth (2012). "White, Patrick Victor (Paddy) (1912–1990)". Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. Retrieved 30 July 2024.

• White, Patrick (1981). Flaws in the Glass: A Self-Portrait. London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN 022402924X.

• White, Patrick (1992). Brennan, Paul; Flynn, Christine (eds.). Patrick White Speaks. London: Penguin. ISBN 0140159339.

• Wilde, William H.; Hooton, Joy; Andrews, Barry (1994). "Patrick White". The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195533811.

• Williams, Mark (1993). Patrick White. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0312089902.

Further reading

• A Conversation with Patrick White, Australian Writers in Profile, Southerly, No.3 1973
• Barry Argyle, Patrick White, Writers and Critics Series, Oliver and Boyd, London, 1967
• Peter Beatson, The Eye in the Mandala, Patrick White: A Vision of Man and God, Barnes & Noble, London, 1976
• John Docker, Patrick White and Romanticism: The Vivisector, Southerly, No.1, 1973
• Simon During, Patrick White, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, VIC, 1996.
• Michael Wilding, Studies in Classic Australian Fiction, Sydney Studies in Society and Culture, 16, 1997
• Ian Henderson and Anouk Lang (eds.) Patrick White Beyond the Grave, Anthem Press, 2015
• Helen Verity Hewitt, Patrick White and the Influence of the Visual Arts in his Work, Doctoral Thesis, Dept. of English, University of Melbourne, 1995.
• Holland, Patrick (27 May 2002). "Patrick White (1912–1990)". glbtq.com. Archived from the original on 14 August 2007. Retrieved 21 June 2007.
• Clayton Joyce (ed.) Patrick White: A Tribute, Angus & Robertson, Harper Collins, North Ryde, 1991.
• Alan Lawson (ed.) Patrick White: Selected Writings, University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, 1994
• David Marr (ed.), Patrick White Letters, Random House Australia, Sydney, 1994.
• Irmtraud Petersson, New "Light" on Voss: The Significance of its Title, World Literature Written in English 28.2 (Autumn 1988) 245-59.
• Laurence Steven, Dissociation and Wholeness in Patrick White's Fiction, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Ontario, 1989.
• Elizabeth McMahon, Brigitta Olubas. Remembering Patrick White : contemporary critical essays, Rodopi, Amsterdam, New York, 2010.
• Denise Varney, Patrick White's Theatre: Australian Modernism on Stage, Sydney University Press, Sydney, 2021.
• Patrick White, Patrick White Speaks, Primavera Press, Sydney, Publisher Paul Brennan, 1989.
• Stephen Michael Sasse, Companion notes to the Aunt's story by Patrick White, WriteLight, 2012.
• Cynthia Vanden Drissen, Writing the nation : Patrick White and the indigene, Rodopi, Amsterdam, New York, 2009.
• William Yang, Patrick White: The Late Years, PanMacmillan Australia, 1995

External links

Media related to Patrick White at Wikimedia Commons

• Patrick White on Nobelprize.org
• Patrick White – Existential Explorer—essay by Karin Hansson at the official Nobel Prize website.
• Why Bother With Patrick White?—excerpts from White's novels, as well as a range of critical interpretations of his work and personal remembrances of White as a man, courtesy of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
• Patrick White reappraised from the Times Literary Supplement
• Online catalogue of the documents and manuscripts acquired by the NLA.
• Patrick White on Trove