Patrick White

Patrick Victor Martindale White (28 May 1912 – 30 September 1990), was an Australian author. He is an important English-language novelist of the 20th century. From 1935 until his death, he published 12 novels, two short-story collections and eight plays.

Patrick White
Patrick White in 1973
Born	Patrick Victor Martindale White (1912-05-28)28 May 1912 Knightsbridge, London, England
Died	30 September 1990(1990-09-30) (aged 78) Sydney, Australia
Occupation	Novelist, playwright, poet, short-story writer, essayist
Language	English
Nationality	Australian
Education	Bachelor of Arts
Alma mater	Cambridge University
Period	1935–87
Genre	High modernism
Notable awards	Miles Franklin Literary Award 1957 Voss 1961 Riders in the Chariot Australian of the Year Award 1973 Nobel Prize in Literature 1973
Partner	Manoly Lascaris (1912–2003)

White's fiction uses humour, ornate prose, shifting narrative vantage points and a stream of consciousness technique. In 1973, he got the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was the only Australian citizen with the prize until the South African-born J. M. Coetzee became an Australian citizen in 2006. His novel The Vivisector was close to winning the Lost Man Booker Prize in 2010.

White was made Australian of the Year for 1974.

Patrick White and Christina Stead are widely called the most important Australian novelists of the 20th century.

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)

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• Bread and Butter Women (1935) Unpublished.
• The School for Friends (1935) Unpublished.
• Return to Abyssinia (1948) Unpublished.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)