Patrick Victor Martindale White (28 May 1912 – 30 September 1990) was an Australian writer who published 12 novels, three short-story collections, and eight plays, from 1935 to 1987. White's fiction employs humour, florid prose, shifting narrative vantage points and stream of consciousness techniques.
White was also the inaugural recipient of the Miles Franklin Award. ==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.
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.
In 1924, the boarding school ran into financial trouble, and the headmaster suggested for White to be sent to a public school in England, a suggestion that his parents accepted. White struggled to adjust to his new surroundings at Cheltenham College, England.
However 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.
The last time such an invitation had been extended was in 1928, to Bert Hinkler. White was made Australian of the Year for 1974, but in a typically rebellious fashion, his acceptance speech encouraged Australians to spend the day reflecting on the state of the country.
In 1974 White gave all his paintings by De Maistre to the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Towards the end of the 1930s, White spent time in the United States, including Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and New York City, which were artistic hotbeds at the time, where he wrote The Living and the Dead.
Although he grew to respect the land and his health improved, it was clear that he was not cut out for this life. ==Travelling the world== From 1932 to 1935, White lived in England, studying French and German literature at King's College, Cambridge University.
Patrick Victor Martindale White (28 May 1912 – 30 September 1990) was an Australian writer who published 12 novels, three short-story collections, and eight plays, from 1935 to 1987. White's fiction employs humour, florid prose, shifting narrative vantage points and stream of consciousness techniques.
Although he grew to respect the land and his health improved, it was clear that he was not cut out for this life. ==Travelling the world== From 1932 to 1935, White lived in England, studying French and German literature at King's College, Cambridge University.
After being admitted to the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1935, White briefly settled in London, where he lived in an area that was frequented by artists.
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.
In 1937, White's father died, leaving him ten thousand pounds in inheritance.
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.
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 to a small farm purchased by White at Castle Hill, near Sydney, in 1948.
During these years he started to make a reputation for himself as a writer, publishing The Aunt's Story and The Tree of Man in the United States in 1955 and shortly after in the United Kingdom.
A number of White's works from the 1960s depict the fictional town of Sarsaparilla, including his collection of short stories, The Burnt Ones, and the play, The Season at Sarsaparilla.
His first 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 portrait of White by Louis Kahan won the 1962 Archibald Prize. White decided not to accept any more prizes for his work, and he declined both the $10,000 Britannia Award and another Miles Franklin Award.
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== After the war, White once again returned to Australia, buying an old house in Castle Hill, now a Sydney suburb but then semi-rural.
In 1963, White and Lascaris decided to sell the house at Castle Hill.
By now, he had clearly established his reputation as one of the world's great authors, but remained an essentially private person, resisting opportunities for interviews and public appearances although his circle of friends had widened significantly. In 1968, White wrote The Vivisector, a searing character portrait of an artist.
White was later friends with Brett Whiteley, the young star of Australian painting, in the 1970s.
White also publicly expressed his admiration for the historian Manning Clark, satirist Barry Humphries, and unionist Jack Mundey. ===Failing health=== During the 1970s, White's health began to deteriorate: his teeth were crumbling, his eyesight was failing, and he had chronic lung problems - however, he also became a more openly political person, and began sometimes commenting on current issues.
In 2010 White received posthumous recognition for his novel The Vivisector, which was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize for 1970. In 2011 Fred Schepisi's film of The Eye of the Storm was released with screenplay adaptation by Judy Morris, Geoffrey Rush playing the son Basil, Judy Davis as the daughter Dorothy, and Charlotte Rampling as the dying matriarch Elizabeth Hunter.
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.
In 1973 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature", as it says in the Swedish Academy's citation, the only Australian to have been awarded the prize.
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. Nevertheless, in 1973, White did accept the Nobel Prize "for an epic and psychological narrative art, which has introduced a new continent into literature".
In 1974 White gave all his paintings by De Maistre to the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Towards the end of the 1930s, White spent time in the United States, including Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and New York City, which were artistic hotbeds at the time, where he wrote The Living and the Dead.
The last time such an invitation had been extended was in 1928, to Bert Hinkler. White was made Australian of the Year for 1974, but in a typically rebellious fashion, his acceptance speech encouraged Australians to spend the day reflecting on the state of the country.
In a letter to Marshall Best on 27 January 1974, he wrote: "Something terrible happened to me last week.
In Patrick White, A Life, his biographer David Marr portrays White as a genial host but one who easily fell out with friends. White supported the conservative, business oriented Liberal Party of Australia until the election of Gough Whitlam's Labor government and, following the 1975 Australian constitutional crisis, he became particularly antiroyalist, making a rare appearance on national television to broadcast his views on the matter.
He was among the first group of Companions of the Order of Australia in 1975 but resigned in June 1976 in protest at the dismissal of the Whitlam government in November 1975 by the Governor-General Sir John Kerr.
The awards were announced in the 1975 Queen's Birthday Honours List.
He was among the first group of Companions of the Order of Australia in 1975 but resigned in June 1976 in protest at the dismissal of the Whitlam government in November 1975 by the Governor-General Sir John Kerr.
They both resigned from the order in 1976, when the Knight of the Order of Australia (AK) was created. ==Commemoration== White is commemorated by the Patrick White Lawns adjacent to the National Library of Australia in Canberra.
In 1979, his novel The Twyborn Affair was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, but White requested that it to be removed to give younger writers a chance to win.
of English, University of Melbourne, 1995. Clayton Joyce (ed.) Patrick White: A Tribute, Angus & Robertson, Harper Collins, North Ryde, 1991. Brian Kiernan, Patrick White, Macmillan Commonwealth Writers Series, The Macmillan Press, London, 1980. Alan Lawson (ed.) Patrick White: Selected Writings, University of Queensland Press, St.
White agreed and wrote the screenplay for the film. In 1981, White published his autobiography, Flaws in the Glass: a self-portrait, which explored issues about which he had publicly said little such as his homosexuality, his dislike of the "subservient" attitude of Australian society towards Britain and the Royal family, and also the distance he had felt towards his mother.
On Palm Sunday, 1982, White addressed a crowd of 30,000 people, calling for a ban on uranium mining and for the destruction of nuclear weapons. In 1986 White released one last novel, Memoirs of Many in One, but it was published under the pen name "Alex Xenophon Demirjian Gray" with White named as editor.
On Palm Sunday, 1982, White addressed a crowd of 30,000 people, calling for a ban on uranium mining and for the destruction of nuclear weapons. In 1986 White released one last novel, Memoirs of Many in One, but it was published under the pen name "Alex Xenophon Demirjian Gray" with White named as editor.
Patrick Victor Martindale White (28 May 1912 – 30 September 1990) was an Australian writer who published 12 novels, three short-story collections, and eight plays, from 1935 to 1987. White's fiction employs humour, florid prose, shifting narrative vantage points and stream of consciousness techniques.
In 1987, White wrote Three Uneasy Pieces, with his musings on ageing and society's efforts to achieve aesthetic perfection.
Lucia, 1994 David Marr, Patrick White – A Life, Random House Australia, Sydney, 1991. 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.
Lucia, 1994 David Marr, Patrick White – A Life, Random House Australia, Sydney, 1991. 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.
Patrick Victor Martindale White (28 May 1912 – 30 September 1990) was an Australian writer who published 12 novels, three short-story collections, and eight plays, from 1935 to 1987. White's fiction employs humour, florid prose, shifting narrative vantage points and stream of consciousness techniques.
When David Marr finished his biography of White in July 1990, his subject spent nine days going over the details with him. White died in Sydney on 30 September 1990. ==Legacy== In 2009, The Sydney Theatre Company staged White's play The Season at Sarsaparilla.
of English, University of Melbourne, 1995. Clayton Joyce (ed.) Patrick White: A Tribute, Angus & Robertson, Harper Collins, North Ryde, 1991. Brian Kiernan, Patrick White, Macmillan Commonwealth Writers Series, The Macmillan Press, London, 1980. Alan Lawson (ed.) Patrick White: Selected Writings, University of Queensland Press, St.
Lucia, 1994 David Marr, Patrick White – A Life, Random House Australia, Sydney, 1991. 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.
Lucia, 1994 David Marr, Patrick White – A Life, Random House Australia, Sydney, 1991. 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.
of English, University of Melbourne, 1995. Clayton Joyce (ed.) Patrick White: A Tribute, Angus & Robertson, Harper Collins, North Ryde, 1991. Brian Kiernan, Patrick White, Macmillan Commonwealth Writers Series, The Macmillan Press, London, 1980. Alan Lawson (ed.) Patrick White: Selected Writings, University of Queensland Press, St.
When David Marr finished his biography of White in July 1990, his subject spent nine days going over the details with him. White died in Sydney on 30 September 1990. ==Legacy== In 2009, The Sydney Theatre Company staged White's play The Season at Sarsaparilla.
In 2010 White received posthumous recognition for his novel The Vivisector, which was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize for 1970. In 2011 Fred Schepisi's film of The Eye of the Storm was released with screenplay adaptation by Judy Morris, Geoffrey Rush playing the son Basil, Judy Davis as the daughter Dorothy, and Charlotte Rampling as the dying matriarch Elizabeth Hunter.
In 2010 White received posthumous recognition for his novel The Vivisector, which was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize for 1970. In 2011 Fred Schepisi's film of The Eye of the Storm was released with screenplay adaptation by Judy Morris, Geoffrey Rush playing the son Basil, Judy Davis as the daughter Dorothy, and Charlotte Rampling as the dying matriarch Elizabeth Hunter.
All text is taken from Wikipedia. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License .
Page generated on 2021-08-05