celebrity writers

Patrick White, Author

Australian Novelist, Short Story Writer, Playwright, and Poet

May 28, 2008

Brief biography of Australian author Patrick White, 1973 Nobel Prize winner in literature.

Australian writer Patrick White is regarded as an important writer of the 20th century, whose work explores the theme of isolation in his characters, often separated from society by age, sexuality, race or geography. He is best known for The Aunt's Story, Voss and The Eye of the Storm.

Despite his popularity worldwide he was not as popular in Australia because of his often cruel depictions of the Australian middle class as materialistic, cold and unfeeling. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973.

Early Life of Patrick White

Patrick Victor Martindale White was born in London on May 28, 1912, while his Australian parents were on vacation. At the age of 13 he was sent back to England to attend at Cheltenham College, which he did not like. In his youth, he began to write plays and stories. After two years on a remote sheep ranch in Australia, where he worked as a stockman near the Snowy Mountains in New South Wales, at the age of 20 he returned to England to attend King's College, Cambridge.

The Writer/Author

White served in the RAF during World War II White in Greece and the Middle East. Following the war he eventually settled on a farm near Sydney, Australia, with his partner Manoly Lascaris. There he wrote his first important work, The Aunt's Story, the reminiscences of an elderly woman. The Tree of Man, about the struggles of a small farmer, and Voss, about the early days of Australian exploration, also received critical acclaim. One of his most important novels, The Eye of the Storm, was published in his later years, at 61. It is about a city dweller who remembers the most significant time of her life when she was stranded on a tropical island.

White also published short stories, The Burnt Ones (1964) and The Cockatoos (1974), and plays, including Four Plays (1965) and Signal Driver (1981).

Last Years

In his memoirs, Flaws in the Glass: A Self-Portrait, White focuses on his life as a writer and as a homosexual in Australian society. He died in Sydney at the age of 78 on September 30, 1990, after a long illness.

Works by Patrick White

Happy Valley, 1939
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 Eye of the Storm, 1973
The Twyborn Affair, 1979
Flaws in the Glass: A Self-Portrait, 1981

Sources:

Cambridge Guide to Literature in English by Ian Ousby, Cambridge University Press, 1993

Chambers Biographical Dictionary, New Edition, edited by Una McGovern, Chambers Harrap Publishers, 2002

Larousse Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring, Larousse plc, 1994

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