Patrick White Bibliography

M. Barnard Eldershaw, Essays in Australian Fiction (1938)
Leslie Rees, A History of Australian Drama (1953)
Vance Palmer, The Legend of the Nineties (1954)
Russel Ward, The Australian Legend (1958)
A.A. Phillips: The Australian Tradition: Studies in a Colonial Culture (1958)
H.M. Green, A History of Australian Literature (1961, 2- volumes, revised 1984 by Dorothy Green)
Geoffrey Dutton (ed), The Literature of Australia (1964, revised 1976)
Robert Hughes, The Art of Australia (1966)
Brian Elliott, The Landscape of Australian Poetry (1967)
Judith Wright, Preoccupations in Australian Poetry (1967)
Coral Lansbury, Arcady in Australia: The evocation of Australia in nineteenth-century English literature (1970)
H.M. Saxby, Images of Australia: A history of Australian children’s literature 1941-1970 (1971)
Harry Heseltine (ed), The Penguin Book of Australian Verse (1972)
Graeme Kinross-Smith, Australia’s Writers (1980)
Dame Leonie Kramer (ed), Oxford History of Australian Literature (1981)
John Bryden-Brown, Ads that Made Australia: How Advertising Has Shaped Our History and Lifestyle (1981)
Brenda Niall, Australia Through the Looking-Glass: Children’s Fiction 1830-1980 (1984)
Geoffrey Dutton, The Australian Collection: Australia’s Greatest Books (1985)
Kaye Harman, Australia Brought to Book: Responses to Australia by Visiting Writers 1836-1939 (1985)
Leon Cantrell (ed), The 1890s: Stories, Verses and Essays (1986)
Geoffrey Dutton (ed), The Illustrated Treasury of Australian Stories (1986)
William H. Wade, Joy Hooton, Barry Andrews (eds) The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature (1986)
Peter Pierce, The Oxford Literary Guide to Australia (1987)
Dale Spender (ed), The Penguin Anthology of Australian Women’s Writing (1988)
Laurie Hergenhan (ed), The Penguin New Literary History of Australia (1988)
Patricia Clarke, Pen Portraits: Women Writers and Journalists in Nineteenth-Century Australia (1988)
Dale Spender, Writing a New World: Two Centuries of Australian Women’s Writers (1988)
Debra Adelaide, Australian Women Writers: A Bibliographic Guide (1988)
Ken Gelder and Paul Salzman, The New Diversity: Australian Fiction 1970-88 (1989)
Kevin Gilbert (ed), Inside Black Australia: An Anthology of Aboriginal Poetry (1989)
Adam Shoemaker, Black Words, White Page: Aboriginal Literature 1929-1988 (1989)
John Leonard (ed), Contemporary Australian Poetry: An Anthology (1990)
Ken Goodwin (ed), The Macmillan Anthology of Australian Literature (1990)
Vincent Buckley (ed), The Faber Book of Modern Australian Verse (1991)
Suzanne Falkiner, The Writer’s Landscape: Settlement and The Writer’s Landscape: Wilderness (1992)
H.M. Saxby, The Proof of the Puddin’: Australian Children’s Literature 1970-1990 (1993)
Joy Hooton and Harry Heseltine (eds), Annals of Australian Literature (1993)
Jennifer Strauss (ed), Oxford Book of Australian Love Poems (1993)
Stella Lees and Pam Macinytre (eds), The Oxford Companion to Australian Children’s Literature (1994)
Michael Wilding (ed), The Oxford Book of Australian Short Stories (1995)
Brenda Niall, The Oxford Book of Australian Schooldays (1997)
Tim Flannery, The Explorers: Stories of Discovery and Adventure from the Australian Frontier (1998)
H.M. Saxby, Offered to Children: A History of Australian Children’s Literature 1841-1941 (1998)
Andrew McCann (ed), Writing the Everyday: Australian Literature and the Limits of Suburbia (1998)
John Thompson (ed), The Oxford Book of Australian Letters (1999)
Laura Murray Cree, Australian Painting Now (2000)
Harry Heseltine, The Most Glittering Prize: The Miles Franklin Literary Award 1957-1998 (2002)
Bruce Bennett, Australian Short Fiction: A History (2002)
Bernard Smith, Two Centuries of Australian Art (2003)
Jane Gleeson-White, Australian Classics: 50 Great Writers and Their Celebrated Works (2007)
Margaret Anne Williams, Australia on the Popular Stage 1829-1929 (2008)
Anita Heiss (ed), Macquarie PEN Anthology of Aboriginal Literature (2008)
Jim Haynes (ed), The Book of Australian Popular Rhymed Verse (2008)
Ken Gelder (ed), The Anthology of Colonial Australian Crime Fiction (2008)
John Kinsella (ed), The Penguin Anthology of Australian Poetry (2009)
Ken Gelder and Paul Salzman, After the Celebration: Australian Fiction 1989-2007 (2009)
Peter Pierce (ed), The Cambridge History of Australian Literature (2009)
Ken Gelder (ed), The Anthology of Colonial Australian Romance Fiction (2010)
Geoffrey Lehmann and Robert Gray (eds), Australian Poetry Since 1788 (2011)
Ken Gelder (ed), The Anthology of Australian Adventure Fiction (2011)
Nicole Moore, The Censor’s Library: Uncovering the Lost History of Australia’s Banned Books (2012)
Geordie Williamson, The Burning Library: Our Great Novelists Lost and Found (2012)
Geoffrey Serle, From Deserts the Prophets Come: The Creative Spirit in Australia 1788-1972 (2013)
Frank Moorhouse (ed), The Drover’s Wife (2017)
Julian Meyrick, Australia in 50 Plays (2022)

Cecil Hadgraft, Patrick White (1951) – The first recorded title in print about White’s career. This is a short (23 page) transcription of a Commonwealth Literary Fund lecture given by Hadgraft.

Geoffrey Dutton, Patrick White (1961) – Lansdowne Press: The first book-length study on Patrick White, although a short monograph as part of the Australian Writers and Their Work series. Released in an expanded edition by Oxford University Press, 1971. ISBN: 0841437491

John Hetherington, Forty-Two Faces (Cheshire, 1962), biographies of Australian writers which includes a chapter: Patrick White: Life at Castle Hill.

R.F. Brissenden, Patrick White (1966) – 48 pages (British Council and the National Book League)

Barry Argyle, Patrick White (1967) – 109 papers (Writers and Critics Series, Oliver and Boyd)

G.A. Wilkes, ed., Ten Essays on Patrick White, Selected from Southerly (Angus & Robertson, 1970). ISBN: 0207120153 :

• Thelma Herring, Odyssey of a Spinster: A Study of The Aunt’s Story
• John F. Burrows, Archetypes and Stereotypes: Riders in the Chariot
• Thelma Herring, Self and Shadow: The Quest for Totality in The Solid Mandala
• John F. Burrows, Jardin Exotique: The Central Phase of The Aunt’s Story
• A.P. Riemer, Visions of the Mandala in The Tree of Man
• Thelma Herring, Maenads and Goat Song: The Plays of Patrick White
• G.A. Wilkes, Patrick White’s The Tree of Man
• G.A. Wilkes, A Reading of Patrick White’s Voss
• James McAuley, The Gothic Splendours: Patrick White’s Voss
• J.F. Burrows, The short stories of Patrick White (on Willy, Letters, Titina, Cats, Clay, Slattery, and Dump)

Ingmar Björksten, Patrick White: epikern fran Australien” // “Patrick White: a general introduction (1973), translated from the Swedish by Stanley Gerson, UQP (1976) ISBN 0702214043.

Alan Lawson, Patrick White [A Bibliography] (1974), Oxford University Press. ISBN 0 195504534.

J.R. (Jessie Reid) Dyce, Patrick White as playwright (1974). ISBN 070220854X

Brian Kiernan, “The novels of Patrick White”, in Literature of Australia (ed: Geoffrey Dutton, Penguin, 1976)

William Walsh, Patrick White’s fiction, 1977, Allen and Unwin. ISBN 0 86861 040 2

Shepherd, R and Singh, K, eds, Patrick White: a Critical Symposium, Flinders University (1978): Papers from the National Seminar on Patrick White, organized by the Centre for Research in the New Literatures in English and held at Flinders University, 20-22 Feb. 1978. ISBN 0 7258 0096 8:

• Adrian Mitchell, Eventually, White’s Language: Words and More than Words
• Michael Cotter, The Function of Imagery in Patrick White’s Novels
• Ron Shepherd, An Indian Story: The Twitching Colonel
• David Tacey, “It’s Happening Inside”: The Individual and Changing Consciousness in White’s Fiction
• Peter Pierce, Big Toys and the Play-making of Patrick White
• May Brit-Akerholt, Structure and Themes in Patrick White’s Four Plays
• David Kelly, The Structure of The Eye of the Storm
• John Colmer, Duality in Patrick White
• Cynthia Vanden Driesen, Patrick White and the Unprofessed Factor: The Challenge Before the Contemporary Religious Novelist
• Manly Johnson, Patrick White: A Fringe of Leaves
• Paul M. St Pierre, Coterminous Beginnings
• Veronica Brady, The Novelist and the Reign of Necessity: Patrick White and Simone Weil
• Kirpal Singh, Patrick White: An Outsider’s View
• W.D. Ashcroft, More Than One Horizon
• John Colmer and Veronica Brady, Two Critical Positions

Raina, Kalpana, A Group of Seven: A Critical Commentary on the Novellas of Patrick White,[masters thesis], McMaster University, 1979: focuses on Dead, Prowler, Cheery, Hand, Vespers, Cockatoos, and Cats

Peter Fitzpatrick, “Patrick White”, in After the Doll, Australian Drama Since 1955 (Edward Arnold, 1979)

Brian Kiernan, Patrick White (Macmillan, 1980) ISBN 0312598076.

Judy White, The Whites of Belltrees (Seven Press, Sydney, 1981)

John A Weigel, Patrick White, 1983, Twayne Publishers. ISBN 0-8057-6558-1: This study examines all eleven novels of Patrick White, the great Australian writer and Nobel Prize-winner. It begins from the observation that major characters in his novels undergo a necessary, redemptive, or facilitating failure. This failure paradoxically enables their success within the context of what White has called the ‘overreaching grandeur’ which circumscribes human existence.

Peter Wolfe, Laden Choirs: The Fiction of Patrick White, 1983, University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0-8131-1501-9.

Ann Maree McCulloch, A Tragic Vision: The Novels of Patrick White (UQP, 1983), ISBN 0702217727

Carolyn Bliss, Patrick White’s Fiction: The Paradox of Fortunate Favour, 1986, Palgrave Macmillan

May Brit-Akerholt, Patrick White (Australian Playwrights series) (1988): covers all 8 major plays. ISBN 905183005X.

David J. Tacey, Patrick White, fiction, and the unconscious (1988), Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195548671

Rodney Stenning Edgecombe, Vision and style in Patrick White: a study of five novels, University of Alabama Press (1989): focusing on Voss, Chariot, Mandala, Vivisector, Storm. ISBN 081730407X

Laurence Steven, Dissociation and Wholeness in Patrick White’s Fiction, Wilfred Laurier UP, 1989. ISBN 1282233165

Wolfe, Peter, ed. Critical Essays on Patrick White (1990), G.K. Hall. ISBN 0816188467, contains:

Thelma Herring, Odyssey of a Spinster: A Study of The Aunt’s Story | Leonie Kramer, The Tree of Man: An Essay in Scepticism | William Walsh, Voss and Others | Edgar L. Chapman, The Mandala Design of Patrick White’s Riders in the Chariot | David J. Tacey, Patrick White: The Great Mother and Her Son [The Solid Mandala] | Peter Wolfe, Jaws: The Eye of the Storm | Veronica Brady: A Properly Appointed Humanism: Australian Culture and the Aborigines in A Fringe of Leaves | Dennis Carroll, Australian Contemporary Drama: Patrick White | John A. Weigel, Epiphanies in Tables and Goats: The Burnt Ones and The Cockatoos | Harry Heseltine, Patrick White’s Style | Hilary Heltay, From The Articles and the Novelist | Rodney Mather, Patrick White and D.H. Lawrence: A Contrast | Veronica Brady, The Novelist and the Reign of Necessity: Patrick White and Simone Weil | Don Anderson, A Severed Leg: Anthropophagy and Communion in Patrick White’s Fiction | Peter Beatson, The Psychic Mandala | John Colmer, Duality in Patrick White | Alan Lawson, Meaning and Experience: A Review-Essay on Some Recurrent Problems in Patrick White Criticism

Clayton Joyce, Patrick White: A Tribute (A&R, 1991). ISBN 020717279X. Joyce sought expressions of interest as early as 6/2/1990 (SMH) with a desire “to express appreciation to Patrick White for his work.” In 10/11/1990, an article which reported on White’s will, Joyce discussed his own feelings growing up in the 1950s and 1960s in Queensland, and coming of age in the 1970s to discover Patrick White’s books, which helped him with his depression about Australian society and especially its relationship to the arts. Finally, with his sister’s guidance, Joyce decided to compile the work in January 1990. Even by November he was still unsure it would come to anything ,even though he had received over 50 pieces! The book was launched on 01 October 1991 and at one event Jack Mundey and Elizabeth Kirkby were among the speakers, on the near-anniversary of White’s death.

Martin Gray (ed.), Patrick White: Life and Writings: Five Essays (University of Stirling, 1991): “… contributions to a one-day conference held at the University of Stirling on 16 March 1991”–Pref.

• Patrick White and Australia as ‘Terra Nullius’ / Ruth Brown
• ‘Et in Australia ego’: framing the pastoral experience in Patrick White’s ‘A fringe of leaves’ / Sally Dawson
• Patrick White / Alan Seymour
• The figure of the holy fool in the novels of Patrick White / Cynthia vanden Driesen
• Flaws in the glass / Martin Gray.

Mark Williams, Patrick White (Macmillan, 1993). ISBN 0333517156

William Yang, Patrick White: The Late Years (1995) by Alan Yang, Pan Macmillan 1995. ISBN 0732908248: “Collection of formal and informal photographs of Patrick White with accompanying essays”

John McLaren (ed), Prophet from the Desert: Critical Essays on Patrick White, Red Hill Press, 1995. ISBN 0646244450

Simon During, Patrick White, Oxford University Press, 1996. ISBN 0195534972: A contrarian argument that much of White’s fame was by chance, he happened to be the one who was there when Australia was looking for a canon, and that critics deliberately focused on the obscure parts of his work in the hope of finding the Emperor’s new clothes rather than acknowledging the often aggressive content, which often doesn’t engage properly with a wide variety of minorities.

Helen Garner, “Patrick White: The Artist as Holy Monster”, in True Stories: Selected Non-Fiction (Text, 1996)

Helen Verity Hewitt, Patrick White, Painter Manqué: Paintings, Painters and Their Influence on His Writing (2002). ISBN 9780522850321

Brian Hubber and Vivian Smith, Patrick White: A Bibliography (Quiddlers Press, 2004). ISBN 9781584561439

James Bulman-May, Patrick White and Alchemy, (Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2005). ISBN 9781875606979

Cynthia Vanden Driesen, Writing the Nation: Patrick White and the Indigene, Rodopi press, 2009. ISBN 9789042025165

Vrasidas Karalis, Recollections of Mr Manoly Lascaris, Brandl & Schlesinger, 2008. ISBN 9781876040956

John Beston (ed), foreward by David Tacey, Patrick White Within the Western Literary Tradition (Sydney University Press, 2010). ISBN 9781920899370

Elizabeth McMahon and Brigitta Olubas (editors), Remembering Patrick White: Contemporary Critical Essays, Rodopi Press 2010. ISBN 9789042028494:

• Brigid Rooney, Public Recluse: Patrick White’s Literary-Political Returns
• Bernadette Brennan, Riders in the Chariot: A Tale for Our Times
• Rodney Wetherell, Patrick White and His Award
• Jennifer Rutherford, Homo Nullius: The Politics of Pessimism in Patrick White’s The Tree of Man
• Anthony Uhlmann, The Symbol in Patrick White
• Elizabeth McMahon, The Lateness and Queerness of The Twyborn Affair: White’s Farewell to the Novel
• Bill Ashcroft, The Presence of the Sacred in Patrick White
• Lyn McCredden, Voss: Earthed and Transformative Sacredness
• Veronica Brady, The Dragon Slayer: Patrick White and the Contestation of History
• John McCallum, The Late Crazy Plays
• Brigitta Olubas, “Some of the doors have never been seen open”: Poetic Habitation and Civil Space in Patrick White’s Early Drama
• Gregory Grahm-Smith: Against the Androgyne as Humanist He(te)ro: Patrick White’s Queering of the platonic Myth
• Lorraine Burditt, Patrick White, 1994-2009: bibliography

White’s work is discussed in Geordie Williamson’s The Burning Library: Our Great Novelists Lost and Found (Text Publishing, 2012)

Cynthia Van Den Driesen and Bill Ashcroft, Patrick White Centenary: The Legacy of a Prodigal Son (2014). ISBN 9781443860406:

• John Barnes, Australia’s Prodigal Son
• Bill Ashcroft, Horizons of Hope
• Lyn McCredden, “Splintering and Coalescing”: Language and the Sacred in Patrick White’s Novels
• Bridget Grogan, Incorporating the Physical Corporeality, Abjection and the Role of Laura Trevelyan in Voss
• John McLaren, Patrick White: Crossing the Boundaries
• Nathanael O’Reilly, The Myth of Patrick White’s Anti-Suburbanism
• Satendra Nandran, Patrick White: The Quest of the Artist
• Pavithra Narayanan, Patrick White and Australia: Perspective of an Outsider
• Jessica White, Inscribing Landscapes in Patrick White’s Novels
• May-Brit Akerholt, “A Glorious, Terrible Life”: The Dual Image in Patrick White’s Dramatic Language
• Greg Battye, Looking at Patrick White Looking: Portraits in Paint and on Film
• Sissy Helff, Patrick White-Lite: Fred Schepisi’s Filmic Adaptation of The Eye of the Storm
• Glen Phillips, The Novelist as Occasional Poet: Patrick White and Katharine Susannah Pritchard
• Meira Chand, In the Shadow of Patrick White
• Antonella Riem, The Spirit of the Creative World in Patrick White’s Voss
• Harish Mehta, “Violent” Aboriginals and “Benign” White Men: White’s Alternative Representation of the Encounter in Voss
• Jeanine Leane, White’s Tribe: Patrick White’s Representation of the Australian Aborigine in A Fringe of Leaves
• Elizabeth Webby and Margaret Harris, Patrick White’s Children: Juvenile Portraits in Happy Valley and The Hanging Garden
• Alastair Niven, The Hanging Garden
• Brian Kiernan, Patrick White: Twyborn Moments of Grace
• Isabel Alonso-Breto, The Shift from Commonwealth to Postcolonial Literatures: Patrick White’s “The Twitching Colonel” and Manuka Wijesinghe’s “Theravada Man”
• Gursharan Aurora, The Unity of Being Synergies Between White’s Mystic Vision and the Indian Religio-Spiritual Tradition
• Ishmeet Kaur, Establishing a Connection: Resonances in Gurugranth Sahib and Works of Patrick White
• Mark Williams, Patrick White and James K. Baxter: Public Intellectuals or Suburban Jeremiahs
• Julie Mehta, Smelly Martyrs: Patrick White’s Dubbo Ushers in Roy’s Velutha and Malouf’s Gemmy
• Fred Chaney, Australia and its First Peoples
• Anne de Soyza, Aboriginal Progress in the Native Title Era: Truth and Substantive Equality in Terra Australis
• Kieran Dolin, Rewriting Australia’s Foundation Narrative: White, Scott, and the Mabo Case
• Vicki Grieves, Patrick White, “Belltrees”, and the “Station Complex”
• Keith Truscott, Mabo – Twenty Years On: An Indigenous Perspective
• Jane Stafford, “This Poem is a Sea Anchor”: Robert Sullivan’s Anchor
• Stephen Alomes, Flaws in the Glass: Why Australia did not Become a Republic… after Patrick White
• Ameer Ali, Negotiating “Otherness”: The Muslim Community in Australia

Ian Henderson and Anouk Lang (ed.), Patrick White Beyond the Grave: New Critical Perspectives (2015). ISBN 9781783083978

Michael Giffin, Patrick White and God (2017), University of Cambridge. ISBN 9781443817509

Christos Tsiolkas, On Patrick White, (Black Inc, 2018). ISBN 9781863959797

Denise Varney and Sandra D’Urso, Australian Theatre, Modernism and Patrick White: Governing Culture, Anthem Press (2018). ISBN 9781783088355. ‘The central argument of ‘Australian Theatre, Modernism and Patrick White’ is that aesthetic modernism in theatre and drama struggled to achieve visibility and acceptability, and was perceived as a threat to the norms and values of early to mid-twentieth-century Australia. The authors argue that when modern drama entered the stage, its preference for aesthetic experimentation over commercial considerations challenged regimes of value based on the popular appeal of musicals, touring productions and overseas imports. The resistance to that prevailing theatre culture and the provocation of Patrick White’s plays provide a prime example of Australia in transition between its colonial heritage and modern future. The 1960s set the scene for the confrontation between modernist experimentation and arts governance, and between aesthetic and commercial values.’ (Publication summary)

Toni Brisland and Anastasia Popp (illus.), Patrick White (Little Steps, 2020). ISBN 9780648267379. ‘Patrick White wanted to be a writer when no one thought he should! This remarkable man, remembered for his poetic descriptions of the Australian landscape and people in his many novels and plays, is the only Australian Nobel Prize for Literature winner. Learn all about one of Australia’s greatest novelists in this fully illustrated biography.’ (Publication summary)

Denise Varney, Patrick White’s Theatre (Sydney University Press, 2021).

Twenty Australian Novelists, Southerly 9.1 (1948) – White is mentioned as not being included in the aforementioned collection, edited by Colin Roderick:

R.G. Howarth, The imago, Southerly 11.4 (1950): presents The Aunt’s Story as “the outstanding Australian novel of 1948”.

“[T]he outstanding Australian novel of 1948… [W]ith great subtlety and artistry, the author evolves the vivid and compelling drama which is being enacted beneath the placid exterior… For all its economy The Aunt’s Story is less hard reading than The Living and the Dead; its noteworthy Joycean predecessor….The method is new and exciting. Christina Stead having committed formal suicide, Patrick White challenges Kenneth Mackenzie as the most expert Australian stylist in the novel… It is gratifying to know that, after his war service and European wanderings, White has now returned to settle down in his native country. What he will give us next will be worth waiting for.”

Clem Christensen, “A Note on Patrick White”, Meanjin, Winter 1956 includes a biography of PW with quotes. “Last year, when we commissioned [Marjorie Barnard’s piece]… we assumed [PW] was still living overseas. Although acknowledged to be one of Australia’s leading novelists, virtually nothing was well known locally about the man himself. So when one of our espionage agents reported that he was living some 20 miles from Sydney, we were surprised, to put it mildly. “

Marjorie Barnard, The Four Novels of Patrick White, Meanjin, Winter 1956 (also includes notes on his poems)

“He bought a farm at Castle Hill, and in partnership with Manoly Lascaris, a Greek friend of the war years, began to breed Saanen goats and Schnauzers, and to grow vegetables and flowers.”

-Clem Christensen

“Patrick White is obsessed with pain and loneliness, the inability of human beings ever to know one another, which is the ultimate loneliness.”

— Marjorie Barnard

A.D. Hope, “The Literary Pattern in Australia”, University of Toronto Quarterly, 26, 1957

Ben Huebsch, article in Book of the Month Club News, July 1957. This included details about PW’s life and work, and a few quotes from his letters – to the author’s surprise!

John Thompson, “Australia’s White policy”, Australian Letters 3/4/1958 (about White’s critical reception in Australia). JPG 1 | 2

• Thompson notes that thirty-one reviews of White’s five novels (up to Voss) have appeared in “the better-known journals and newspapers of Australia” among them several favourable, and around seventeen of them were hostile.

James Stern, Patrick White: the country of the mind, London Magazine, 6/6/1958

Vincent Buckley, “Patrick White and His Epic” in Twentieth Century 12.3 (1958) and republished in Australian Literary Criticism 1962

John Rorke, Patrick White and the critics, Southerly 20.2 (1959)

Helen Prideaux, The experimental novel in Australia: Patrick White, Prospect 3.3 (1960)

Thesis: Mrs. Vivian Olsen, Patrick White’s The Tree of Man: A Study of Style, University of Hawaii (1961)

Peter Wood, Moral complexity in Patrick White’s novels, Meanjin 21.1 (March 1962)

Marcel Aurousseau, Odi Profanum Vulgus: Patrick White’s “Riders in the Chariot”, Meanjin 21.1 (March 1962)

J.J. Bray, The Ham Funeral, Meanjin 21.1 (March 1962)

H.P. Heseltine, The Australian Image, Meanjin 2.1.1 (March 1962)

Clement Semmler, Sarsaparilla in Solferino, ABR 1.8 (June 1962), examining Being Kind to Tinita, The Letters, and Willy-Wagtails by Moonlight

Sister Patricia Agnes Norton, “A study of the novels of Patrick White: Man and the individual experience”, M.A., ANU, 1963

Elizabeth Loder, “The Ham Funeral: its place in the development of Patrick White”, Southerly 23.2 (1963)

Sylvia Butts, Six Short Stories by Patrick White, Makar 19 June 1963, no. 15 – covering The Twitching Colonel, Cocotte, Being Kind to Titina, Willy-Wagtails, Letters, and A Cheery Soul

Cyril E. Goode, “After the dust of the Chariot” –Melbourne Bohemia 1/6/1963 [exploring the reception of Riders in the Chariot]

Roger Covell, Patrick White’s plays, Quadrant 8.1 (April 1964)

Sylvia Gzell, Themes and imagery in Voss and Riders in the Chariot, ALS 1.3 (June 1964)

John Tasker, Notes on “The Ham Funeral”, Meanjin 23.2 (Sep 1964)

R.F. Brissenden,The Plays of Patrick White (Meanjin Sep 1964, 23.3)

James McAuley, “The gothic splendours: Patrick White’s Voss”, Southerly 25.1 (1965)

Keith Macartney, Patrick White’s Four Plays, Meanjin 24.2 (Dec 1965)

J.F. Burrows, Jardin Exotique: The Central Phase of the Aunt’s Story, Southerly 26, 1966

A.K. Thmson, Patrick White’s The Tree of Man (Meanjin 25.1, 1966)

Judith Wright, Patrick White since Voss, Current Affairs Bulletin 39.3 (26/12/1966)

Manfred Mackenzie, Apocalypse in Patrick White: The Tree of Man (Meanjin 25.4, 1966)

A.P. Riemer, Visions of the mandala in The Tree of Man, Southerly 27.1 (1967

G.A. Willkes, A reading of Patrick White’s Voss, Southerly 27.3 (1967)

H.G. Kippax, Australian Drama since Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, Meanjin 23.2 (Sep 1967)

Garrett Barden, Patrick White’s The Tree of Man, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, (1968) 57.225

Peter Shubb, Patrick White: chaos accepted, Quadrant 12.3 (May 1968)

Manfred Mackenzie, The Consciousness of Twin Consciousness: Patrick White’s The Solid Mandala, NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction (1969) 2.3

J.F. Burrows, Stan Parker’s Tree of Man, Southerly 29.4 (1969)

G.A. Wilkes, An approach to Patrick White’s Solid Mandala, Southerly 29.2 (1969)

R.P. Laidlaw, The complexity of Voss, Adelaide Southern Review 4.1, 1970

Peter Beatson, The three stages: mysticism in Patrick White’s Voss, Southerly 30.2, 1970

Jack Richards, Patrick White, Australian Novelist (1971), Laval University Quebec

John B. Beston, Love and sex in a staid spinster: The Aunt’s Story, Quadrant 15.5 (Sep 1971)

John B. Beston, Alienation and humanisation, damnation, and salvation in Voss , Meajin 30.2 (1971)

John B, Beston, Voss’ proposal and Laura’s acceptance letter: the struggle for dominance in Voss, Quadrant 16.4 (1972)

John Beston & Rose Marie Beston, The black volcanic hills of Meroe: fire imagery in Patrick White’s The Aunt’s Story (Ariel 3.4, Oct 1972)

Leonie Kramer, Patrick White’s Götterdämmerung, Quadrant 17, 1973

Leslie Rees, The plays of Patrick White, in The Making of Australian Drama, Angus & Robertson 1973

Andrew Taylor, Patrick White’s “The Ham Funeral”, Meanjin 32.3 (Sep 1973)

Alan Lawson, Unmerciful dingoes? The critical reception of Patrick White (Meanjin 32.4 Dec 1973): in response to the series of Canberra Times articles in which Lawson – writing his bibliography – discovered that White had been praised by many Australian critics and not as praised by foreign critics as was his general claim (“they love me over there, not here”).

William Walsh, Fiction as Metaphor: The Novels of Patrick White, The Swanee Review (1974), 82.2

A.L. McLeod, Patrick White: Nobel Prize for Literature 1973, Books Abroad (Summer 1974), 48.3

Leon Cantrell, Patrick White’s First Book , ALS 6.4 (1974) – on Thirteen Poems

A.P. Riemer, The Eye of the Needle : Patrick White’s Recent Novels (Southerly 34.3 Sep 1974)

Axel Kruse, Puzzles and Word-Games: Patrick White’s Night on Bald Mountain (1975, Southerly 35.4)

Laurie Hergenhan, Patrick White’s “Return to Abyssinia”, ALS 7.4 (Oct 1976)

D. Carroll, Stage Conventions in the Plays of Patrick White (Modern Drama 19, March 1976), reprinted in Contemporary Australian Drama (Currency Press 1981): Carroll argued that the Australian theatre wasn’t quite ready for global competition yet but would soon “have the resources and the experience to do them full justice”.

Noel Macainsh, The Poems of Patrick White (1978)

Lyndon Harries, The Peculiar Gifts of Patrick White, Contemporary Literature (1978) 19.4

B.N. Brooke, Reading For Pleasure: Chance Acquaintances, The British Medical Journal (1979), 2.6198

Randolph Stow, Transfigured Histories: Recent Novels of Patrick White and Robert Drewe, ALS May 1979 9.1

David A. Myers, The Peacock and the Bourgeoisie: Ironic Vision in Patrick White’s Shorter Prose Fiction, PhD, University of Adelaide, 1979

Texas Studies in Literature and Language (Summer 1979, 21.2): An Issue Devoted to the Writings of Patrick White: Theme, Technique, and Tradition:

• Manfred Mackenzie, Tradition and Patrick White’s Individual Talent (1979)
• Veronica Brady, The Novelist and the New World: Patrick White’s Voss
• William J. Scheick, The Gothic Grace and Rainbow Aesthetic of Patrick White’s Fiction: An Introduction
• Robert F. Whitman, The Dream Plays of Patrick White
• Robert S. Baker, Romantic Onanism in Patrick White’s The Vivisector
• Edgar L. Chapman, The Mandala Design of Patrick White’s Riders in the Chariot
• A Patrick White Chronology
• Zulfikar Ghose, The One Comprehensive Vision
• Manly Johnson, A Fringe of Leaves: White’s Genethlicon
• William J. Scheick, A Bibliography of Writings about Patrick White, 1972-1978
• Alan Lawson, Meaning and Experience: A Review-Essay on Some Recurrent Problems in Patrick White Criticism

A.P. Riemer, Eddie and the Bogomils – Some Observations on the Twyborn Affair, Southerly 40.1 (March 1980)

Manly Johnson, Twyborn: The Abbess, the Bulbul, and the Bawdy House, Modern Fiction Studies (1981) 27.1

Thomas L. Warren, Patrick White: The Early Novels, Modern Fiction Studies (1981), 27.1

Susan A. Wood, The Power and Failure of “Vision” in Patrick White’s Voss, Modern Fiction Studies (1981) 27.1

A.P. Riemer, Landscape with Figures: Images of Australia in Patrick White’s Fiction, Southerly, 42.1 (1982)

May-Brit Akerholt, Female Figures in the Plays of Patrick White and Dorothy Hewett, Westerly I. (1984)

Veronica Brady, Glabrous Shaman or Centennial Park’s Very Own Saint? Patrick White’s Apocalypse (Westerly, Sep 1986 31.3)

Rodney S. Edgecombe, Patrick White’s Style – Again, Antipodes (1987) 1.2

Michael Wilding, Patrick White: The Politics of Modernism (1987)

Dennis Haskell, ‘A Lady Only by Adoption’: Civilisation in A Fringe of Leaves, Southerly 47.4 (Dec 1987)

Noel Macainsh, Patrick White and the Aesthetics of Death (1987), LiNQ 15.2

Debra Journet, Patrick White and D.H. Lawrence: Sexuality and the Wilderness in A Fringe of Leaves and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, South Central Review (1988) 5.2

A.P. Riemer, It Doesn’t Pay to Be Different: The Perils of Translating Patrick White, Southerly 49.3 (1989)

Shirley Paolini, Desert Metaphors and Self-Enlightenment in Patrick White’s Voss, Antipodes (1990) 4.2

Hedda Ben-Bassat, To Gather the Sparks: Kabbalistic and Hasidic Elements in Patrick White’s Riders in the Chariot, Literature and Theology (November 1990) 4.3

Virginia Kirby-Smith Carruthers, Patrick White’s Improbable Iseult: Living Legend in A Fringe of Leaves, Antipodes (1992) 6.1

Zulfikar Ghose, On Re-Reading Riders in the Chariot, Antipodes (1992) 6.1

Rodney Stenning Edgecombe, The Weeds and Gardens in Riders in the Chariot, Antipodes (1992) 6.1

Marion Spies, Affecting Godhead: Religious Language and Thinking in Voss and Riders in the Chariot, Antipodes (1992) 6.1

Alan Lawson, Bound to Dis-integrate – Narrative and Interpretation in The Aunt’s Story, Antipodes (1992) 6.1

A.P. Riemer, Death of the Author: Birth of the Classic, Antipodes (1992) 6.1

Veronica Brady, To Be or Not to Be?: The Verbal History of Patrick White, Westerly 37.2, 1992)

Ruth Brown, White and the Wart, Australian Studies 6 November 1992

John Thompson, Faces of Australian writing, National Library of Australia News, vol. 3 (6), March 1993, pp. 8-11

David Coad, Patrick White: Prophet in the Wilderness, World Literature Today, Summer 1993 – 67.3

Rodney Stenning Edgecombe, A Note on Patrick White: The Snake Episode in Riders in the Chariot, Antipodes 7.1 (1993)

J.A. Wainwright, The Real Voss as Opposed to the Actual Leichardt: Biography, Art, and Patrick White, Antipodes (1993), 7.2

Michael Griffin, Judaism between “Torah, Haskalah” and “Kabbalah”: The Revealed Imagination in the Novels of Patrick White”, Literature and Theology (1994) 8.1

Thomas L. Warren, Patrick White’s The Living and the Dead – A Struggle for Identity, Antipodes (1994) 8.1

Michael Giffin, Between Athens, Jerusalem, and Stonehenge: The Christian Imagination in the Novels of Patrick White, Christianity and Literature, Winter 1994 43.2

John Docker, White Mythologies: Eternity and Identity in White and Joyce – Riders in the Chariot and Ulysses, ASAL Proceedings 1994

Ruth Brown, The Country, the City, and The Tree of Man, Modern Language Review Oct 1995 90.4

Patricia Excell, The Tree of Man and Meanjin, Antipodes, Dec 1995, 9.2

Lee Spinks, Austerities and Epiphanies: A Note on Fantasy and Repression in Patrick White’s “Five-Twenty (Westerly 40.1, Autumn 1995)

Michael Halliwell, ‘The space between’: post colonial opera? – the Meale/Malouf adaption of Voss, Australasian Drama Studies 28, April 1996

Helen Thomson, Patrick White: Our Last Colonial Novelist? in From A Distance: Australian Writers and Cultural Displacement (Deakin, 1996)

George Watt, Patrick White: Novelist as Prophet, Literature and Theology, Sep 1996, 10.3

Glenn Nicholls, Patrick White the Parodist: The German Romantic Tradition in Voss, Antipodes, June 1996 10.1

Graeme Sharrock, Patrick White and Iris Murdoch – Death as a Moral Summons in “The Eye of the Storm” and “Bruno’s Dream”, Antipodes 11.1 (June 1997)

T.G.A Nelson, Rescue from Absurdity – Patrick White’s “The Vivisector” and Ionesco’s “The Chairs”, Antipodes 11.2 (December 1997)

Helen Verity Hewitt, “Screaming Silent Words” – Francis Bacon, Sidney Nolan, and Hurtle Duffield, Antipodes 14.1 (June 2000)

Charles Lock, Patrick White: Writing Towards Silence, The Kenyon Review, Spring 2001, 23.2

Karin Hansson, Patrick White – Existential Explorer, long essay on the Nobel Prize website (2001)

T.G. Rosenthal, Patrick White, Sidney Nolan and Me, ABR June-July 2002 (242)

David Marr, News from the Blue Blue News: Gradual Elimination of Patrick White from the National Consciousness Nears Completion, Overland Winter 2002 (167)

John Beston, Will Voss Endure? Fifty Years Later, Antipodes (June 2003) 17.1

John Beston, The Tree of Man as a Pioneer Novel, Antipodes (Dec 2003) 17.2

Rodney Stenning Edgecombe, Some Sources for the Construction of Hurtle Duffield in The Vivisector, Antipodes (Dec 2003) 17.2

John Beston, Patrick White and Theodora Goodman in New Mexico, Antipodes (Dec 2004), 18.2

James Harold Wells-Green, Contrivance, Artifice, and Art: Satire and Parody in the Novels of Patrick White, PhD thesis, University of Canberra, June 2005: This study arose out of what I saw as a gap in the criticism of Patrick White’s fiction in which satire and its related subversive forms are largely overlooked…I demonstrate that White exceeds the categories that his critics have tried to impose upon him.

Veronica Brady, God, History, and Patrick White, Antipodes, 19.2 (Dec 2005)

John Beston, Willa Cather and Patrick White, Antipodes 20.2 (Dec 2006)

Iris Ralph, A Green Flaw in the Crystal Glass: Patrick White’s Riders in the Chariot, Monash University 2006

Ayres, Marie-Louise, My MSS are destroyed…’ the Patrick White Collection, National Library of Australia News, vol. 17 (6), March 2007, pp. 3-6 

David Malouf, Patrick White Reappraised, TLS, 2007

Bernadette Brennan, Riders in the Chariot: A Tale for Our Times, JASAL 7 (2007)

David Marr, Patrick White: The Final Chapter, The Monthly, April 2008

Gavin D’Costa, Atonement and the Crime of Seeing: Patrick White’s Riders in the Chariot (June 2008), Literature and Theology

Deb Narayan Bandopadhyay, It overflows all maps: Culture, Nationalism, and Frontier in Patrick White’s Voss, Antipodes 23.2 (Dec 2009)

Meg Harris Williams, The Evolution of Artistic Faith in Patrick White’s Riders in the Chariot, Ariel 40.4 (2009)

Jane Frugtneit, Patrick White’s The Vivisector: Memoirs of Many in One – Who is Hurtle Duffield?, Australian Studies 1.1 (2009)

James Clements, “Verbal Sludge”: Mud and Malleability in the Novels of Patrick White, Antipodes 23.2 (Dec 2009)

Brigid Rooney, Imagining the Real: Patrick White’s Literary-Political Career, in Literary Activists: Austrlaian Writers and Political Life (2009)

Margaret Harris and Elizabeth Webby, Patrick White’s Papers (ABR, Dec 2010)

David Marr, Patrick White’s London – originally a lecture, delivered in London, this was published in The Best Australian Essays 2010, edited by Robert Drewe.

David Marr, Divided Loyalties, SMH 10/7/2010 (on White’s relationship to London)

Debra Adelaide, No One comes to see me now: Manoly Lascaris and Patrick White’s ghost, Monthly December 2011

Nicholas Shakespeare, Patrick White: Under the Skin, Telegraph 19/10/2012 (hailing his work)

Elizabeth Webby, Australian Dictionary of Biography Volume 18, entry (MUP) c. 2012

Jean-François Vernay, Male Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder? Guys, Guises and Disguise in Patrick White’s The Twyborn Affair, Transnational Literature, 4.2 (May 2012)

Neil Armfield, Patrick White: A Centenary Tribute, Meanjin 71.2 (Winter 2012)

David Marr, So Much of Our Life In It, Australian Book Review, May 2012 – discussing the idea that the rejection of the plays was the impetus for White to write more plays

George Watt, The Unacceptable Self in “Flaws in the Glass” and “Voss”, Antipodes 26.2 (2012)

Jessica Geva, Patrick White: (Auto)Biography – A Veiled Confession?, Antipodes 26.1 (June 2012)

Elizabeth Webby and Margaret Harris, Patrick White and Film, University of Sydney JASAL 13.2 (2013)

Natasa Kampmark, A Clockwise Smile of the First Australian Nobel Prize Winner: Translating Patrick White, Antipodes 27.2 (Dec 2013)

Damien Freeman, Meagher, Mabo, and Patrick White’s Tea-cosy: Twenty Years On, presented at the 25^th Conference of the Samuel Griffith Society (2013)

Denise Varney, Australian Theatrical Modernism and Modernity: Patrick White’s Season at Sarsaparilla (April :2013), Australasian Drama Studies 62

Brigid Rooney, Stretching Out in All Directions: Patrick White and the Great Australian Emptiness in Telling Stories: Australian Life and Literature 1935-2012 (2013)

John Arnold, The True History of the Publication of Patrick White’s “Peter Plover’s Party”, “Script and Print” 37.1 (2013)

Andrew Fuhrmann, Patrick White: A Theatre of His Own, ABR 356 (Nov 2013)

Susan Lever, A Mt Wilson Model for Xanadu in Riders in the Chariot, JASAL 12.3 (2013)

Bridget Grogan, Ladies and Gentlemen? Language, Body and Identity in The Aunt’s Story and The Twyborn Affair, ALS 28.3 (Oct 2013)

Gregory Graham-Smith, Self-Propagation and Self-Dissolution: The Paradox of Patrick White’s Flaws in the Glass, ALS 28.3 (Oct 2013)

Michael Giffin, On Using Words as Paint: Explaining the Art of Patrick White, Quadrant 58.5 (May 2014)

Rodney Stenning Edgecombe, Hugo, Goethe, and Patrick White: Sources for The Eye of the Storm and The Vivisector, Antipodes 28.2 (Dec 2014)

Peter Kirkpatrick, “’Are You For Magic?”: Patrick White and the Camp”, ALS 29.4 (November 2014)

Rodney Stenning Edgecombe, Günter Grass’s Blechtrommel and Patrick White’s Solid Mandala, Antipodes 28.2 (Dec 2014)

John Barnes, On Reading and Re-reading Patrick White, Cambridge Quarterly 43.3 (Sep 2014)

Rodney Stenning Edgecombe, Two Hugolian Moments in Novels by Patrick White, Antipodes 28.1 (Jun 2014)

Danny Anwar, The Island Called Utopia in Patrick White’s The Tree of Man, Southerland 74.1 (2014)

J,M. Coetzee, The Last Instructions of Patrick White in The Best Australian Essays 2014

Denise Varney, White’s Brown Woman, Meanjin, Summer 2015 – on “A Cheery Soul” (although surely incorrectly) that Miss Docker might be Indigenous.

John J.  Carmody, Patrick White: Composer Manqué: The Centrality of Music in White’s Artistic Aspiration, Antipodes 29.1 (Jun 2015)

John Beston, Going Into Dreamland: From Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland to Patrick White’s The Aunt’s Story, Antipodes 29.2 (Dec 2015)

Shaun Bell, ‘Greece – Patrick White’s Country’: Is Patrick White a Greek Author?, JASAL 14.5 (2015)

John Beston, Going into Dreamland : From Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland to Patrick White’s The Aunt’s Story , Antipodes 29.2 (2015)

Lorraine Burdett, Synthetics, Surveillance and Sarsaparilla: Patrick White and the New Gossip Economy (c. 2015?)

Annalisa Pes, The Boredom and Futility of War in Patrick White’s Fiction, Le Simplegadi 15 (April 2016)

Fiona McFarlane, On Reading The Aunt’s Story by Patrick White, Southerly 75.2 (2016)

Michelle Potter, Behind the Scenes with the Australian Ballet, 1963-65, Dance Research: The Journal of the Society for Dance Research Summer 2016 34.1

Jackson Moore, “Is Prowse’s Rectum a Grave?: Jouissance, Reparative Transnationalism and Patrick White’s The Twyborn Affair”, JASAL 15.3 (2016)

Jackson Moore, The Queer Novels of Patrick White, PhD thesis, ANU 2016

Mica Hilson, The Forces of Habit and the Ethics of Self-Composture in Patrick White’s Fiction, The Comparatist, Vol 40 (Oct 2016)

Wataru Sato, A Role of Woman in Australian Colonial History: Patrick White’s Voss (2017??)

Julian Meyrick, The Great Australian plays: A Cheery Soul gave us a supreme theatrical mpnster, Conversation 31/1/2017

Ryszard W. Wolny, Australian Modernist Theatre and Patrick White’s The Ham Funeral, European Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies 2.4 (2017)

J.M. Coetzee, Late Patrick White, published in Late Essays 2006-2017, 2017, Knopf

Anne Pender, Robyn Nevin, Patrick White, and the Art of the Modern in Australian Theatre, Australasian Drama Studies 71 (Oct 2017)

Vincent Plush, Music in the Life and Work of Patrick White (2017, University of Adelaide PhD thesis), see radio show below

Sue Rabbitt Roff, “Peevish Paddy and Sir Neddy: Patrick White’s Nobel Prize”, Meanjin, 7 Dec 2018

Mireille Juchau, The Infinite in Everything: Patrick White’s Riders in the Chariot, Sydney Review of Books, July 2018

Christos Tsiolkas, Patrick White’s Immigrant Language, Monthly, May 2018 (excerpt from his book On Patrick White)

Dylan Rowen, I Am No Longer a Fiction but a Real Human Being”: The Modernist Queer Body in Patrick White’s The Twyborn Affair, Hecate 44.1 (2018)

Angelo Loukakis, Failing Patrick White, Sydney Review of Books, April 2019

Greg Gerke, Full Orchestration: Rediscovering Patrick White, Music & Literature, January 30, 2020

Carolyn Strange, The Passions of the Broken-Hearted: Patrick White and Spousal Homicide, Meanjin 7.3 (Spring 2020)

Martin Thomas, A Period in the Shade: Patrick White Thirty Years on, Australian Book Review, June 2021

Peter Craven, The Genius of Patrick White, in Essays for Australia Vol 1 (2023)

See also the Press Gallery page for newspaper articles prior to 1959. These items will gradually be moving there.

“Voss wins for author”, SMH 2/12/1959 [re: WH. Smith Award]

John Hetherington, Patrick White: invulnerable to the gibes of his critics, Age 16/7/1960

“Society Feud. Novelist Attacks Hostess” in Sunday Mirror 29/7/61: White got into a slight fracas with a society matron who didn’t particularly enjoy opening night of The Ham Funeral.

“Opening of Patrick White’s first play”, SMH, 1/11/1961

“Best novel award to Patrick White” SMH 18/4.1962 [re: Riders winning the Miles Franklin]

“Writer wins award twice”, Canberra Times 18/4/1962 [re: Riders winning the Miles Franklin]

Stephen Murray-Smith, “White offers help in dispute over Commonwealth Literary Fund grant” (Overland 24, Sep 1962)

Ian Donaldson, “The plays of Patrick White”, Guardian 3/10/1962

Bulletin 5.10.1963 (p8) “Patrick White and the Sino-Soviet split” – re: left-wing attitudes to White in the Soviet Union and Australia, with response from Judah Waten on 19.10.1963 (p36), who argued that he opposed White on non-ideological grounds “on principle to his excessive inwardness which is not only a method but a philosophy connected with his view of the outer world as irrational and meaningless.”

John Small, Patrick White’s Opera: The Advent of Peter Sculthorpe, The Bulletin, 13 Jun 1964

Leonie Kramer, Heroes, villains and sacred cows [on Down at the Dump] Bulletin 24/10/1964

Gavin Souter, The case for and against Patrick White, SMH 2/1/1967 [on Coast to Coast short story anthologies]

The Britannica Awards controversy: When Patrick White objected to Christina Stead being denied a Britannica award, the scandal made pages 2 and 6 of the SMH 4/12/1968 and the Bulletin 7/12/1968, which did not deny that Stead deserved the award but characteristically argued that the Britannica Committee could do whatever the hell they pleased.

Max Harris, The public severity and private sincerity of Patrick White, Australian 5/4/1969, p.10

 “39 sign publicly to defy National Service Act”, SMH, 10/12/1969 SMH p 9: on White being among those who protested the Vietnam War.

Max Harris, “A Nobel effort – with some apologies to Morris White”, The Australian, 20/12/1969, p17: Harris mocked the Swedish press because they got PW confused during the first Nobel campaign with popular writer Morris West, among other confusions of Australian culture.

On the potential Voss film: Nation 1/11/1969 | Australian 21/7/1970 | SMH 21/7/1970 p21 | Bulletin 1/8/1970 p35 and 15/8/1970 p13

On the Portnoy’s Complaint trial: Bulletin 12/9/1970 p27 | Daily Mirror 27/10/1970 p13 | Herald Melb 27/10/1970 p3 | Australian 28/10/1970 (“Patrick White defends Portnoy as ‘classic’)  | SMH 28/10-/1970 p8

On White not taking the Nobel: Age 20/3/1970 p2 | Daily Mirror 8/10/1970 p2 | Age 10/10/1970 p14 | Sydney

“Patrick White v great god sport”, SMH 18/3/1972 – front page piece on his battle against Centennial Park development

Robert Drewe, “Fighting for the trees of man”, Australian 8/6/1972 re: Centennial Park

19/10/1973 – all major Australian papers share (most of them lead with) White winning the Prize. Most major international newspapers also broke the story, since it came during the day of the 18^th for Europe and North America.

20/10/1973 – major papers open with stories about White, including giving away his prize money and not collecting the prize in person due to the distance.

27/10/1973 – confirmation of White’s plan to endow an Award with his winnings makes most of the major papers.

Edward Kynaston, The corrugated road to Nobelity, Nation Review 26/10/1973

“White helps black schools”, article on his charity work, Australian 30/10/1973

Kylie Tennant, The quiet man who won the Nobel Prize, Australian Women’s Weekly 7/11/1973

7/11/1973 – SMH leads with confirmation Sidney Nolan will stand in for White at the Nobel Awards in Sweden.

28/5/1975 – “White Hits at Mining”: The Australian, p.1 (interview on page 8)

Eugene Stapleton, “The teeth of Patrick White”, SMH 3/6/1978

Dutton, The Return to Confidence, National Times, 17 Feb 1979:  “Patrick White’s greatest achievement was to make Australia a country of the mind”.

Geoffrey Dutton, Patrick White at 70: A Prism’s Light Shining in Flawed Glass, Bulletin 1/6/1982

6/1/1983 – White is featured in the Sydney Morning Herald’s top 50 Sydney personalities, which includes Max Gillies, Judy Davis, Thomas Keneally, Neville Wran, Leonie Kramer(!), Sir Keith Campbell, Clive James, a racehorse, John Howard, Joan Sutherland, Bruce Beaver, Jimmy Barnes, Bettina Arndt, Shirley Smith, Mel Gibson, and Antony Mundine

Sidney Nolan trashed PW in The Age 11/6/1983

Bill Mellor, “The White Paper”, SMH 12/8/1984

Margaret Jones, “An industry named Patrick White”, 29/3/1986 SMH

Les Carlyon, “Poor Patrick White: Australia’s Unread Icon”, 20/7/1991 The Age

William Fraser, Patrick White’s last laugh – did the author set a snare for unwary academics? Sydney Morning Herald. Good Weekend, 16 May 1992, pp. 18-24

Thomas Keneally, Show me the way to go home, 16 Nov 2002, Guardian – review of Voss and its place in our culture.

???, How Patrick White laughed last (SMH?) 3 April 2003 – re: the treasures of the trust and the Centennial Park house

Gary Young Saving the site of White’s Dreaming, 9 December 2004 – SMH

???, Banker lays out $3.2m for White’s old house, SMH April 30 2005

On 29 June 2005, the SMH runs a two-column debate: Patrick White Was Never Worth Reading with Bruce Elder agreeing with the statement and Sacha Molitorisz disagreeing.

Jennifer Sexton, Why bother with Patrick White?,  The Weekend Australian 15-16 July 2006

3 Nov 2006, David Marr gets the front page of the SMH re: the discovery of PW’s papers, which takes up plenty of ink in the coming weeks.

David Malouf, Patrick White Reappraised, 27 Jan 2007, The Age

Angela Bennie, The Problem of Patrick, Sydney Morning Herald, May 27, 2007

??, Courier Mail review: War of words and pictures, 21 Jul 2007

Chris Middendorp, “One our greatest works is 50 –  let’s show we care”, Age 7/10/2007 [arguing in support of Voss]

3/6/2010 and 6/6/2010, newspapers break with The Vivisector being among those longlisted for the Lost Booker Prize. And again on 27/3/2010 when he made the shortlist (alongside fellow Australian Shirley Hazzard).

Looking back at the Lost Booker, Sam Jordison, re: Vivisector, Guardian 18/5/10

Peter Craven, A Classic Crying Out to be Filmed, The Age 23/1/2010: re the quest for funding for The Eye of the Storm motion picture.

Patrick White and Sidney Nolan by Shane Maloney and Chris Grosz, Monthly Oct 2010

2012: Papers discuss the release of The Hanging Garden and subsequently Happy Valley, the latter launched by Text Publishing for the first time in 75 years.

David Marr, Patrick White’s rare first novel revived for a new audience, SMH 26/5/2012

Linda Morris, SMH 12/5/2016 “National Library secures Patrick White’s first book of poems”

Obituary in The Age 1 Oct 1990 [front page] :

              “our Dickens, our Balzac, our Joyce, our Faulkner… outside the mainstream of Australian culture at that time.”

SMH 1/10/1990: „Patrick White, author and stirrer, dies at 78”

Obituary, Advertiser, 1/10/1990 [front page]

Times of London, 1/10/1990:

Patrick White put Australian literature on the map. “Nobel Prize or not, he would in any case have warranted a place in the history of the novel for his visionary power and for taking risks, which few other writers dared to take, in order to give full rein to his imagination. Without doubt The Tree of Man, Voss, and The Solid Mandala are among the most important novels of the century in any language; and as a whole his tormented oeuvre is that of a great and essentially modern writer.”

Guardian, 1/10/1990:

“All his best writing has both a pioneer’s sense of endurance that appears in much of modern Australian fiction and an ominous feeling that is very European.”

“Patrick White: Voice that Carried Across the World”, Advertiser 2/10/1990

Reluctantly the Voice of a Nation, The Mercury 2/10/1990

A.P. Riemer, Love or Hate Him, White Will Come Back into Fashion, SMH 2/10/1990:

  Riemer argues that White no longer spoke in a voice popular with young academics and writers, and that he would likely creep further into obscurity throughout the next 10 or 20 years, but would eventually come back into fashion as people became less immediately connected to their strong opinions about him, and let him become the classic he deserved. This was 100% correct.

Jerry Pratley, Outspoken White Leaves Mixed Legacy, 2/10/1990

“Patrick White: Australian Artist”, SMH 2/10/1990

The Daily Mirror (Murdoch paper) ran the obituary under “Famed But Unread: End of Career”; Philip Clark notes in the SMH that the late edition of the paper was under “Last Chapter in a Great Career”… perhaps someone realised that they were just illiterate in the Murdoch offices!

Bob Hawke’s tribute on 2/10:

“It is no secret that as an uncompromising and frank commentator on a wide range of contemporary social issues, Patrick White was at times a sharp critic of this Government. He sought a more humane and thoughtful world – a quest that led him to see serious flaws all around him, and not least in himself.”

Shane Rodgers, “PM Praises White as Frank Critic”, Advertiser 3/10/1990

Axel Clark, Sunday Herald 7/10/1990

Peter Craven, “The First of the Great Australian Novelists”, Sunday Age 7/10/1990

Liz Porter, “Vale Patrick White”, Sunday Age 7/10/1990

Ann Nugent, “Great Man of Letters: An Exile in His Own Country”, Canberra Times 8/10/1990

Carolyn Bliss, Patrick White, Antipodes (1990) 4.2

Diana Simmonds, Bulletin 9/10/1990

Jim McClelland, “Fathoming the magic of a genius”, SMH 10/10/1990

“Parliament Praises Late and Great Critic” Advertiser, 10/10/1990

Harry Kippax, “The privilege of knowing Patrick”. SMH 11/10/1990:

               Arguing that he regards White’s novels and early plays as masterpieces and it was a privilege to know him, and their relationship should not be assumed to be based on the negative reviews of the late plays.

Robert Gray, “Gray Reflects on White”, SMH, 10/11/1990

Veronica Brady and Jiongqiang Zhu, Westerly 35.4 (December 1990)

???, Patrick White’s ‘mandala’ dies at 91 – obit – SMH, 20 November 2003

Philip Jones, Manoly Lascaris – obituary – Guardian 8 Dec 2003

1950s – According to Broadcasting It by Keith Howes (“it” being homosexuality), Patrick is parodied or at least the source for the character of Richard Fulton in the long-running BBC middle-class radio drama Mrs Dale’s Diary, written by Jonquil Antony, whose husband John Wyse directed Return to Abyssinia. (In the later years, the character was openly outed.)

Two parodies of Voss for a magazine competition, one written by Sidney J. Baker in the style of Frank Clune, the other by “Aunty Flo” in the style of A.D. Hope, in the Sydney Nation (8/11/1958)

C.B. Christesen, “Voss: the Epilogue”, poem in Meanjin 18.4 (1959)

Peter Hastings “Moss, with apologies to Mr Patrick White, to whose unique talents Australia is not yet accustomed”, short story parody, Sydney Observer 14/5/1960

Peter Hastings “The Herb Elliott story”, short story parody, Sydney Observer, 23/7/1960

Peter Hastings, “But Did Not”, a parody of Xavier Herbert’s Soldiers’ Wives in the style of Patrick White, Bulletin 15/12/1961

Peter Hastings, “She’s Done Her Lolly”, a parody of White’s Voss in the style of Xavier Herbert, Bulletin, 15/12/1961 [see above]

Poem: “Neil Hutchison to Patrick White”, Bulletin 10/2/1962:

               “We love you, Patrick, at arm’s length:

               You think us fickle and unsteady,

               But then, that’s our own funeral

               And we’ve too many hams already.”

“Winner of the Archibald Prize, Louis Kahan: ‘Patrick White;”, Meanjin 22.1 (March 1963)

P.D.H “The Season Revisited”, Bulletin 6.7.1963 (parody of The Season at Sarsaparilla)

Geoffrey Dutton, Lament for a grey medium: for Patrick White, in Poems Soft and Loud (Cheshire Publications 1967), originally published in SMH 23/10/1965.

Randolph Stow, Midnite: The Story of a Wild Colonial Boy (1967). Stow’s exquisitely funny novel for children features a cameo appearance from a philosophical German explorer. His name is Johann Ludwig Ulrich von Leichardt zu Voss and has two bad-tempered camels, Sturm and Drang. He is exploring, however he claims to be largely exploring himself.

Victor Niris, Winning entry in Parody competition, Australian 23/1/1971: a parody of White’s style, especially Riders in the Chariot

R.F. Brissenden, Voss, satirical poem published in the Oz Shrink Lit competition, SMH 11/4/1981

Ian Dickson, The Twyborn Affair, satirical poem published in the Oz Shrink Lit competition, SMH 16/5/1981

John Maguire, A Fringe of Leaves, satirical poem published in the Oz Shrink Lit competition, SMH 1/8/1981

Nadia Fletcher, The Vivisector, satirical poem published in the Oz Shrink Lit competition, SMH 6/3/1982

Nigel Butterley, Goldengrove, fantasia for string orchestra, commissioned by Musica Viva Australia and dedicated to Manoly Lascaris and Patrick White (1982)

David Mitchell, Flaws in the Glass, satirical poem published in the Oz Shrink Lit competition, SMH 17/4/1982

“Patrick White: His Life and Work”, written by Michael Le Moignan and Larry Lucas. This was a 6-hour survey of White’s life on the Radio Helicon program on ABC Radio National. It featured White reading excerpts from Flaws in the Glass and actors reading from all of his novels (except Happy Valley) and the seven plays from The Ham Funeral to Netherwood. It originally aired in three 2-hour episodes in March and April 1987 and was released as a five-cassette tape set for $49.95 at the ABC Shop. The set was reviewed in the SMH 5/12/1987. The two subsequently considered writing a film documentary, “White Light: A Film Portrait of Patrick White” (1987); the draft script is in the National Library of Australia archive.

Peter Skrzynecki, After a Portrait by Brett Whiteley (published in Joyce 1990), poem for White

Elizabeth Riddell, His Day (published in Joyce 1990), poem for White

Barry Humphries, Threnody for Patrick White, published in SMH 20/7/91 and collected in Neglected Poems and Other Creatures (1991): A rather cold-hearted eulogy

Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Tongues of Fire: In Honour of Patrick White Who Taught Us To Nourish Things of the Spirit (in his Rungs of Time, OUP, 1993), poem

Alan Lawson, Why Bother with Patrick White?, website for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, c. 2001

Fran Kelly, The Sale of Patrick White’s House, Radio National Breakfast – 18 Feb 2005

Jennifer Byrne et al, The Book Club: The Solid Mandala, ABC Radio 2007 with Jacki Weaver, Marieke Hardy, Jason Steger, and Craig Reucassel.

Phillip A Ellis, Biggles Goes Gay for Patrick White, poem in Going Down Swinging (2011) issue 32.

ABC Radio, Patrick White’s Ear, 26 May 2012

ABC Radio, Is Patrick White anti-Australian?, 28 Dec 2012

This year marks one hundred years since the birth of Patrick White, Australia’s first and only winner of the Nobel prize for literature, which he received in 1973. White has been described as many things including ‘the most prodigious literary imagination in the history of this nation’ but also ‘Australia’s most unreadable novelist.’ Perhaps the two statements are not mutually exclusive. Certainly, White had an ambivalent relationship with Australia. He loved the land itself; he said ‘It was landscape which made me long to return to Australia while at school in England. It was landscape more than anything which drew me back when Hitler’s war was over.’ But Patrick White is perhaps better remembered for describing this country as ‘the Great Australian Emptiness, in which the mind is the least of possessions, in which the rich man is the most important, 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.’

– Recorded at the 2012 Sydney Writers’ Festival, the panel discusses ‘Is Patrick White anti-Australian?’

Alan Wearne, “Sarsaparilla: A Calypso”, a poem (2012), in Fifty-One Contemporary Poets from Australia (Ed. Pamela Brown, 2012)

Speech given by Professor the Hon Gareth Evans AC QC FASSA, Chancellor of The Australian National University, at the launch of Cynthia vanden Driesen and Bill Ashcroft (eds), Patrick White Centenary: The Legacy of a Prodigal Son (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), ANU, Canberra, 2 October 2014

Marcelle Freiman, Patrick White’s Briefcase, poem – March 2017 – Meanjin

Marcelle Freiman, Gethsemane, on Patrick White– Cordite Poetry Review 1 May 2017

Vincent Plush and Music in the Work of Patrick White // By Andrew Ford on The Music Show, Radio National :

“Nobel laureate Patrick White’s work is not short of critical appraisal. But, according to musicologist Vincent Plush, the role of music in his work has not been explored nearly enough. Plush joins us to discuss the ways that White came to music, how the opera Voss eventually got written and the complex ways certain great composers influenced White’s own compositions.

– Broadcast: Sun 2 Apr 2017, 11:30am

ABC Radio 14/11/2018, Late Night Live with Phillip Adams: “David Marr on Patrick White”, recorded at Scone Literary Festival

The Hall of Mirrors (film, 1992)

White makes an appearance in this documentary made about the Adelaide Festival, directed by Scott Hicks.

The Burning Piano: A Portrait of Patrick White (film, 1993)

Interviewer: David Marr, director: Jim Sharman, producer: Christopher McCullough

ABC TV, March 3, 1993 120 mins

With interviewees including David Marr, Barry Humphries, David Malouf, Geoffrey and Nin Dutton, HG Kippax, Richard Meale, Betty Withycombe and Peggy Garland.

Also includes dramatisations of scenes from some of his novels by actors who are “The cream of the Australian theatre” (SMH 24/2/1993) including Colin Friels, Judy Davis, Kate Fitzpatrick and Robyn Nevin

Reviews:

Raymond Gill, Age 25/1/1993

Pam Casellas, West Australian 3/3/1993

Phillip Adams, “Burnt Offerings for a God Who Grilled Us All”, Weekend Australian 27-28 Feb 1993

Geoff Slattery, Age 3/3/1993