Patrick White Collections and Anthologies

Roderick Shaw, Capricornia (1945)

• The Burnt Ones (1964)
• Four Plays (1965)
• The Cockatoos (1974)
• Three Uneasy Pieces (1987)
• Patrick White Speaks (1989)
• Collected Plays: Volume II (1994)
• Patrick White: Letters (1994)
• Patrick White: Selected Writings (1994)
• Collected Short Stories (2004)

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The Burnt Ones (1964)

see the main page on this collection.

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Four Plays (1965)

Collects The Ham Funeral, The Season at Sarsaparilla, A Cheery Soul and Night on Bald Mountain

Editions:

• First published as Four Plays: Eyre & Spottiswoode (UK, June 1965, jacket design by Desmond Digby, 356pp, featuring illustrated plates)
• Viking (US – reprint of the UK edition)
• Sun Books (AU 1967, with introduction by Harry Kippax, republished six times)
• Reissued as Collected Plays, Vol. 1 : Currency Press (AU, 1985, foreword by Katharine Brisbane, republished 2016.)

History: PW decided in 1964, in response to often hostile critical reviews, to cease writing plays. The publication of these four works was somewhat of a vindication for his desire to be recognised as a serious playwright, while also the closing of a chapter. Hubber and Smith report that PW earned £350 in royalties on the hardback edition, indicating sales of under 2,000. Additionally, the US did not produce its own copies; Viking simply issued 495 editions reprinted from the UK. It is unlikely these sold all that well in the US either, as none of the plays had been performed there. Hubber and Smith report that the book received only cursory reviews without much interest.

By 1985, the landscape of Australian theatre and arts was substantially different. The rise of a new generation of playwrights, and increased arts funding for state theatre companies, saw a golden age for Australian plays. (PW’s works began to be revived in 1976, and were in full swing by the 1980s). Katharine Brisbane and Philip Parsons founded Currency Press, the first specialist theatre publisher in the country. They reissued the plays in a new edition, in hardback and paperback, which were reliably sold to universities and school libraries around the country, and are still easily found.

Reviewed:

• Keith Harrison, “Ham and Sarsaparilla”, The Spectator, 24/9/1965
• Charles Osborne, The London Magazine, 5.6 (Sep 1965)
• T.G. Rosenthal, Australian Book Review, 4.11 Sep 1965
• Peter Porter, Sunday Times 19/9/1965
• H.G. Kippax, SMH, 23/10/1965:
  • “It Is significant, and may be of importance in the development of Australian drama, that he employed anti-naturalistic methods and used the resources of language with uninhibited virtuosity on stages whose indigenous drama… has been committed to verismo and the vernacular… The reader… who was irritated by the crones in … The Ham Funeral is likely to find a poetic relevance in the text that John Tasker, directing inadequate actresses, was unable to translate to the stage.”
• Pat Griffith, “Novelist’s plays poetically stimulating”, Advertiser, 13/11/1965
• Leonie Kramer, “Gulliver in Sarsaparilla” Bulletin 11/12/1965:
  • “[T]he ideas his plays express lie always upon their surface. In spite of the symbolism, the theatrical devices, the stage-direction comments and the occasional enigmatic aphorisms, the plays remain philosophically somewhat naïve. They are too categorical. Body and soul, mind and spirit, [etc]… are in themselves barren and unpersuasive concepts unless they emerge from the complexities of convincing character studies…. It is to me quite astonishing that the man who created Theodora Goodman, Voss and most particularly Himmelfarb, should in his plays present characters so flat and pallid… In all four plays there is some good comic writing… Yet too often he givers way to the temptation to be funny at the expense of the coherence of the action.”
• Keith Macartney, Meanjin, 24.4 (Dec 1965)
• Ernest James, The Australian, 15/1/1966
• Richard Flantz, Overland 35 (1966)
• J.F. Burrows, ALS, 2.3 (June 1966)
• R.F. Brissenden, The Australian, 6/1/1968

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The Cockatoos (1974)

see the main page on this collection.

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Three Uneasy Pieces (1987)

see the main page on this collection.

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Patrick White Speaks (1989)

Edited by Christine Flynn and Paul Brennan. Collects 32 speeches and essays by White, from 1958 to 1988.

Editions: Primavera Press (AU, July 1989, 208pp), Jonathan Cape (UK, 1990, 201pp), Penguin (UK, 1992, not including the photographic plates)

Original price: Australia $29.95 (hardback) / $16.95 (paperback)  // UK £12.95

History: During the final months of David Marr writing PW’s biography, the author finally sorted through papers he had collected over the years, which led to the printing of this volume. PW bought 109 copies for family and friends. Hubber and Smith note that he received a substantial contract for this: 5% for the first 5,000 copies, 7.5% for the next 15,000 (if sold), and 10% for all above that, as well as remaindered volumes.

Reviews:

• Katharine England, Advertiser, 29/7/1989
• Jim McClelland, SMH 19/8/1989:
  • “Politicians, who consider themselves experts in invective, may derive some lessons from this book in how to excoriate a foe without descending into the sewer.”
• David McCooey, West Australian 26/8/1989
• Senator Janine Haines, Australian Magazine, 26/8/1989:
  • Haines wrote that White’s editors “have not done [him] a service in appearing not to have edited. This is particularly evident on those odd occasions when he resorts to childish vulgarity for no purpose other than to vent spleen, rage, and frustration.”
• Paul Carter, Australian Book Review 114 (September 1989)
• Peter Pierce, Bulletin, 19/9/1986
• Veronica Brady, Fremantle Arts Review, 4.10 (October 1989)
• Cath Filmer-Davies, Courier-Mail 7/10/1989
• Laurie Clancy, The Age, 17/2/1990
• Jeff Doyle, Canberra Times, 24/3/1990

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Collected Plays, Volume II (1994)

Editions: Currency Press (AU, May 1994, foreword by Pamela Payne)

Original price: $19.95

History: PW’s first four plays had been reliably in print since 1965. His next three plays had been released individually by Currency, and continued selling throughout the 1990s. This edition was designed to include those three, along with the previously unprinted Shepherd on the Rocks, as part of Katharine Brisbane’s landmark Currency Press series of Collected Plays.

Unfortunately although Currency republished the first volume in 2016, the second appears to be long out of print. Most of the plays can be found either for purchase online or in second-hand individual editions (excepting Shepherd on the Rocks), but Collected Plays Volume II is almost impossible to find.

Reviews:

Peter Fitzpatrick, “The Presiding Genius and the Leader of the Opposition”, Australian Book Review 165, Oct 1994 (the title refers to the two playwrights being reviewed: David Williamson and PW)

Alexandra S. Cromwell, Antipodes 9.1 (June 1995)

Nadia Fletcher, Australasian Drama Studies 28 (1995)

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Patrick White: Letters (1994)

Edited by David Marr.

Editions: Random House (AU, September 1994, 677pp), Jonathan Cape (UK, January 1995, 677pp), University of Chicago Press (US, 1996, 677pp), Vintage (AU, 1996), Louis Braille Books (Audiobook, 1996, read by Paul Karo)

Original price: $49.95 (hardback and paperback)

History: Throughout his life, PW tried to have all of his correspondence destroyed, and kept essentially none of the letters he received. But as life went on, the author clearly began to think about his legacy. With PW’s support, biographer David Marr was able to collect over 2,000 of his letters while writing Patrick White: A Life. Subsequently, he came across another 1,000, which he was able to use in his research for this volume. Roughly 620 letters are published here, in chronological order, with biographical and explanatory notes by Marr. Much of the material crosses over with Marr’s biography, but it also provides more shading and interest in the daily life and thoughts of the great artist.

The letters were quickly published in the UK but failed to find a US publisher. At the end of 1994, American writer E. Annie Proulx determined to take a copy home from an Australian visit to find a publisher in her home country.

Reviews:

• William Fraser, SMH 10/9/1994
• Janet Hawley, Good Weekend 17/9/1994
• Louise Carbines, The Age, 24/9/1994
• Catherine Armitage, Australian, 30/9/1994
• Yvonne Preston, Canberra Times 1/10/1994
• Brian Kiernan, Weekend Australian, 1/10/1994
• Brian Matthews, The Age, 1/10/1994
• Michael Davie, SMH, 1/10/1994
• Gavin Simpson, West Australian, 7/10/1994
• Elizabeth Riddell, Bulletin, 11/10/1994
• Andrew Field, Courier-Mail, 22/10/1994
• Christine Slade, Canberra Times, 29/10/1994
• Peter Coleman, Sydney Review 69 (October 1994)
• Andrew Riemer, Independent Monthly 6.5 (November 1994)
• Michael Heyward, Australian Book Review 166 (November 1994)
• Peter Coleman, Adelaide Review 133 (November 1994)
• Alison Croggon, Voices 4.4 (Summer 1994-95)
• Hilary Corke, Spectator, 21/1/1995
• Economist, 18/2/1995
• Clement Semmler, Quadrant 39.3 (March 1995)
• David J. Tacey, TLS, 3/3/1995
• Alan Ross, London Magazine 35.1 (1995)
• Tim Winton, London Review of Books 17.12, 22/6/1995
• Cleo Lloyd da Silva, Antipodes 9.2 (December 1995)
• Claude Rawson, New York Times Book Review, 21/7/1996

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Patrick White: Selected Writings (1994)

Edited by Alan Lawson

Edition: University of Queensland Press (AU, July 1994, 304pp)

Reviews:

Rosemary Sorensen, Australian Bookseller and Publisher, May 1994

Tony Maniaty, Weekend Australian 2/7/1994

Elizabeth Riddell, SMH 16/7/1994

Judy Smallman, Australian Book Review 163 (August 1994)

David Meyers, Imago: New Writing 7.1 (March 1995)

Carolyn Bliss, Antipodes 9.1 (June 1995)

Ruth Brown, Australian Studies (Nov 1995) Cleo Lloyd da Silva, Antipodes 9.2 (December 1995)

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Collected Short Stories (2004)

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