Patrick White Novels – Patrick White Catalogue

Novels by Patrick White

Grace Crowley, Abstract Painting (1950)

Between 1939 and 1986, Patrick White published twelve novels. A thirteenth, unfinished, was published posthumously, in 2012.

Beyond this, White left numerous abandoned or juvenile novels, some of which are lost forever, others surviving in the collection of his papers stored at the National Library of Australia. See the Unpublished Works page.

For White’s non-novelistic output, see the list of Published Works.

01. Happy Valley (1939)

In a small Australian town between the wars, the older generation suffer hate and isolation while the young attempt to navigate the narrow path toward hope.

02. The Living and the Dead (1941)

In 1930s London, two siblings and their unstable mother search for life and love in the face of an increasingly uncertain world.

03. The Aunt’s Story (1948)

After her mother’s death, an Australian spinster departs for Europe and a little hotel filled with people from across the continent, where she learns one can never quite escape the place life has set aside for them.

04. The Tree of Man (1955)

Stan and Amy Parker set out to build on land in an isolated part of country Australia. As their home grows, so does the community around them, and – like all of us – they will lose some things and find others along the way.

05. Voss (1957)

A German explorer journeys from 1850s Sydney Town on an expedition into the heart of the great Australian continent. He leaves behind his financier’s sharp-minded daughter, fighting her own personal battles.

06. Riders in the Chariot (1961)

Four lonely souls in contemporary suburbia are united by a strange, revelatory vision, as each of them battles the oppressive forces of conformity and everyday persecution.

07. The Solid Mandala (1966)

Over the course of their lives, twin brothers – with sharply divergent natures – witness world wars, and a changing culture, while maintaining an inextricable bond.

08. The Vivisector (1970)

Born in poverty, Hurtle Duffield grows up to become a visionary artist, torn between the elegant façade of Sydney society and his own peculiar genius.

09. The Eye of the Storm (1973)

In a large Sydney home, the dying matriarch Elizabeth Hunter dominates her household: her Holocaust-survivor housekeeper, her doggedly loyal solicitor, three nurses with their own doubts, and her two children: the womanising actor Sir Basil, and daughter Dorothy, now a princess who has shed her Australian identity.

10. A Fringe of Leaves (1976)

In the 19th century, a refined lady from a poor Cornish past survives a shipwreck on an island off the coast of Queensland. In the weeks that follow, she is forced into a journey of self-discovery, which will break down her identity – perhaps beyond the point of no return.

11. The Twyborn Affair (1979)

A mysterious Greek woman during the First World War with haunting eyes. A young heir in the 1920s, trying his luck at manual labour in a country he thought he had left behind. The proprietress of an East End brothel in the early months of World War II, tainted by a provincial past and broken by unfulfilled love. Three people with an unexpected connection and a shared past…

12. The Hanging Garden (1981, unfinished, published 2012)

Two children – a boy whose mother died in the Blitz and a girl whose Communist father was executed in Greece – are brought together in Sydney to shelter from the war, negotiating the dangers of life together, abandoned on the far side of the world.

13. Memoirs of Many in One (1986)

The thoroughly unreliable and unlikely reminiscences of an old woman from her Greek ancestors to her time in a travelling theatre company – told through papers edited by her reliable, dull friend: a gentleman named Patrick White…

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