Patrick White’s Reading

Desmond Digby, Romantic Landscape (1958)

Works that were noted for having a particular impact, with thanks to David Marr’s biography, Patrick White’s letters, and miscellaneous additional sources.

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1910s: Ethel Pedley’s Dot and the Kangaroo; Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden; Johann David Wyss’ The Swiss Family Robinson

1920s: James Elroy Flecker’s Hassan; Thomas Hardy’s general oeuvre; Anita Loos’ Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: The Intimate Diary of a Professional Lady; Margaret Kennedy’s The Constant Nymph; the plays of Anton Chekhov and Henrik Ibsen

1930s: Henry Handel Richardson’s The Fortunes of Richard Mahon; poetry of A.E. Housman; the works of James Joyce (especially Ulysses) and D.H. Lawrence; Gustave Flaubert’s works, especially Madame Bovary; Alain-Fournier’s Le Grand Meaulnes; George Moore’s Evelyn Innes and Sister Teresa; the works of Gertrude Stein and Oswald Spengler; Marcel Proust; Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.

1940s: Journal of Edward John Eyre; works of Charles Dickens; Cyril Connolly’s The Unquiet Grave; Eve Langley’s The Pea Pickers; Saul Bellow and John Updike.

1950s: Rimbaud’s poems; Lawrence Durrell’s Bitter Lemons; Rebecca West’s The Fountain Overflows.

1960s: Manning Clark’s History of Australia; Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov; Christina Stead’s The Man Who Loved Children; David Campbell’s poems; Jung’s Psychology and Alchemy, David Ireland’s The Chantic Bird; works of Barbara Baynton; Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita; Peter Mathers’ Trap; Elizabeth Harrower’s The Watch Tower; Janet Frame’s Owls Do Cry and other works; Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago; Ramparts Magazine: A Vietnam Primer

1970s: Edna O’Brien’s A Pagan Place; Tanizaki Jun-ichiro’s Some Prefer Nettles; Christina Stead’s Letty Fox: Her Luck; Nadine Gordimer’s The Conservationist; Shirley Hazzard’s Transit of Venus; Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman and other early novels; David Malouf’s Johnno and An Imaginary Life; Yasunari Kawabata’s The Sound of the Mountain; David Foster’s The Pure Land and other early works; Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo; Edmund Wilson’s works.

1980s: Janet Frame’s To the Is-Land and An Angel at My Table; Kate Grenville’s Joan Makes History; David Malouf’s novels and short stories.

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