Patrick White Timeline

1910 – Ruth Withycombe marries Victor Martindale (Dick) White.

1912 – 28 May – Patrick Victor Martindale (Paddy) White born in Knightsbridge, London.

October – The Whites set out on the Otranto steamship for Sydney.

1913 – The family move to Belltrees near Mount Woolooma, the family property (to be shared one day by PW and his only paternal cousin Alf). Ultimately, it isn’t a good fit, and the Whites move to Phillip Street in the Sydney CBD, a pair of flats.

1915 – May – PW’s sister Suzanne White is born. The family is now living in Cromer.

1916 – The Whites buy Lulworth House, 73 Roslyn Gardens, Elizabeth Bay for £6,000.

1917 – PW starts at Sandtoft, a kindergarten in Woollahra.

1920 – PW starts school at Cranbrook. The Whites buy a cottage Beowang (renamed Withycombe) in the Blue Mountains (1-9 Church Lane, Mount Wilson) when it becomes clear PW’s asthma is getting worse.

1922 – PW starts at Tudor House in the Southern Highlands, an Anglican school with a focus on weak/asthmatic boys (near Sutton Forest). Meets Banjo Paterson, who has married into the broader White family. Has two letters published in the children’s section of the Sunday Times.

1925 – Dame Nellie Melba visits Tudor House. By this time, PW is attempting plays and short novels.

April – The Whites sail for England, and it’s Cheltenham College for PW.

1926 – PW writes love poems on behalf of a boy who is in love with the daughter of family friend Ethel Kelly. He and his family reportedly stay at the same hotel as the allegedly-amnesiac Agatha Christie.

1929 – PW matriculates from Cheltenham. His childhood poems are published by Ruth in a limited-edition collection for the family, as Thirteen Poems.

1930 – PW sets sail for Sydney, on the same ship that brought him five years earlier. Dorothea Mackellar is on board. To please his parents, he agrees to work as a jackaroo for two years, at Bolaro in the Southern Highlands, although he wants to live in London and be an actor. Over this period, PW writes several novels and short works, often unfinished.

1932 – PW takes his university entrance exams in Sydney and then sets off to Cambridge. He starts at King’s College in October to study modern languages, with a focus on French and German. 

1933 – PW commences a relationship with “R”, a fellow student. Visits Nazi Germany.

1934 – PW sets up rooms with R. Their youthful love affair eventually comes to an end with the realisation that R is not particularly homosexual. Makes his professional writing debut, when two poems appear in the London Mercury. Visits France and Germany.

1935 – PW’s first play, Bread-and-Butter Women “professionally” produced by his mother in Sydney. Ruth also has The Ploughman collection of poems published.

May – Graduates from Cambridge. Visits Europe again, this time to accompany his sister. Moves into a small flat at 91 Ebury Street in Belgravia, London.

1936 – PW takes one final trip to Germany and the Baltic. Meets Roy de Maistre, whose art studio is near PW’s flat, and falls in love. It is a brief affair, with a big age difference and a personality clash, but they settle as friends. De Maistre’s art has an influence. In Australia, Dick sells his share in Belltrees to his brother, and removing PW’s direct connection to the land.

1937 – Ruth produces PW’s next play, The School for Friends, in Australia very briefly. The Twitching Colonel, 1^st professional short story, published in the London Mercury. 

August – Heads to southern France to work on the novel Happy Valley. Meets Pepe Mamblas and they become lovers.  Finds an agent (initially John Green) agent at Curtis Brown literary agency. Numerous publishing houses turn down Happy Valley.

December– Dick dies of a heart attack, after having suffered severe asthma for a few years. This leaves PW in a satisfactory financial state without having to take on work outside of writing. (£10,000 to PW, the rest mostly to Ruth.) Ruth sells Lulworth and Withycombe as part of plans to move to the UK, plans which will be frustrated by the War.

1938 – PW has a comic monologue, Peter Plover’s Party, accepted on the West End as part of the revue Nine Sharp. Moves into room above de Maistre’s new studio at 13 Eccleston Street. Abandons a dark novel about murder, Nightside. A poem, House Behind the Barrcicades, published in New Verse whose editor Geoffrey Grigson (also a distant relative) is luckily enough a reader for George Harrap. As a result of this connection, Happy Valley is ultimately accepted by George G. Harrap, Ltd.

1939 – 2 Feb – Happy Valley, 1^st novel, published in the British and Commonwealth market.

PW travels to New York and California, Taos and then Massachusetts. Here he meets Spud (Walter) Johnson, an older man who runs a local newspaper and writes poetry, and the pair become lovers. On his travels, PW commences writing The Living and the Dead. Meets and falls for Dr. Joe Rankin in New York, a few weeks before heading back home just as war breaks out in Europe.

1940 – PW has a lyric accepted for a Hermione Gingold revue, Swinging the Gate. Viking accepts Happy Valley for American publication. PW returns to New York to spend time with Rankin and see Happy Valley published. Returning to the UK, signs up for army service, moving back to Ebury Street, working for the Red Cross. With Harrap uninterested in The Living and the Dead, PW shops it around to several UK publishers – including Jonathan Cape – who reject it. Called up to RAF Volunteer Reserve. Cocotte, 2^nd professional short story, published in Horizon.

1941 – PW stationed in the Middle East, primarily Khartoum and Alexandria. Awarded the Australian Literary Society Gold Medal for Happy Valley despite contravening the rules (by not living in Australia), from a panel that includes A.A. Phillips and Frank Wilmot. After several rejections, George Routledge & Sons accepts The Living and the Dead, 2^nd novel, for UK publication.

July – At an afternoon tea in Alexandria organised by a casual lover, PW meets Manoly Lascaris. They end up living in a flat in the Rue Safia Zaghloul although often living apart while serving in their respective armies.

1942 – During the War, starts learning Greek, in addition to his university French and German. Writes several short stories during this time, most unsold. The Sewing Machine of Tobruk, short story, published.

1943 –Journeys to Palestine, working out of Haifa. Spends time compiling reports and generally using his writing skills to serve the military.  After Alep, short story, published.

1944 – Late in the year, ML and PW head back to Greece, which has been freed.

1946 – Jan – PW is demobbed, returning to England to (new) rooms on Ebury Street. He wants to live in Greece with ML but ultimately they agree to move to Australia.

On the journey to Australia (initially without ML), PW finishes The Aunt’s Story. Makes one of his earliest forays into public debate, penning a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald in support of European immigrants and refugees.

1947 – Ruth holds a grand party to farewell herself, and then moves permanently to England. Return to Abyssinia, 1^st professional play opens in the UK for a short run, marking the end of his early period. PW sets sail for the UK again to take the dogs through the quarantine process. During this time he writes The Ham Funeral, but is unable to sell it to any producers.

1948 – The Aunt’s Story, 3^rd novel, is published. PW and the dogs set out for Australia; ML follows. They find a property – Dogwoods, 74 Showground Road, Castle Hill – that will suit the desire to be near but not in the middle of it all. (£2,667, 10s). Castle Hill is 40 minutes’ drive from the centre of Sydney; at the time, there is plenty of farmland (it is now a built-up area). In time, Castle Hill will become the fictional suburb of Sarsaparilla, whose social mores dominates the fiction of PW’s middle period.

1949 – ML takes Australian citizenship, fast-tracked as he served British command in the war. Between 1948 and 1951, PW writes nothing of note due to the burden of work on the property and adjusting to life (and culture) in Australia.

1951 – R.G. Howarth reportedly gives the first lectures on PW’s work at Sydney University

Dec – After slipping and falling in the rain at Dogwoods, PW has a moment of spiritual awakening, starting him on a journey of religious growth that will continue for the rest of his life. Now he commences The Tree of Man. His middle period has begun.

1954 – After struggling to find a British publisher, PW is placed with Eyre & Spottiswoode after the direct intervention of his American editor, Ben Huebsch.

1955 – The Tree of Man, 4^th novel, is publisher. Critically applauded, it also sells reasonably well, easing PW’s perceived financial woes. He is now considered a serious novelist, although a bitter review by poet and critic A.D. Hope will sour his opinion of critics for the rest of his life.

1956 – Australian author Marjorie Barnard publishes an analysis of the four novels in Meanjin, the first scholarly treatment. PW gives one of his earliest interviews, to author Kylie Tennant in the Sydney Morning Herald, in response to Hope’s review the previous year.

1957 – Voss, 5^th novel,is published. Keith Michell asks PW if he would be interested in writing theatre, which inspires the author to pull out his old copy of The Ham Funeral. On the Balcony, short story, published in Harper’s Bazaar.

1958 –Voss wins the Miles Franklin Award, PW gives first public speech of his life. PW and ML travel from April to October, typewriter in tow, via Thailand to Israel, Germany, and England. Next to New York, where ML will see his mother for the first time in 40 years, after she abandoned the family when he was a child. Finally on to Florida and California. Here they meet Sidney and Cynthia Nolan; PW takes to the latter immediately. Via Fiji, they return to Sydney.

PW pens his famous essay The Prodigal Son for journal Australian Letters, in which he engages with the issue of Australian writers emigrating from the country, and the difficult reasons for why he decided to stay, as well as his hopes for the future of Australian literature.

PW, having voted conservative all his life, reportedly votes Labor in this election, although he will switch back to the Liberal party for a couple of following elections.

1961 – Riders in the Chariot, 6^th novel, is publishing, winning PW a second Miles Franklin Award. Visits New Zealand to see family, and then Queensland to tour the coast as research for A Fringe of Leaves.

After much angst over finding a company willing to stage it, and some rewrites after 14 years in the cupboard, The Ham Funeral, PW’s 2^nd professional play, premières in Adelaide to some rapture and much furore.

1962 – Season at Sarsaparilla, 3^rd play, premières in Adelaide. Louis Kahan wins the 1962 Archibald Prize for his portrait of PW. Ham Funeral travels to Sydney. Being Kind to Titina published in Meanjin; The Letters published in Quadrant; The Woman Who Wasn’t Allowed to Keep Cats and Willy-Wagtails by Moonlight published in Australian Letters; A Cheery Soul published in London Magazine.

PW and ML prepare to move on from Dogwoods. PW burns his papers, including the last known copies of Nightside and Return to Abyssinia, as well as a suitcase full of copies of The Ploughman which he has been collecting via a major Sydney book trader.

Sydney and Brisbane premières of The Ham Funeral; Melbourne première of The Season at Sarsaparilla

1963 – A Cheery Soul, 4^th play, premières in Melbourne. PW lunches on the royal yacht Britannia with Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip during their tour of Australia. PW and ML journey via Singapore to Greece and Turkey and then England, where PW sees his ill mother. Shortly after returning home from their 6-month trip, the news comes that Ruth has died. As a result, PW comes into his full inheritance. Clay published in Overland; Miss Slattery and Her Demon Lover published in Australian Letters and then London Magazine; Down at the Dump published in Meanjin.

White works on three failed projects: a play, Don Juan and Don Joan; a film, Triple Sec; and an opera, Untitled [A Fringe of Leaves].

Sydney première of The Season at Sarsaparilla.

1964 – The Evening at Sissy Kamara’s published in London Magazine. Night on Bald Mountain, 5^th play, premières in Adelaide; the critical response is mostly negative, and PW swears off writing plays. The Burnt Ones, 1^st short story volume, is published, collecting numerous already-published works as well as marking first printing of A Glass of Tea and Dead Roses. Through Eleanor Arrighi, PW and ML find the house at 20 Martin Road, Centennial Park, ‘Highbury’, for £17,500, which was built in 1912, the same year both men were born. They move with their three dogs and two cats.

1965 – Four Plays, 1^st collection of plays, is published. Another failed project: the novella Dolly Formosa’s Last Stand.

1966 – The Solid Mandala, 7^th novel, is published. PW refuses to accept two awards for it, including the Miles Franklin, and this recalcitrance – combined with a perceived coldness on the part of Eyre & Spottiswoode – sees him break with his British publisher after a decade. A Woman’s Hand published in Australian Letters. The Full Belly published in Coast to Coast 1965-66. A Cheery Soul filmed for the BBC.

PW joins public protests for the first time arguing against the dismissal of Jorn Utzon from the Sydney Opera House project; is mentioned in papers for doing so. Is offered an honorary Doctor of Letters from the Australian National University but declines.

1967 – A further never-completed project, a novel The Binoculars and Helen Nell. Dogwoods is finally sold, allowing ML his own money for the first time in 20 years. PW spends most of the year working on The Vivisector. PW’s radicalism ramps up a gear when he reads the Ramparts Vietnam Primer.

1968 – In the great protest year of 1968, PW and ML head back to Greece, now under military junta, followed by Paris and London (where he is courted by new British publishers), New York, Florida, and San Francisco. Five Twenty published in Southerly and then in Coast to Coast, 1967-68.

1969 – PW signs with Jonathan Cape in the UK. Makes his first highly-publicised (and, at the time, illegal) political act, protesting the Vietnam War. Rumours swirl about a Nobel Prize for PW but Samuel Beckett wins. PW votes Labor (Gough Whitlam) reluctantly, although Whitlam loses.

1970 –PW gives evidence at the trials in Melbourne and Sydney in support of local publishers who violated censorship laws to print Portnoy’s Complaint. The Vivisector, 8^th novel, is published.

1971 – PW and ML visit US for the final time; ML sees his mother for the last time. Then London with the Nolans, and on to Dublin, Paris, Spain, Italy, and Greece. At year’s end, after ML contracts diabetes, the couple make a pact: PW gives up drink (which doesn’t keep), ML gives up cigarettes (which does). For the second time PW is considered for the Nobel, this time apparently making it quite far in the voting – Solzhenitsyn wins. Offered a knighthood but turns it down.

1972 – PW makes a media splash protesting against the building of sports stadiums on Centennial Park, and is supported by the Builders’ Labourer’s Federation (under Jack Mundey) on a “green Ban”. This time, they win.

Dec – PW votes for Whitlam again, still rather reluctantly; this time Whitlam wins, becoming the first Labor Prime Minister in 23 years.

1991 – Publication of David Marr’s Patrick White: A Life. PW is one of the authors given a plaque in the inaugural installation of the Sydney Writers’ Walk.

1992 – Perth première of Season at Sarsaparilla. Brisbane première of A Cheery Soul.

1993 – Rawcus Productions in Canberra stages readings of all 8 available PW plays. Melbourne revival of Big Toys (last professional production of that play as of 2023). Jim Sharman’s documentary The Burning Piano airs on ABC TV.

1994 – Publication of White’s letters (edited by David Marr), Selected Writings (edited by Alan Lawson), and Collected Plays Volume II. A Sydney revival of Big Toys is cancelled at the last minute.

1996 – Melbourne revival of A Cheery Soul; Adelaide revival and Sydney première of Night on Bald Mountain (32 years after its first production); Voss adapted for ABC Radio.

1997 – Sydney revival of The Season at Sarsaparilla.

2000 – Sydney revival of The Ham Funeral and A Cheery Soul. By now, White’s novels out-of-print in most formats, and hard to find except in remainder bins.

2001 – Adam Cook’s adaptation of The Aunt’s Story premières in Melbourne and Sydney.

2002 – ML leaves Highbury for a nursing home, which is coincidentally Lulworth, PW’s childhood house and now a care home. (Former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam would move there in 2010 for the final years of his life.)

2003 – ML dies. His ashes are scattered into the sea off Clovelly by Barbara Mobbs, David Marr, Kerry Walker, Lascaris’ nurses and a couple of his friends. The house in Centennial Park, Highbury, is put up for sale and a public campaign, aided by the National Trust of NSW, begins to get the Government to buy it. The Government considers buying it (for $4 million) but ultimately decides the price is not worth it.

2004 – The contents of Highbury are auctioned off rather than protected, and – after much battle – the house is listed on the New South Wales State Heritage Register, which prevents its demolition. Nevertheless, it ultimately sells privately to investment banker Matthew Roberts and wife Samantha for $3.2 million. (At the auction, film producer Margaret Fink buys White’s wastepaper basket, which she gifts to Neil Armfield, who subsequently gifts it to American filmmaker John Waters, a big White fan.)

2005 – Melbourne première of The Ham Funeral, forty-five years later.

2006 – White’s literary executor, Barbara Mobbs, surprises the world when she announces she has kept 24 boxes of his papers, including a few letters, countless manuscripts and typescripts, notebooks, photographs, and other items, alongside 8 boxes of other miscellanea (I think). These are sold to the National Library of Australia, becoming a literary sensation, and putting books on the front page of Australian newspapers.

A literary hoax occurs when a young writer, Wraith Picket, submits an in-progress manuscript to various Australian publishers, receiving dismissive responses. Picket is revealed to be a fiction; the manuscript is chapter three of The Eye of the Storm, the novel which cemented White’s Nobel win; “Wraith Picket” is an anagram of his name. Literary elites take this as evidence that publishers now are so unaware of their country’s own past that they can’t even recognise such a famous novel; cultural outsiders see this as proof that all culture is merely about context and privilege, because the elitist White couldn’t get published today. (In this author’s view, both attitudes are somewhat naive.)

2007 – The NLA holds the first exhibition of the White archives, including his “realia”, such as his iconic beret and beanie.

2009 – The Twyborn Affair adapted for BBC Radio. Numerous Australian institutions hold a celebratory week of events in honour of Voss.

2010 – The Australian Book Review announces the results of their 2009 poll of favourite Australian novels: White comes in at #3 (Voss), #10 (The Tree of Man) and #14 (The Vivisector). Some writers with whom he engaged make the cut too: Randolph Stow’s The-Merry-Go-Round in the Sea (#18), David Malouf’s Remembering Babylon (#16), Helen Garner’s Monkey Grip (#12), Christina Stead’s The Man Who Loved Children (#9), Kate Grenville’s The Secret River (#7), and Henry Handel Richardson’s The Fortunes of Richard Mahony (#2). Tim Winton wins the poll, with Cloudstreet.

Sarah de Jong and Sarah Carradine’s opera The Cockatoos premières in Melbourne.

2011 – Fred Schepisi’s The Eye of the Storm premières.

2012 – The National Library of Australia and State Library of NSW exhibit a centenary exhibition, The Life of Patrick White.

Sydney revival of The Season at Sarsaparilla. Adelaide revival of The Ham Funeral

2013 – Melbourne revival of The Season at Sarsaparilla (last professional production of this play as of 2023).

2014 – Melbourne professional première of Night on Bald Mountain (last professional production of this play as of 2023)

2015 – Chris Drummond’s The Aspirations of Daise Morrow premières in Adelaide. Andrew Hale’s The Cockatoos premières in Perth.

2016 – White’s Centennial Park home is sold again to Richard Kuo and Samantha Meers, a wealthy couple.

2017 – Sydney revival of The Ham Funeral (last professional production of this play as of 2023).

2018 – Sydney revival of A Cheery Soul (last professional production of this play as of 2023).

2021 – Melbourne and Adelaide revivals of Voss the opera are cancelled due to the covid-19 pandemic.

2022 – Rescheduled one-night only concert of Voss, presented by Victorian Opera and the State Opera of South Australia.

2023 – The 50th anniversary of White’s Nobel win, in October, is marked with some discussion but much of it centres on whether his legacy has held up for future generations. Only time will tell…

2024 – Barbara Mobbs, PW’s beloved literary agent, dies aged 81. She had managed the PW copyright/estate until she retired in 2016, handing her agency over to Jane Novak.