Unpublished works by Patrick White

UNPUBLISHED WORKS

Sidney Nolan, Robbed (1947)

Novels | Plays | Short Stories | Memoir | Screenplay | Essays | Music | Poems | Letters | Speeches | Interviews | Other works| Unpublished works

Throughout his life, Patrick White wrote dozens of pieces that were either never finished or never published. Such a list can never be exhaustive. There are no doubt early, destroyed works which even his legendary biographer David Marr could not track down. In addition, the trove of papers in the National Library of Australia has not been fully digitised to allow complete access – and some of the unpublished works are written in White’s own often illegible hand.

Hopefully here I have chronicled the majority of unpublished works that reached any level of completion. As always, I would appreciate updates or corrections.

  1. The Mexican Bandits (1922) – play – written when PW was 10 years old. It ends in a massacre. (cf Marr 611)
  2. Love’s Awakening (1923) – play – written when PW was 11 years old – “a man and a woman decided they were going to have a divorce, and he goes out to buy the divorce, and that’s the end of Act One. Act Two, he has supper with the other woman and decides he’s not going to have a divorce after all because he doesn’t care for the other woman and he goes back in Act Three – and Love Awakens”. [quoted in Marr 61]
  3. The Bird of Prey (c. 1923) – play – “about a femme fatale in Florence who had a cellarful of lovers in chains”, PW quotes in his 1973 interview with Southerly.
  4. The Maelstrom (1926) – novel – an unfinished work at age 14 about a femme fatale; other texts refer to this as a play, so it is possible this is a variation on item #3 above. (cf Marr)
  5. Love Poem to Dorothy Dickson (c. 1926) – poem – While at Cheltenham College, PW wrote a love poem to the actress Dorothy Dickson, and sent it. (cf Marr)
  6. Gloria Mundi and Winter Pastoral – poems – c. 1929, which exist in typescript form, attached to the NLA’s copy of Thirteen Poems. (cf NLA)
  1. Sullen Moon (1930-31) – novel (unfinished) – begun while PW was jackarooing in Australia at age 18: the story of two sisters and a man, “and the moon played a big part”. Some of the material would be reused when PW wrote The Aunt’s Story, in that novel’s first section. (cf Marr 99, 106)
  2. Finding Heaven (1931-32) – novel –  about city life after the great depression, the story of a girl in the mountains and a “flash” man from the city. The novel was considered for publication by literary impresario P.R. “Inky” Stephenson”, who had connections with PW’s mother. Stephenson sent the novel back with some suggestions for revision. However by that point the young PW had outgrown it, and never replied. (cf Marr 112)
  3. Amorous Wives (c. 1933) – play – written with his close friend Ronald Waters, shortly after he returned to London at age 20: a revolving door farce of lovers, which the pair never completed. (cf Letters 5)
  4. Soiree and Interpretation – poems – c. 1933, which apparently exist in one of the copies of The Ploughman, reported in Hubber & Smith.
  5. The Madonna of the Forest (c. 1934) – play – a romantic story taking place in a castle in the forest. Unfinished. (cf Letters 5)
  6. Unknown play (c. 1936) – play – “a bleak play about a spinster”. The work is lost, but bleak spinster life would play a large role in The Aunt’s Story. (cf Marr 144)
  7. Into Egypt (c. 1936) – play – “about a whore trying to find something else. She drowns herself in a temple” (cf Marr 144)
  1. “Déjeuner à Guéthary” and “Those who have discarded truth for the lie of living…” (1937) – poems – 2 x love poems to Pepe Mamblas unpublished but stored at the National Library of Australia. Excerpted in David Marr, p. 161. Dated 28/8/1937, St-Jean-de-Luz.
  2. It’s in the Bag (1937) – additional dialogue – written for legendary comedic actress Margaret Rutherford for the revue It’s in the Bag. The lines were slowly cut during previews, and ultimately Rutherford was too!
  3. Nightside (1938) – novel – an unfinished work about an Australian dancer who comes afoul in modern Europe, ultimately being murdered (shades of Berg’s Lulu?). No manuscript survives. PW finished the first draft in 1939. A copy survived until 1964, when PW burnt it as he left Dogwoods, his semi-rural home of two decades. PW subsequently found a copy among the possessions of the deceased Roy de Maistre in 1968, and destroyed that too. (cf Marr 180)
  4. Duet for Harpies (1939) – short story – satire about suburban women in America, which PW wrote during his trip around that country. It was never completed but found its ultimate form in the characters of Mrs Jolley and Mrs Flack in Riders in the Chariot.
  5. White’s American Journal (1939-1940) – diary – which he considered publishing around 1940, given it was a time of great growth for him as both a person and a writer. Eventually he burnt it. (cf Marr 202)
  6. Juliana (c. 1940) – play – Adaptation of Henry James’ The Aspern Papers. PW could not find a buyer for the script.
  7. A Pair of Shoes (c. 1942)-  short story – satirised life in Palestine, where PW was serving during WWII. PW tried to sell it but never found a buyer. Text now lost.
  8. ‘A long surreal poem” (c. 1948) –poem – Shortly after his return to Australia, PW submitted this for a poetry competition in the SMH in the late 1940s but to no avail. Now lost. (cf Marr)
  1. Triple Sec (c. 1963) – screenplay – made up of three short screenplays. Each was an adaptation of a story published in The Burnt Ones: Clay, Down at the Dump and Willy-Wagtails by Moonlight. It appears that PW wrote the screenplay in 1963 while travelling through Europe. He hoped to cast Zoe Caldwell (as the three roles in Clay) and Barry Humphries, and have Bruce Beresford direct. Nothing ultimately came of it.
  2. Don Juan and Don Joan (1963) – play – PW wrote this while travelling in Europe, with the intention of Zoe Caldwell playing the lead role. The text is presumably lost. 
  3. Eliza Fraser (1963) – opera – PW was asked by Stefan Haag at The Elizabethan Theatre Trust (the precursor to Opera Australia) to write a libretto for an opera to open the new Sydney Opera House. He decided to adapt a novel he had abandoned (but would later return to): A Fringe of Leaves. Sidney Nolan would do the sets. While in London in 1963, Nolan arranged for PW to meet the great composer Benjamin Britten to propose he write the music; the meeting was not pleasant, and all hope of involving Britten was lost. On returning to Australia, PW drafted a libretto and approached the young composer Peter Sculthorpe. Despite Sculthorpe’s interest in the project, the composer did not think the libretto was compatible with his ideas. After some consideration, they decided to stop work, and the relationship broke down with PW clearly miffed by Sculthorpe’s attitude. In his letter to the Bulletin in 1964, PW denies that he is working on an opera. ‘I am not working on an opera, I may not work on an opera, but if I do, it will be known as Sculthorpe’s opera; no libretto was ever more than the peg on which to hang the coat.’ (Ultimately, Prokofiev’s War and Peace would open the new House.)

Sculthorpe would premiere some soprano fragments in 2012 at the National Portrait Gallery of Australia, from the only part of the libretto he had held onto. From his composer’s note: “The song, which I have called ‘Patrick White Fragments’, is concerned with Eliza Fraser’s resignation to the possibility of her own death. She finds solace in a rain forest and there, in early morning light, she replaces her crinoline with skeletons of leaves. Patrick planned the symbolism of this transition to be at the very heart of the opera.”

  1. Two unpublished poems (c. 1963) – poems – In his memoirs, “Sun Music: Journeys and Reflections from a Composer’s Life” (ABC Books, 1999), Peter Sculthorpe includes two never-published PW poems from a failed collaboration
  2. Untitled Ballet (1963) – ballet scenario. Under founding artistic director Peggy Van Praagh, The Australian Ballet hired Robert Helpmann as co-director (the start of a tempestuous relationship). For his first original ballet for the company, the company chose Malcolm Williamson as composer and Sidney Nolan as costume and set designer, commissioning PW to write the synopsis in August 1963. The ballet opens with a “grotesque fete-galante version of an Australian picnic”, contrasting the bush with a country ballroom (in the style of Voss?). The daughter of a notable Australian family heads into the bush with her Italian fiancé, where they view the displays of native Australian birds including the lyrebird. The girl is increasingly drawn to the freedom of the bush and, one night after a ball, she returns naked to the bush (in the style of A Fringe of Leaves?) and dances with the bird in an almost sexual act. Her fiancé interrupts the moment, kills her, and is arrested.  White’s suggested titles include “The Stroke of Feathers”, “The Double Engagement” and “The Feather Breast”.

Helpmann disliked the libretto and made his dislike clear. Van Praagh sided with him, and – by December 1963 – asked him to use his own scenario rather than PW’s. In what appears to have been a quick turnaround, the ballet premièred as The Display in March 1964, often remembered as the first full ballet derived entirely from Australian themes.

PW’s notes were found in the records of The Australian Ballet at the National Library of Australia [‘Scenario for a ballet – by Patrick White’ (Typescript) NLA Records of the Australian Ballet, MS 7559, box 286, folder ‘Scenarios’]. David Marr argues that PW’s plans still made it into The Display, although primarily in the overall idea of contrasting human courtship with native birds, and the use of painted gauzes and veils on the stage. The remainder of the libretto seems to be too complicated for a ballet, and the satirical aspect with which PW approached the society ball was not in keeping with the Ballet’s more stately approach to the artform.

  1. Dolly Formosa’s Last Stand, aka Dolly Formosa and the Happy Few (1965) – novella – a story about theatre people, cocaine addiction and lunatics. This was intended as part of a trio of novellas called Presences which PW planned to offer to the newly formed Australian concern Sun Books. He never completed this novella, let alone started the other two. The title is given differently in different sources, but the name Dolly (Dolores) Formosa would be used again in Memoirs of Many in One.
  2. The Binoculars and Helen Nell (1966 – 1967) – novel – a proposed epic novel about a Sydney woman who experiences many lives. The novel commences around the start of the century and moves through the decades. Our heroine commences life as a farmer’s daughter and slovenly cook named Ellen before getting her big break at a ritzy Sydney Harbour restaurant in the 1920s, a satire of an era of decadence and snobbery. Nell becomes a prostitute and then the mistress of a wealthy man, Marr suggests she also becomes an actress, a cat burglar, and more. PW was considering subtitles such as “The Far and the Near” and “The Varieties of Sexual Experience”. PW had written about 160,000 words by the start of 1967 when he abandoned the novel, frustrated with it. Ideas from this novel ended up in The Vivisector and also in The Night the Prowler. Around 1970, he considered going back to it. PW then dug out some of the ideas in 1985 when working on Memoirs of Many in One.
  3. The Last Long Weekend (1970s) – radio play – draft only, held in the National Library Archives.
  4. The Monkey Puzzle: A Comedy for the Screen (1977) – screenplay. A writer, Will Garlick, is taping his memories so that he can be remembered. Mrs Henrietta Birdsell is a fan from the Federal Archives (aka the National Library of Australia) and she comes to his home to record them but clearly his stories don’t please her. The fan is ultimately turned off by an intimate understanding of the artist. By the time PW wrote this in 1977, his first film, The Night the Prowler was in production. He offered this to that film’s director, Jim Sharman, with the idea of Barry Humphries for the lead role. Nothing eventuated. The title comes from the monkey puzzle tree in the house’s backyard. Will’s wife Lalage is a successful writer of romantic fiction, perhaps a commentary on PW’s thorny relationship with the more commercial side of writing. The film features a parody of the author Xavier Herbert, as well as a dream sequence in which Lalage’s novel is adapted in an epic Hollywood film, a parody of the elevated grandeur with which some directors wanted to adapt Voss.
  1. Births, Deaths and Lotteries (1978) – opera libretto. A Brechtian satire including a parodic Queen Elizabeth, a republican revolution in Australia, and a fire that takes out much of Sydney. A wealthy and vain housewife struggles with her day-to-day life, finally hurling herself from a tall building in the Sydney CBD. The idea was originally suggested by composer Richard Meale, and PW considered it for several years. Meale ultimately moved on to the opera of Voss. He would set one passage from this, for soprano and chamber players, called Aria (1984).
  2. The Lyrebird and the White Mountain (1979)– play – David Marr writes that this was designed for the actress Diane Cilento, but was never finished and presumed lost.
  3. Untitled Novel (1979) – novel – PW commenced this after The Twyborn Affair, with the intention that it would be his final novel. The story was that of a children’s writer who has lost her muse, and sets out to fly around Australia with her partner. They plan to see the outback from above but instead end up interrupting a writer’s seminar, providing a satire of the Australian literary scene. PW made some first draft notes, but his plans to circumnavigate Australia in a plane as research came asunder, and he never wrote the book. As it would turn out, PW would have three further attempts at writing a “final” novel.
  4. Last Words (1979) – screenplay – based on the life of PW’s childhood nurse Lizzie Clarke, with whom he remained friends until the end of her long life. A historical saga, charting the life of this servant who begins as a maid named Eureka Steel. The script took elements of his earlier work, The Binoculars and Helen Nell, and was originally designed for the actress Robyn Nevin.
  5. Kidults: Screenplay by Penny Finkelstein (c. 1980) – screenplay. A satire, which Elizabeth Webby discusses in her 2013 paper, about a young couple, Lance and Lorna Jolley, who see a movie at the cinema and apparently enter a fantasy world. There are echoes here of his final novel, Memoirs of Many in One, which used many ideas from PW’s incomplete works of this era.
  6. My Book Discoveries of 1983 (1983) – article. A draft held in the National Library archives. It is unclear what PW was drafting this for, if anything.
  7. The White Goddess and the Firebird: A History (1983) – play. The National Library of Australia lists this script in the White papers, noting that the subject matter is that of convicts, explorers, and Indigenous Australians, and is written in a frail handwriting, suggesting it was written quite late in PW’s life. David Marr alludes to an unfinished play written in 1983 (Letters 584). However it is possible that this is another version of The Lyrebird and the White Mountain (see above).
  8. Abandoned novel (1986) – novel. In late 1986, having finished Memoirs of Many in One, PW sat down for the final time to write a new novel. He wrote for six weeks before deciding he didn’t have the strength to commit to an intense, multi-year project.
  1. The Flag and Flag Business (mid-1980s) – prose pieces. PW drafted these but never completed them. It is unclear whether these are fiction or non-fiction, although they may be non-fiction reflections in the line of Three Uneasy Pieces. They are stored in the National Library of Australia.
  2. State Affair (mid-1980s) – poem. Draft only. Stored in the National Library of Australia.
  3. Music Theatre (mid-1980s) – poem. Draft only. Stored in the National Library of Australia.
  4. To Artur Lundkvist, on the occasion of his 80th birthday in Stockholm (1986) – speech. Presumably not delivered, as PW did not visit Sweden in this year (or ever again).
  5. Four Love Songs (1987) –plays. These short plays were designed to be a set, with 3 originally planned and then expanded to 4. The pieces were being written for Kerry Walker, who had become one of PW’s favourite local actors ever since she starred in The Night The Prowler. In the uproar of the 1988 Australian Bicentenary, PW left the plays unfinished. He returned to them in late 1989, but did not complete them before his death.
    • The Park, or Memorial Park. “An old woman sits talking on a park bench, a man enters and sits beside her, he departs, she keeps talking, he returns and kills her.”
    • The Whore’s Cat: “A cat lies on a waterbed… while the voice of its mistress is heard talking about her lovers (politicians).”
    • My Big American, “Two girls fuck American soldiers on leave in Sydney.”
    • A Nun’s Monologue [unwritten?] – A satire on the life of Mary McKillop. After researching her, PW came to the conclusion that she might not deserve to be satirised, and might have been a better person than he thought.
  6. Why did I refuse to have any of my own work performed or published during the Bi? (c. 1988) – article. Draft only, in the National Library archives. This could be a draft of his piece Bicentenary, but unclear.
  7. The Master Builder (1989) – play. PW considered updating Ibsen’s famous play in conjunction with May-Brit Akerholt, who had just published a perceptive book on his theatrical works. The piece was never written, and PW died the following year.

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