Personal documents and certificates, 1940-1988

Component identifier:

Series 13

Content Summary:

This series contains correspondence between Patrick White and his solicitor J.W. Butterfield relating to White's will and power of attorney, including copies of the draft will and final will. There are also copies of White's birth certificate and his war service record, together with facsimiles of his early letters to 'Dear Fairies' and 'Dear Father Christmas' (plus a later handwritten version of this letter).

Immediate source of acquisition:

During White's lifetime, he asserted that he kept no manuscripts or personal papers, burning his drafts on completion of each work. For many years after his death, it was believed that a single manuscript draft of Memoirs of many in one (1986), donated by White to the anti-apartheid Canon Collins Education Trust for Southern Africa in 1988 and subsequently purchased at auction in 1991 by the National Library of Australia and the State Library of New South Wales, was the only surviving record of White's literary manuscripts. While White does appear to have destroyed a considerable portion of his manuscript material, he clearly retained many literary papers and personal papers until his death. The papers in this collection were in the custody of Manoly Lascaris (White's partner) who died in 2003, and of Barbara Mobbs, White's long-term literary agent and Literary Executor, who presented the collection to the National Library of Australia in 2006.

Names:

White, Patrick, 1912-1990

Contents

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