Notebook, including material for Voss (1957), Riders in the chariot (1961) and A fringe of leaves (1976), c.1947-1976

Containers:

Box 4

Component identifier:

Item 4

Content Summary:

St George brand exercise book, handwritten in pencil and blue ink. Contains research and preparation for Voss - Leichhardt, diction, terms, phrases, details for follow-up, prospective names and parts; dialogue (notes evolving into a novel), comprising exchanges in draft developing key themes and character dispositions.

Also includes notes relating to: Riders in the chariot; notes in and from the German by Gershom Scholem on the Kabbalah; notes on Jewish thought and Hassidism (Alf Dubbo and Himmelfarb emerge on these pages); 'Brainstorm - What is love but a half hour with Liberace?'; Mitchell Library call slip for C.C. Petrie's Reminiscences of early Queensland, 9 October 1973, inserted; notes to background and historical detail for A fringe of leaves; timeline of records and events; notes on geography, topography and climate.

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

Access and use