Manuscript and typescript drafts by White including 'The flag', 'Flag business', 'State affair', 'Music theatre', 'Why did I refuse to have any of my own work performed or published during the Bi?' and 'Patrick White's views on the Bicentenary 25 January 1988', c.1988

Containers:

Box 14

Component identifier:

File 3

Content Summary:

Ruled foolscap pages (torn out of notebook) featuring handwritten drafts in blue ballpoint, including 2 prose works 'The flag' (2pp) and 'Flag business' (1p), 2 poems 'State affair' and 'Music theatre' (1p), and an article 'Why did I refuse to have any of my own work performed or published during the Bi?' (6pp); typescript of 'Patrick White's Views on the Bicentenary 25 January 1988' (3pp, 2 copies); together with Blast no. 5, Autumn 1988, featuring 'Patrick White blasts bi-birthday' pp5-6

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

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