Speeches, 1972-1984

Containers:

Box 15

Component identifier:

File 1

Content Summary:

Draft speeches by White, mostly typescript, some with corrections: untitled speech giving White's views on Jack Mundey (c.1982); short handwritten notes on nuclear disarmament with statement on Aborigines and mining companies (c.1982?); 'Role of the Australian citizen in a nuclear war' (1983); 'Town Hall rally' on urban development (Sydney, June 1972); 'Address to the Librarians of Australia' (Mitchell Library, September 1980); 'National Book Council Awards' (Melbourne, October 1980), together with NBC Seventh Annual Literary Dinner agenda and head table plan; 'People for Nuclear Disarmament' (Melbourne, October 1981); 'The state of the Colony' (1981); 'A letter to humanity' (Sydney, November 1982); 'Speech at demonstration for nuclear disarmament' (Sydney, April 1982); 'Citizens for Democracy' (1983); 'Patrick White at celebrations of the student uprising and fall of the Junta' (Athens, November 1983); 'Australian patriotism' (Sydney, January [1984?]). A presentation folder given to White on the occasion of his 1983 Athens speech is filed at Series 8, Folder 3.

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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