Amazing Australians: Patrick White

Source: abc.net.au/arts/white

Patrick White was an Australian writer who is widely considered to be one of the most influential English-language novelists of the 20th century. White wrote a number of novels, plays and three short-story compilations. In 1973 he became the first Australian to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He is still considered a very prominent writer and some of White’s pieces are still studied in the HSC today.

Information on Patrick White is relatively easy to find, but be sure that the information you are gathering is from reputable sources.

In the Library

Searching the catalogue using the keywords “Patrick White” will get you some good results.
If you are looking for a particular title such as, “Happy Valley”, you can type in the full title.

 

Library Website

If you go to the Information desk online webpage on the Library website you will see that you have access to encyclopaedias like Britannica and World Book which both have entries for Patrick White.  

If you then go to the Reference Databases webpage try using the name “Patrick White” to search in Biography in Context, Literary Reference Center Plus and Novelist which will give you some great information. 

Online

If you decide to Google once again you can use the name Patrick White, other terms you could try include;

·         Patrick White Australian Author

·         Patrick White Nobel Prize Literature

If you are interested in specific works then I would recommend searching by the title as well as or instead of the author as this makes it a more specific search, i.e.

·         “Happy Valley” Patrick White

·         “The Aunt’s Story” Patrick White

·         Voss Patrick White

Other websites that you might find useful

Nobelprize.org

This website contains biographical information about Patrick White as well as facts and even his banquet speech which was presented by Sidney Nolan.

ABC 

This website has information on White’s life, pictures, audio clips, war diary and information about his works including excerpts.

Australian Dictionary of Biography

This site has a complete and quite thorough biography on Patrick White with relevant links.