Patrick Victor Martindale White (28 May 1912 – 30 September 1990), was an Australian author who is widely regarded as one of the most important English-language novelists of the 20th century. From 1935 until his death, he published 12 novels, two short-story collections and eight plays.
White's fiction employs humour, florid prose, shifting narrative vantage points and a stream of consciousness technique. In 1973, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature,[1] the only Australian to have been awarded the prize.
Childhood and adolescence

White was born in Knightsbridge, London, to an English-Australian father and an English mother. His family later moved to Sydney, Australia when he was six months old.
- As a child he lived in a flat with his sister, a nanny, and a maid, while his parents lived in an adjoining flat.
- At the age of four White developed asthma, a condition that had taken the life of his maternal grandfather.
- White's health was fragile throughout his childhood, which precluded his participation in many childhood activities.
He loved the theatre, which he first visited at an early age. This love was expressed at home when he performed private rites in the garden and danced for his mother’s friends.
- At the age of ten, White was sent to Tudor House School, a boarding school in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales, in an attempt to abate his asthma.
- It took him some time to adjust to the presence of other children.
At boarding school he started to write plays. Even at this early age, White wrote about palpably adult themes.
- In 1924, the boarding school ran into financial trouble and the headmaster suggested that White be sent to a public school in England, a suggestion his parents accepted.[citation needed]
- White struggled to adjust to his new surroundings at Cheltenham College, in Gloucestershire. He later described it as "a four-year prison sentence".
- White withdrew socially and had a limited circle of acquaintances. Occasionally, he would holiday with his parents at European locations, but their relationship remained distant.
While at school in London, White made one close friend, Ronald Waterall, an older boy who shared similar interests. White's biographer, David Marr, wrote that "the two men would walk, arm-in-arm, to London shows; and stand around stage doors crumbing for a glimpse of their favourite stars, giving a practical demonstration of a chorus girl's high kick ... with appropriate vocal accompaniment".
- When Waterall left school, White withdrew again. He asked his parents if he could leave school to become an actor. The parents compromised and allowed him to finish school early on the condition that he came home to Australia to try life on the land.
His parents felt that he should work on the land rather than become a writer, and hoped that his work as a jackaroo would temper his artistic ambitions.
White spent two years working as a stockman at Bolaro, a station of 73-square-kilometre (28 sq mi) near Adaminaby on the edge of the Snowy Mountains in south-eastern Australia. Although he grew to respect the land and his health improved, it was clear that he was not cut out for this life.
Travelling the world
From 1932 to 1935, White lived in England, studying French and German literature at King's College within Cambridge University.
His homosexuality took a toll on his first term academic performance, in part because he developed a romantic attraction to a young man who had come to King's College to become an Anglican priest. White dared not speak of his feelings for fear of losing the friendship and, like many homosexual men of that period, feared that his sexuality would doom him to a lonely life. Then one night, the student priest, after an awkward liaison with two women, admitted to White that women meant nothing to him sexually. This became White's first love affair.
During White's time at Cambridge he published a collection of poetry entitled The Ploughman and Other Poems, and wrote a play named Bread and Butter Women, which was later performed by an amateur group (which included his sister Suzanne) at the tiny Bryant's Playhouse in Sydney.[3] After being admitted to the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1935, White briefly settled in London, where he lived in an area that was frequented by artists. Here, the young author thrived creatively for a time, writing several unpublished works and reworking Happy Valley, a novel that he had written while jackarooing. In 1937, White's father died, leaving him ten thousand pounds in inheritance. The fortune enabled him to write full-time in relative comfort. Two more plays followed before he succeeded in finding a publisher for Happy Valley. The novel was received well in London, but poorly in Australia. He began writing another novel, Nightside, but abandoned it before its completion after receiving negative comments—a decision that he later admitted regretting.
In 1936 White met the painter Roy de Maistre, 18 years his senior, who became an important influence in his life and work. The two men never became lovers, but remained firm friends. In Patrick White's own words "He became what I most needed, an intellectual and aesthetic mentor". They had many similarities. They were both homosexual; they both felt like outsiders in their own families; as a result they both had ambivalent feelings about their families and backgrounds, yet both maintained close and lifelong links with their families, particularly their mothers.