Skip to content | Change text size
 

38. White, Patrick, 1912-1990

Happy Valley : a novel / by Patrick White. (New York : Viking Press, 1940)

Happy Valley : a novel

Patrick White was, before the arrival of Peter Carey, our most famous writer internationally. In 1973 he won the Nobel Prize for literature and used the money to set up an award for Australian authors.

On display we have a copy of The ploughman (1935) his early volume of verse, in a dustwrapper, and a selection of his novels chosen to show the difference in presentation between the UK and the US editions. As with The Ploughman, White did not allow republication of his first novel Happy Valley, and copies are now quite rare. Tree of man (1955) was his attempt to write the definitive Australian novel, chronicling a family on a farm from the 1880s to the 1930s who are beset by bushfire and flood, the novel finally ending with the land being sold and subdivided for housing allotments.

Photo album created with Web Album Generator