AustLit

'When Patrick White claimed in 1977 'My MSS are destroyed...', he was declaring truthfully that he had burnt priceless drafts of his major novels and plays. However, when the National Library of Australia (NLA) acquired the 'lost' Patrick White papers from his literary executor Barbara Mobbs in 2006, a frisson of excitement and shock rebounded through the scholarly, literary and wider arts communities. More than anyone, his biographer David Marr was astonished to discover this cache of thirty-two boxes of unknown material. 'Happy to let me dig about in the entrails of his life' for almost a decade, it now seemed to Marr that White had deliberately kept him from 'trawling through this intimate evidence of his work'. In 2012, the celebration of the centenary of White's birth is the catalyst for scholars and the custodians of cultural collections to revisit the significance of White's entire body of work, published and unpublished, and his influence and place in Australia's artistic life.' (Author's introduction)