Letters

Patrick White spent his life writing letters. He wanted them all burnt, but thousands survive to reveal him as one of the greatest letter-writers of his time.

Patrick Letters is an unexpected and final volume of wonderful prose by Patrick White. Only a few scraps of his letters have been published before. Here his 70-year correspondence sees the light of day for the first time. From the aftermath of the First World War until his death in 1990, letters poured from Patrick White’s they are shrewd, funny, hauntingly beautiful, dramatic, pig-headed, camp and above all relaxed. He wrote novels to sway a hostile world, but letters were for Patrick White was an old man before he wrote fiction as free and open as the best of his letters.