Patrick White: 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 White: 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 pen: 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 friends: Patrick White was an old man before he wrote fiction as free and open as the best of his letters.