“STANDS IN THE COMPANY OF LAWRENCE, JOYCE, MANN AND FAULKNER”: FIRST EDITION OF THE PIVOTAL SECOND NOVEL BY PATRICK WHITE—“THE ONLY AUSTRALIAN WRITER EVER SELECTED FOR A NOBEL PRIZE”

WHITE, Patrick. The Living and the Dead. New York: Viking, 1941. Octavo, original orange cloth, original dust jacket.

First edition, preceding the first English edition, of second novel by White, who was awarded the 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature—"there is still no Australian writer of greater stature"—a fine copy in the original dust jacket.

White, awarded the 1973 Nobel Prize in Literature, "stands in the company of Lawrence, Joyce, Mann and Faulkner" (Sewanee Review). "The first writer with Australian roots to be widely read abroad and the only Australian writer ever selected for the Nobel Prize," he is also, to many, the nation's most controversial (New York Times). Yet "there is still no Australian writer of greater stature… his novels always take us out to the very edges of belief, to the vista of the possible, to the horizon of the spirit" (Patrick White Centenary, 20-23). The Living and the Dead, his second novel after Happy Valley (1939) explores the turmoil of a world on the brink of war. Set largely in London, it delves deeply into the radical changes in its characters' lives. "Not only does the work swathe three generations; it also shifts time, repeats events from different points of view, and, perhaps most boldly, ends only hours after it begins" (Wolfe, Laden Choirs, 50).

White, born in London while his Australian parents were abroad, traveled to the U.S. in 1939 to find an American publisher. There he met publisher Ben Huebsch of Viking, who became, in the words of White's biographer David Marr, "the rock on which Patrick White's career was built" (Patrick White, 127). Huebsch published Happy Valley and quickly accepted the manuscript for Living and the Dead, which had been rejected London publishers. With that, "Marr notes that an important pattern had been set for the next 15 years: 'immediate acceptance of White's work in New York and a struggle to find a publisher in London'. As Simon During argues, White's reputation was first established in New York, then in London, and eventually imported back to Australia" (Cambridge History of Australian Literature, 250). First edition with "First published in February 1941" on copyright page. Precedes the first English edition.

An exceptional copy in fine condition.