Australia's only Nobel laureate in literature, Patrick White was born in London in 1912, while his parents were there on a visit. Patrick White's first novel, Happy Valley (1939), was set in New South Wales. Some of his better-known novels include The Tree of Man (1955), Voss (1957), Riders in the Chariot (1961), The Solid Mandala (1966), and The Twyborn Affair (1979). Patrick White wrote several plays, including The Season at Sarsaparilla, which have seen recent and well-received revivals.
Patrick White received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1973 "for an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature."
Patrick White died in Sydney in 1990.