Editing Patrick White (section)

== Critical reception ==
White's first published novel, ''Happy Valley'' (1939), received favourable reviews in Britain and Australia, although some critics noted that it was too derivative of Joyce, Lawrence and Woolf. The novel was awarded the Gold Medal of the Australian Literature Society.{{Sfnp|Webby|2012}}{{Sfnp|Kiernan|1980|pp=14-15}} ''The Living and the Dead'' (1941) and ''The Aunt's Story'' (1948) attracted little critical attention in Australia, although the latter was favourably reviewed in the ''New York Times Review of Books''.{{Sfnp|Webby|2012}}{{Sfnp|Barnes|2014|pp=7-8}}

''The Tree of Man'' (1955) was White's first major international success, attracting positive reviews in the United States and the United Kingdom. James Stern, writing in the ''New York Times Book Review,'' praised the novel as "a timeless work of art." Australian reviewers were more divided, poet [[A. D. Hope]] calling White's prose "pretentious and illiterate verbal sludge." The novel sold eight thousand copies in Australia in the first three months and was awarded the Gold Medal of the Australian Literature Society.{{Sfnp|Webby|2012}}{{Sfnp|Barnes|2014|pp=15-16}}

''Voss'' (1957) was reviewed favourably in the United Kingdom but critics in the United States and Australia were more ambivalent. A significant body of Australian critics continued to fault White's prose style and some objected to his rejection of the realist prose tradition.{{Sfnp|Webby|2012}}{{Sfnp|Barnes|2014|pp=17-18}} The novel was a best seller in the United Kingdom and won the inaugural Australian Miles Franklin Award. ''Riders in the Chariot'' (1961) also achieved critical and commercial success in the United Kingdom, and won admiring reviews in Australia.{{Sfnp|Webby|2012}}

By 1963, White was widely accepted as the major Australian literary novelist. A. D. Hope called him "unquestionably the best known and most discussed novelist of the day" and thought his success was "indicative of a break with the naturalistic tradition which has dominated Australian fiction since the turn of the century, and may well be a portent of a more imaginative and a more intellectual sort of fiction."{{Sfnp|Barnes|2014|p=18}} White was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1973. Academic Elizabeth Webby states that many critics consider ''The Twyborn Affair'' the best of his subsequent work.{{Sfnp|Webby|2012}}

Katherine Brisbane states that the reception of White's plays has been ambivalent as they mix realism, expressionism and poetic and vernacular dialogue in a way which has challenged audiences and directors.{{Sfnp|Brisbane|2009|pp=393-94}} ''The Ham Funeral'' (1947) was successfully produced in 1962 after it was rejected by the Adelaide Festival for obscenity. It was successfully revived in 1989. The Season at Sarsaparilla (1962) has been his most produced play.{{Sfnp|Webby|2012}}