Author's private papers go public

Patrick White won the Nobel prize in literature in 1973

Unpublished manuscripts by the late Australian author Patrick White have gone on public display, despite the writer saying he wanted them burnt.

Australia's only winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, who died in 1990, left a will demanding his private papers be destroyed.

But his agent Barbara Mobbs could not destroy them, eventually selling them to the National Library of Australia.

A library spokeswoman said the papers would be of "immeasurable importance".

"This acquisition completely changes our understanding of how White lived and worked," said Jan Fullerton, director-general of the National Library in Canberra.

'Serious man'

Ms Mobbs was given the boxes of private papers, including two unpublished books and plays, by the author's partner of 49 years, Manoly Lascaris.

In his will, White had asked Ms Mobbs to destroy them, like he had destroyed many other folios of work.

"I don't think he did it out of spite. He was a deeply serious man, deeply serious about his writing," said Marie-Louise Ayres, the library's curator.

"I think he did truly believe that his final works were what he wanted to be judged on, and fair enough."

White was born in London in 1912 but moved to Sydney as a child. His best-known works include Tree of Man, Voss and Riders in the Chariot.