Happy Valley (Text Classics) - Hardcover

White, Patrick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1921922915 ISBN 13: 9781921922916

Publisher: Text Pub Co, 2013

Synopsis

Originally published in 1939, Happy Valley is set in a small country town in the Snowy Mountains. Based on Patrick White's own experiences in the early 1930s as a jackaroo at Bolaro, near Adaminaby in south-eastern New South Wales, Happy Valley paints a portrait of a community in a desolate landscape. It is a jagged and restless study of small-town and country life. White was twenty-seven when Happy Valley was published by George C. Harrop in London. This mesmerising first novel gives us a prolonged glimpse of literary genius in the making. It won the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal in 1941, but White did not allow the novel to be republished in English in his lifetime. Its appearance now in the Text Classics series is a major literary event. Happy Valley is the missing piece in the extraordinary jigsaw of White's work.

About this title

Review:

'The outstanding figure in Australian fiction.' (The New York Times)

'One of the greatest magicians of fiction ... White's scope is vast and his invention endless.' (The Observer)

'Patrick White is, in the finest sense, a world novelist. His themes are catholic and complex and he pursues them with a single-minded energy and vision.' (The Guardian)

Book Description:

Patrick White’s magnificent debut – first published 1939, this mesmerising first novel gives us a prolonged glimpse of literary genius in the making.

About this edition

• Publisher: Text Pub Co
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1921922915
• ISBN 13: 9781921922916
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 407