T. H. White
Terence Hanbury White, known as T. H. White, was a British author born in India who spent most of his adult life in the British Isles. His tumultuous childhood, marked by his parents' divorce, influenced his emotional struggles throughout life. Educated at prestigious institutions, White began his writing career in 1930, initially using the pseudonym James Aston. He gained significant recognition with his 1938 novel, *The Sword in the Stone*, which later became part of his acclaimed series about King Arthur, collectively known as *The Once and Future King*. This series, published in 1958, intricately retells Arthurian legends, blending historical knowledge with modern psychological insights, particularly evident in his portrayal of characters like Morgause and King Arthur himself. White's life was characterized by a profound loneliness and a passion for various interests, from flying to training hawks. He also expressed a desire to support individuals with disabilities, inviting them to his home on the island of Alderney. His final years were marked by unfulfilled emotions and he passed away in Greece, leaving behind a rich legacy of both fiction and nonfiction works that reflect his diverse interests and experiences.
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Subject Terms
T. H. White
English novelist
- Born: May 29, 1906
- Birthplace: Bombay (now Mumbai), India
- Died: January 17, 1964
- Place of death: Piraeus, Greece
Identity: Gay or bisexual
Biography
Although Terence Hanbury White was born in India, he spent most of his adult life in the British Isles. His parents’ bitter divorce colored his childhood and contributed to lifelong emotional problems. Educated at Cheltenham College and Queen’s College, Cambridge, he taught school at Stowe Ridings, Buckinghamshire. There he began his writing career in 1930, at first publishing novels under the pseudonym James Aston. A suppressed homosexual (for which he blamed his mother), White began psychotherapy in 1935 and tried unsuccessfully to have a “normal” love life. In 1937 he resigned his teaching job to devote himself full-time to writing. His first major success was The Sword in the Stone, published in 1938. From 1938 to 1945 White, a pacifist, lived in Ireland. He returned to England after World War II to live on the tiny island of Aldernay in the English Channel. {$S[A]Aston, James;White, T. H.}
White’s greatest success was his retelling of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (1485), which gave him financial security in 1960 after it became the basis for Lerner and Loewe’s musical Camelot. The four novels—The Sword in the Stone, The Witch in the Wood, The Ill-Made Knight, and The Candle in the Wind—with some revisions were collected under the title The Once and Future King in 1958. The Book of Merlyn, the original conclusion of White’s Arthuriad, was written during World War II and sent to White’s London publisher in 1941. Because of its pacifist theme, however, the book was rejected and only published posthumously in 1977.
In these retellings of the legends of King Arthur, White shows a vast knowledge of the Middle Ages and a keen appreciation of medieval culture. More important, he is able to make the sometimes shadowy figures of the legends vital and real, often interpreting his characters with the aid of modern psychology. In the portrayal of Morgause in The Witch in the Wood White presents a thinly disguised and bitter picture of his own mother, but the character of King Arthur is sympathetically depicted. The king becomes an almost tragic figure as he struggles, in the face of mounting opposition, to build an ideal kingdom founded on law and justice instead of on naked force.
White, known to his friends as Tim, was a lonely, often tortured but brilliant and charming man. He would combat depression sometimes with heavy drinking but more often by enthusiasm for what he called his “crazes”: he learned to fly a plane, to fish for salmon, to train hawks, to speak Gaelic, and later in life to sign the deaf alphabet and to read braille. Interested in helping individuals who were blind or deaf, he invited them for summer holidays at his home in Aldernay. On Aldernay he also formed a hopeless and unrevealed love for a twelve-year-old boy he called “Zed,” which tormented his final years. While on a Mediterranean cruise following a lecture tour of the United States (described in the posthumous America at Last), White was found dead in his cabin in the port of Piraeus, Greece, apparently of heart failure. He was buried in the Protestant cemetery in Athens.
White’s nonfiction best exemplifies the wide range of his knowledge and interest. The Age of Scandal and The Scandalmonger, for example, are anthologies of gossipy and scandalous anecdotes about men and women of eighteenth century England. The Goshawk is an account of his attempt to train a hawk after the manner of a medieval falconer; The Book of Beasts is a translation of a medieval bestiary (a collection of legends about actual and legendary animals); and England Have My Bones, The Godstone and the Blackymor, and America at Last are autobiographical accounts of White’s life in England, Ireland, and the United States.
Bibliography
Brewer, Elisabeth. T. H. White’s “The Once and Future King.” Cambridge, England: D. S. Brewer, 1993. Examines White’s work and other Arthurian romances, historical fiction, and fantastic fiction. Includes bibliography and index.
Crane, John K. T. H. White. New York: Twayne, 1974. A competent overview of White’s work. For the beginning student.
Irwin, Robert. “T. H. White.” In The St. James Guide to Fantasy Writers, edited by David Pringle. Detroit: St. James Press, 1996. A good summary account of White’s fantasies.
Kellman, Martin. T. H. White and the Matter of Britain. Lewiston, N.Y.: E. Mellen Press, 1988. Kellman studies the Arthurian legend in detail.
Manlove, C. N. The Impulse of Fantasy Literature. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1983. The chapter on White carefully relates his work to the book’s other subjects and the tradition of British fantasy.
Warner, Sylvia Townsend. T. H. White: A Biography. London: Cape/Chatto & Windus, 1967. A sensitive biography, whose central conclusions are summarized in Warner’s introduction to The Book of Merlyn.