Marcus Clarke

Clarke was born on 24 April 1846 at 11 Leonard Place, Kensington, London. He was the only son of Chancery lawyer William Hislop Clarke and his wife Amelia Elizabeth Matthews, who died when he was four years old. Several of his family had distinguished themselves in the army, the colonial service or the law. His father had a flourishing practice in London. Clarke expected to enter the Foreign Service upon graduation from Cholmeley Grammar School, Highgate, where he studied with Gerard Manley Hopkins and his brother Cyril. But Clarke’s life was turned upside down when his father suffered a breakdown, which either led to, or was the result of, financial ruin.

Following his father's death, Clarke made the decision to immigrate to Australia in 1863. He was initially taken under the wing of an uncle, James Langton Clarke, a County Court Judge at Ararat, Victoria and spent his first few years in Australia engaged in a variety of occupations, working as a clerk at the Bank of Australasia and as a station hand. In 1867 he became a staff writer for the Argus, arguably Australia’s first literary magazine, contributing a column called ‘The Peripatetic Philosopher’. Clarke later worked for several other papers including the Age, Australasian and Australian Journal. It was around about this time that he began writing for the theatre and met and married the actress Marion Dunn, with whom he eventually had 6 children.

In 1870 Clarke found work with the Melbourne Public Library as Secretary to the Board of Trustees and in 1873 was appointed Sub-Librarian. He was at the centre of Melbourne’s café society, and had a reputation for being witty, urbane and brilliant. It would appear that overwork, heavy drinking and debt led to bouts of anxiety and other related health problems in the mid-1870s. Clarke died on 2 August 1881 from erysipelas. He had spent only 14 years of his life in Australia but his creative output in that time was prodigious: 5 novels, over 40 short stories and more than 20 works for the theatre, not counting his poetry and journalism.

Biographical summary derived from:        

Brian Elliott, ‘Clarke, Marcus Andrew Hislop (1846 - 1881)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 17, Melbourne University Press.

The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature, William H. Wilde, Joy Hooton and Barry Andrews eds, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1985.

AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource (www.austlit.edu.au). AustLit is freely available at many libraries, universities and schools. For further details see: www.austlit.edu.au/subscription