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Marcus Clarke

Reading Australia: 'For the Term of His Natural Life' by Marcus Clarke

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Reading Australia

In his essay ‘The Fiction Fields of Australia’ (1856), Frederick Sinnett conducts an inquiry ‘into the feasibility of writing Australian novels; or, to use other words, into the suitability of Australian life and scenery for the novel writers’ purpose and, secondly, into the right manner of their treatment’.

Marcus Clarke

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Reading Australia

Marcus Clarke (1846–1881) was an Australian journalist, novelist, and poet, best known for the novel For the Term of His Natural Life (1874) which was originally serialised as His Natural Life in the Australasian Journal.

Cyril Hopkins’ Marcus Clarke edited by Laurie Hergenhan, Ken Stewart and Michael Wilding

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October 2009, no. 315
Susan K. Martin reviews 'Cyril Hopkins’ Marcus Clarke' edited by Laurie Hergenhan, Ken Stewart and Michael Wilding

The slightly odd title of this volume – not Marcus Clarke, but Cyril Hopkins’ Marcus Clarke – is reminiscent of a spate of movies in the 1990s, including Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Those weren’t the authentic products, but this book does present Hopkins’s Clarke, in that much of the volume is made up of his childhood memories of the author of For the Term of His Natural Life (1874) and long extracts from Clarke’s letters to Hopkins.

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The Australian Stage edited by Harold Love & Reverses by Marcus Clarke, edited by Dennis Davison

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May 1986, no. 80
Helen Thomson reviews 'The Australian Stage' edited by Harold Love, 'Reverses' by Marcus Clarke, and 'Les Emigres aux Terres Australes' by Citizen Gamas, translated and edited by Patricia Clancy

The Australian Stage represents an interesting intersection between the academic world and the creative arts, between the long perspective of the historian, and the ephemerality of theatre performances. Its methodology is academic; it proceeds from an examination of documents, of written records of an art form only one aspect of which we think of as being written, the actual texts of plays. However, these are not the documents in question (although some bibliographical information about the plays is also included); rather it is the responses to performances, particularly reviews, written reminiscences, playbills, newspaper reports, which provide, collectively, the material for a historical survey of theatre in Australia.

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