Review of Marcus Clarke: An Annotated Bibliography by Ian F. McLaren

Abstract

In recent times Marcus Clarke has been appreciated not simply as a one-book writer but also for the extent and variety of his writing; for his extensive journalism—including literary criticism, political and social comment, documentaries, satires, regular columns—for his stories (e.g. see Michael Wilding ed. Marcus Clarke: Stories Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1983) and most recently for his work in the theatre. And not least, Clarke is becoming recognized as both the centre and the most brilliant recorder of one of Australia's earliest and most important cultural circles, that of post-goldrush Melbourne. His writing epitomizes and pictures much of that metropolitan society. These are the ways in which his biographer Brian Elliott saw him, thus prefiguring and stimulating later lines of interest. By bringing to life the man, his times and his varied activities Elliott provided both a readable and basic biography and a mine of information. Ian McLaren's monumental Bibliography in extending vastly the information about Clarke's writings, their publishing history and responses to them, promises in its way to be a further major stimulus to the study of Clarke and Australian colonial culture.