Marcus Clarke was born in London on the 24th of April 1846. As he grew up he was befriended by Cyril and Gerald Manly Hopkins and in fact Cyril's manuscript biography of Clarke (in Sydney's Mitchell Library) constitutes the most complete source we have on Clarke's early years in London. Clarke's mother died when he was young, and as he grew towards adulthood he evidently had expected a reasonable inheritance from his father, a London barrister. But when William Hislop Clarke became seriously ill and mentally unstable, his financial affairs, it turned out, were in complete chaos, leaving Clarke himself destitute. Clarke, at this time, had an uncle in Australia who was judge of the Court of Mines and of the Ararat County Court in the late

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First published 08 January 2001

Citation: McCann, Andrew. "Marcus Clarke". The Literary Encyclopedia. 8 January 2001.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=905, accessed 9 February 2010.]