The Full Texture of Literary Life

Literary critics in the 1960s and 1970s, following the lead of the Leavisites and the American New Criticism, analysed texts in their own terms by disregarding their background and context. “How many children had Lady Macbeth?” was considered the irrelevant question critics who couldn’t distinguish between a literary creation and real life asked. Australia’s blockbuster convict-bushranger novels, Kingsley’s Geoffry Hamlyn, Clarke’s His Natural Life and Boldrewood’s Robbery under Arms, for example, were assessed primarily on their “literary merits”.

Michael Wilding was foremost among those who reacted against this self-denying ordinance. Why not investigate the background and historical context of such wonderful imaginative creations to elicit new insights into their magic? In the eleven essays on Marcus Clarke’s life and times and literary creations reproduced here in Marcus Clarke: Novelist, Journalist and Bohemian, Wilding takes us into the heart of…