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Manning ClarkStock informationGeneral Fields
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DescriptionManning Clark was one of the most influential Australian intellectuals of the last half century. His political pronouncements were often highly provocative and his sweeping judgements, dire denunciations and oracular prophecies infuriated conservatives. His most enduring legacy, however, was his magisterial 6-volume History of Australia. In it he reshaped the now familiar story of Australia's modern evolution; from the First Fleet's arrival, the convicts, the rum rebellion, gold, the sheep's back, Federation, and the glorious defeat at Gallipoli, up to the nation emerging from the Great Depression and on the threshold of a new world war. Within the dramatic narrative, which he envisaged as an epic, are highly original and insightful portraits of its great men with their tragic flaws: Phillip, Macquarie, Burke and Wills, Bligh, Wentworth, and above all, Henry Lawson. But behind this ambitious work - with its more than a million words and 25 long, slogging years of research and scholarship - was a man as flawed as the historical figures he was presenting. Author descriptionBrian Matthews is the acclaimed author of Louisa, and more recently of his idiosyncratic memoir, A Fine and Private Place. |