CLARKE, MARCUS (ANDREW HISLOP)

born April 24, 1846, London, Eng. died Aug. 2, 1881, Melbourne, Vic., Australia English-born Australian author known for his novel For the Term of His Natural Life (1874), an important literary work of colonial Australia. At the age of 17 Clarke left England for Australia, where his uncle was a county court judge. After working briefly as a bank clerk, he turned to farming on a remote homestead. By 1867, however, he was writing stories for Australian Magazine and working as a theatre critic on the Melbourne Argus. Commissioned by the Australian Journal to write a serial about convict life, Clarke produced his masterwork, For the Term of His Natural Life, the story of Rufus Dawes, a man falsely convicted of a crime, who falls into the degradation of the convict world. It was written melodramatically in a style of almost garish realism. Clarke enjoyed good company and helped to found the Yorick Club, which numbered among its members many of the literary lights of his day. His numerous novels and tales are collected in The Austral Edition of the Selected Works of Marcus Clarke (1890).