Mary Patricia Clarke OAM FAHA (born 30 July 1926) is a writer, historian and former journalist who now writes about nineteenth century women in Australia. [1]
Clarke was born in Alphington, Melbourne to John L. Ryan, a teacher, and Annie T. Ryan (nee McSweeney). [2] She was educated in Melbourne until the family moved to Sale where she went to secondary school and then at the University of Melbourne.
Clarke worked as a journalist at the Australian News and Information Bureau in Melbourne and Canberra, for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in the Press Gallery, Parliament House, Canberra, as journalist and editor for Maxwell Newton Publications and as Editor of Publications for the National Capital Development Commission. She has published numerous books about women in Australian history, with a particular interest in female journalists. [3]
Clarke is an honorary fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, [4] fellow of the Federation of the Australian Historical Societies [5] and awardee of a Medal of the Order of Australia for contributions to literature on Australian history. [6]
Vida Jane Mary Goldstein was an Australian suffragist and social reformer. She was one of four female candidates at the 1903 federal election, the first at which women were eligible to stand.
Caroline Louisa Waring Calvert was an early Australian writer, botanist and illustrator. While she was well known for her fiction during her lifetime, her long-term significance rests on her botanical work. She is regarded as a ground-breaker for Australian women in journalism and natural science, and is significant in her time for her sympathetic references to Aboriginal Australians in her writings and her encouragement of conservation.
Alexander McPhee Miller is an Australian novelist. Miller is twice winner of the Miles Franklin Award, in 1993 for The Ancestor Game and in 2003 for Journey to the Stone Country. He won the overall award for the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for The Ancestor Game in 1993. He is twice winner of the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards Christina Stead Prize for Conditions of Faith in 2001 and for Lovesong in 2011. In recognition of his impressive body of work and in particular for his novel Autumn Laing he was awarded the Melbourne Prize for Literature in 2012.
Dr Brenda Mary Niall is an Australian biographer, literary critic and journalist. She is particularly noted for her work on Australia's well-known Boyd family of artists and writers. Educated at Genazzano FCJ College, in Kew, Victoria, and the University of Melbourne, Niall began writing during her time as Reader in the Department of English at Monash University.
Rosa Campbell Praed, often credited as Mrs. Campbell Praed, was an Australian novelist in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Her large bibliography covered multiple genres, and books for children as well as adults. She has been described as the first Australian novelist to achieve a significant international reputation.
Jessie Catherine Couvreur was an Australian novelist.
Alexander Hugh Chisholm OBE FRZS also known as Alec Chisholm, was a noted Australian naturalist, journalist, newspaper editor, author and ornithologist. He was a member of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union (RAOU), President of the RAOU 1939–1940, and editor of its journal the Emu from 1926 to 1928. In 1941 he was elected a Fellow of the RAOU in 1941 and the previous year he had been the first recipient of the Australian Natural History Medallion for his work in ornithology and popularising natural history. Chisholm was a prolific and popular writer of articles and books, mainly on birds and nature but also on history, literature and biography.
Robyn Archer, AO, CdOAL is an Australian singer, writer, stage director, artistic director, and public advocate of the arts, in Australia and internationally.
Cecil Anthony John Coady, more commonly publishing as C. A. J. Coady and less formally known as Tony Coady, is a prominent Australian philosopher with an international reputation for his research, particularly in epistemology but also in political and applied philosophy. Coady's best-known work relates to the epistemological problems posed by testimony, most fully expounded in his book Testimony: a Philosophical Study. It was influential in establishing a new branch of inquiry within the field of epistemology. He is also well known for his publications on issues related to political violence. Coady is a regular commentator in the Australian media on philosophical aspects of public affairs.
Anna Maria Bunn (1808–1889) was the anonymous author of The Guardian: a Tale (1838), the first novel published on mainland Australia and the first in the continent by a woman. Bunn's authorship was only established after a historian found a copy of the book in which her son had noted his mother's authorship.
Elizabeth Anne Webby was an Australian literary critic, editor and scholar of literature. Emeritus Professor Webby retired from the Chair of Australian Literature at the University of Sydney in 2007. She edited The Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature and was editor of Southerly from 1988 to 1999.
Mary Cecil Allen was an Australian artist, writer and lecturer. She lived most of her adult life in America, where she was known as Cecil Allen. Allen initially painted landscapes and portraits in her early career, but changed to modernist styles including cubism from the 1930s. In 1927 Allen lectured at New York City venues including the Metropolitan Museum, Columbia University and other institutions. She was sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation. Allen wrote two books of art criticism, The Mirror of the Passing World (1928) and Painters of the Modern Mind (1929), based on her lectures.
Harriet Edquist is an Australian historian and curator, and Professor Emerita in the School of Architecture and Urban Design at RMIT University in Melbourne. Born and educated in Melbourne, she has published widely on and created numerous exhibitions in the field of Australian architecture, art and design history. She has also contributed to the production of Australian design knowledge as the founding editor of the RMIT Design Archives Journal and is a member of the Design Research Institute at RMIT University.
Nina Mikhailovna Christesen pioneered the study of Russian in Australia and founded the Department of Russian Language and Literature at the University of Melbourne in 1946.
Janet Susan McCalman, is an Australian social historian, population researcher and author at the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne. McCalman won the Ernest Scott Prize in 1985 and 2022 (shared); the second woman to have won and one of eight historians to have won the prize twice.
Ann Veronica Helen Moyal was an Australian historian known for her work in the history of science. She held academic positions at the Australian National University (ANU), New South Wales Institute of Technology, and Griffith University, and later worked as an independent scholar.
Catherine Hay Thomson was a Scottish-born Australian undercover journalist, literary agent and educator.
Hilary L. Rubinstein is an Australian historian and author. She researches and writes on British naval history and modern Jewish history.
Shirley Elizabeth McKechnie was an Australian pioneer of contemporary dance as a dancer, choreographer, director and educator.