Scholar awarded Manning Clark House Fellowship
- Posted:
- June 17th, 2009
- Guest
Marjorie Barnard
Associate Professor Maryanne Dever (Women’s Studies) is a recipient of a 2009 Manning Clark House/Copyright Agency of Australia Fellowship. The Fellowships, now in their third year, enable scholars to stay in home of the celebrated historian while conducting research in Canberra.
Manning Clark House, designed by Robin Boyd in 1952, is the house where Manning and Dymphna Clark lived and worked from 1953 until their deaths in 1991 and 2000 respectively. Manning Clark’s roof top study, where the six volumes of A History of Australia and his other works were written, remains much as it was when the Clarks lived in the house.
While in Canberra, Associate Professor Dever is working on an edition of letters from the writer, Marjorie Barnard, to the influential critic Nettie Palmer. Barnard is perhaps best known for her collaborative novels written with Flora Eldershaw and her collection of short stories, The Persimmon Tree (1943). The letters, held in the National Library, date from the 1930s to the 1960s and provide unparalleled insights into Barnard’s developing career, her successes as a fiction writer and her later disappointments in the face of an increasingly indifferent reading public and a hostile Cold War political culture. Barnard’s letters are also valuable for the insights they offer into the negotiations and compromises that single, university-educated women of that day were required to make in pursuit of their professional ambitions.
More information about Manning Clark House Fellowships is available from the Manning Clarke House website.