Manning Clark: Essays on his Place in History

AUSTRALIANA

 Manning Clark’s work provokes violent reactions for and against. His majestic six-volume A History of Australia ‘helped us to know who we are’. Yet attacks on Clark stretch back fifty years, and Peter Ryan accused him recently of writing ‘gooey subjective pap’ much of it ‘false’. These essays offer detailed, scholarly analysis of the History – its style and structure, its dominant themes, its treatment of women and of Aborigines, its sense of place, its reliability. They examine Clark’s place among Australian historians, artists and writers, his public role as ‘the best guru in the business’, his teaching methods, his philosophy of life, and his thinking on national identity. How should we judge Manning Clark’s contribution? What is his place in Australian history? This book seeks to inform opinion and to steady the debate. Its contributors include historians, political scientists, literary critics, classicists, men and women, young and old, friends and enemies.

• 1. Remembering Manning / Don Baker and Russel Ward
• 2. ‘Always a pace or two apart’ / Stuart Macintyre
• 3. A Sentimental Humanist / G. P. Shaw
• 4. Clark and Patrick White / John Rickard
• 5. In Khruschev’s Russia / P. A. Howell
• 6. A History of Australia as Epic / J. S. Ryan
• 7. History Without Facts / M. H. Ellis
• 8. Women in ‘A Man’s World’ / Susan Pfisterer-Smith
• 9. A Sense of Place / John Atchison
• 10. ‘I’m sorry, very sorry…’ / Jo Woolmington
• 11. Two Clarks / John Barrett
• 12. The Whole Game Escaped Him / John Hirst
• 13. A Great Historian? / Alan Atkinson
• 14. The Teacher / Susan Davies
• 15. In the Public Arena / John Warhurst
• 16. The Ryan Affair / Peter Craven
• 17. Clark and National Identity / Miriam Dixson.
• Includes bibliographical references (p. 211-227) and index.

• Clark, Manning, 1915-1991
• Clark, Manning, 1915-1991. History of Australia
• Australia — Historiography