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Researcher awarded Manning Clark House Fellowship

1 July 2009

Associate Professor Maryanne Dever

Associate Professor Maryanne Dever from the Centre for Women's Studies and Gender Research in the Faculty of Arts has received the 2009 Manning Clark House/Copyright Agency of Australia Fellowship.

The fellowships, now in their third year, enable researchers to stay in the home of the celebrated historian while conducting research in Canberra.

Manning Clark House, designed by Robin Boyd in 1952, is 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 are 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.

Associate Professor Dever said the research would build upon her work on intimate correspondence and the dilemmas researchers face delving into writers’ personal lives through private collections.

"It's quite uncanny to be staying in Manning and Dymphna Clark's home and to see their private papers in situ, even making cups of tea in their tea pots," Associate Professor Dever said.