AustLit

'Dymphna Clark has come to the attention of the biographer, Judith Armstrong, and the nation, through her role as the wife of Australia’s best known historian, Manning Clark. Usually, this is not a basis for notoriety or indeed, sufficient attraction to persuade an author to undertake a feminist biography. The biography charts the changes in persona of the young woman throughout her studies and her marriage. The author gives her reason for undertaking this “biography of a wife” as perceiving the need to expose Dymphna Clark as a brilliant linguist and translator in her own right, rather than as she was known – as an academic’s wife and a mother of six children.' (Introduction)