"Michael Wilding's essays on Marcus Clarke's life and works, from his schooldays at Highgate with Gerard Manley Hopkins to membership at the Melbourne Bohemian Yorick Club with Adam Lindsay Gordon and Henry Kendall, and his associations with the Chief of Police Captain Frederick Standish, the Irish nationalist politician and political prisoner Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, and the President of the Melbourne Public Library Sir Redmond Barry..."--Back cover.

Contents: Marcus Clarke Bohemian -- Literary friends : Gerard Manley Hopkins and Marcus Clarke -- 'A friend of my people at home' : Marcus Clarke and Captain Frederick Standish -- What do poets drink? : Clarke, Gordon and Kendall at the Yorick -- Marcus Clarke in the colonial city : the journalism -- 'A national school of Australia poetry' and Marcus Clarke's essential recycling -- Old tales of a young country -- His natural life -- Chidiock Tichborne -- The stories -- 'Weird melancholy' : inner and outer landscapes in Marcus Clarkes' stories -- Notes.

Includes bibliographical references and index.