Dr Patricia Clarke is a writer, historian, editor and former journalist, who has written extensively on women in Australian history and on media history. She is the author of fourteen books. Several of her publications are biographies of women writers and others explore the role of letters and diaries in the lives of women.
She is an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academic of Humanities, a Fellow of the Federation of Australian Historical Societies and a former President of the Canberra and District Historical Society.
She was founding honorary secretary of the Independent Scholars Association of Australia (ISAA), 1995-2001, and a member of ISAA ACT council. She was a member of the National Library of Australia's Fellowship Advisory Committee from 1996-2016 and of the ACT Historical Houses Advisory Committee between 2010-2016. She has been a member of the Commonwealth Working Party for the Australian Dictionary of Biography since 1987.
PUBLICATIONS:
- Bold Types - How Australia's First Women Journalists Blazed a Trail, 2022, National Library of Australia
- Great Expectations: Emigrant Governesses in Colonial Australia 2020, National Library of Australia
- Eilean Giblin: A feminist between the wars. Monash University Publishing, Clayton Vic., 2013. Short-listed for 2014 Magarey Medal for Biography.
- Rosa! Rosa! A Life of Rosa Praed, Novelist and Spiritualist, Melbourne University Press, Carlton Vic., 1999.
- Tasma: The Life of Jessie Couvreur, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1994. Joint winner Society of Women Writers’ Non-fiction Award.
AWARDS:
- 1993
- Harold White Fellow at the National Library of Australia
- 1994
- One-year Fellowship, Literature Board at the Australia Council
- 1995
- Joint winner, Society of Women Writers non-fiction award, Tasma: the life of Jessie Couvreur
- June 2001
Awarded Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for service to the promotion of Australian history through research and writing, to the study of Australian women writers of the 19th Century, and to the Canberra and District Historical Society. - 2001
- Three-year Australia Council Fellowship