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The Colonial Sphinx

by
April 1981, no. 29

Henry Parkes: A Biography by A.W. Martin

MUP, $29.80 hb, 482 pp

The Colonial Sphinx

by
April 1981, no. 29

Notwithstanding recent expressions of disaffection with large-scale narrative biography (e.g., James Walter's biography of Whitlam), I remain a devotee of the genre. In Australia, our communal sense of identity, our historiographical debates and our literature are diminished by the infrequency of such works.

Although suffering from too prolonged preparation, and over-phenomenological in conception, Henry Parkes is a fine example of the kind of ambitious conventional biography we need. The book is the product of both unflagging empiricism and a wistful identification with Parkes and his Victorian flamboyance of character.

Henry Parkes: A Biography

Henry Parkes: A Biography

by A.W. Martin

MUP, $29.80 hb, 482 pp

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