Marcus Andrew Hislop Clarke, known as Marcus Clarke, was born in Kensington, London. His mother died when he was just a small child and he was raised by his father, a lawyer.Marcus Clarke moved to Victoria, Australia, where he had an uncle in the provincial town of Ararat, and landed in Melbourne in June 1863. In 1869 Clarke married the actress Marian Dunn and shortly afterwards they started to raise a family of six children. He died of pleurisy at the age of thirty-five.
