Dymphna Clark Lectures

[Hilma] Dymphna Clark (1916 – 2000)

Dymphna Clark was born in Melbourne of Swedish and Flemish parents, from whom she inherited an extraordinary discipline and energy, and a love of European literature, food and music.

She completed honours at Melbourne University where her father, Augustin Lodewyckx, was Head of Germanic Languages, and then travelled to Germany as the 1938 Humboldt scholar. As the Nazi regime continued to rise she abandoned her doctoral studies and reunited with Manning Clark in Oxford, marrying him there in 1939. In addition to maintaining a large household (there were six children) she provided invaluable assistance to her husband’s greatest works by editing, proof reading and research.

Dymphna Clark was a distinguished scholar in her own right. She was fluent in eight languages, could “get by” in another four, and lectured in German at the ANU. She established Manning Clark House, and enlivened the community with a passion for the environment. She was a driving force behind the formation of the Aboriginal Treaty Committee, together with noted economist, H.C. Coombs, and the poet Judith Wright.

Dymphna Clark’s major work is the translation of the botanist Charles Baron von Hügel’s New Holland Journals 1833-34, which was published in 1994 by MUP at the Miegunyah Press in association with the State Library of New South Wales.

The Dymphna Clark Lecture was created in Dymphna’s honour in 2003.