| Menie Parkes | |
| Birth Name: | Clarinda Sarah Parkes |
| Relatives: | Sir Henry Parkes (father) |
| Birth Date: | 23 July 1839 |
| Birth Place: | at sea, off Cape Howe, New South Wales, Australia |
| Death Place: | Ashfield, New South Wales, Australia |
Clarinda Sarah Parkes (23 July 1839 – 11 October 1915) was an Australian poet and writer. She was also known as Menie Parkes and wrote under that and a number of other pseudonyms, including Patty Parsley, Alethea, Ariel and C. S. P.
Parkes was the daughter of Clarinda (née Varney) and Henry Parkes, later five-time Premier of New South Wales. She was born on board the Strathfieldsaye, off the New South Wales coast, near Cape Howe.[1]
Her first poem appeared in print under her initials, C. S. P., in 1855 in the Empire,[2] a Sydney newspaper owned and edited by her father. In 1859–1860, as Patty Parsley she wrote serialised stories for The Australian Home Companion and Band of Hope Journal.[3] Writing as Ariel, Bitter-Sweet–So Is the World was serialised over 30 weeks in The Sydney Mail in 1860–1861.[4]
On 30 March 1869 Parkes married William Thom, at Werrington.[5] He was a Presbyterian minister and they settled in Pambula, where their first two sons were born,[6] [7] before moving to Ballan, near Ballarat in Victoria.
Parkes's last known published work was a reflection, Sydney Sixty Years Since, published in the Sydney Morning Herald in 1910.[8]
Parkes died at her home in Ashfield, New South Wales on 11 October 1915.[9] She was buried in St Thomas' cemetery at Enfield.[10]
In 1983 A. W. Martin edited a collection of Thom's letters to her father, Letters from Menie : Sir Henry Parkes and his daughter.