Book description
Trapped on her parents' farm in the hardscrabble Australian outback,
sixteen-year-old Sybylla Melvyn loves the bush but not the toil it
brings. She longs for refinement, and most of all she longs to achieve
great things. Suddenly she falls under the gaze of wealthy, handsome
Harry Beecham . . . and finds herself choosing between the conventional
path of marriage and her plans for a 'brilliant career'. Miles
Franklin (1879-1954) was born into a pioneering family settled in New
South Wales, Australia. She wrote
My Brilliant Career
when she was only sixteen. Publication in 1901 brought instant fame and
a notoriety that was so unwelcome that she forbade its republication
until ten years after her death. Miles Franklin travelled to America,
where she worked for the Women's Trade Union League, and later during
WWI to London and Salonika, where she did war work. In 1933 she returned
to Australia, where she spent the rest of her life. My Career Goes Bung
, the sequel to My Brilliant Career
, was published in 1946, and her autobiography, Childhood at Brindabella
, posthumously in 1963.
