My Brilliant Career

Miles Franklin

Little, Brown Book Group, Aug 2, 2012 - Fiction - 320 pages

NOW A CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED FILM WITH BAFTA WINNING ACTRESS, JUDY DAVIS

'A splendidly vivid display . . . its sharply detailed, entirely convincing voice' THE TIMES

'An insightful exploration of class, gender and youthful frustration' ANITA SETHI, GUARDIAN

'It combines linguistic surprise and inertness in a way possible only to genius' NEW YORK TIMES

First published in 1901, this Australian classic recounts the live of sixteen-year-old Sybylla Melvyn. Trapped on her parents' outback farm, she simultaneously loves bush life and hates the physical burdens it imposes. For Sybylla longs for a more refined, aesthetic lifestyle - to read, to think, to sing, but most of all to do great things.

Suddenly her life is transformed. Whisked away to live on her grandmother's gracious property, she falls under the eye of the rich and handsome Harry Beecham. And soon she finds herself choosing between everything a conventional life offers and her own plans for a brilliant career.

Contents

• An Introduction to Possum Gully: 2
• A Lifeless Life: 3
• A Career which Soon Careered to an: 4
• Disjointed Sketches and Grumbles: 5

About the author

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.

Franklin then went to America, where she worked for the Women's Trade Union League, and later London and Salonika, where she did war work as a political secretary for the National Housing Council.

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.

Bibliographic information

• Title: My Brilliant Career; Virago Modern Classics
• Author: Miles Franklin
• Contributor: Carmen Callil
• Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group, 2012
• ISBN: 1405519304, 9781405519304
• Length: 320 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Action & Adventure; Fiction / Classics; Fiction / Coming of Age; Fiction / Literary; Fiction / Romance / General; Fiction / Women