My Brilliant Career (Bolinda Classics)

'I am given to something which a man never pardons in a woman. You will draw away as though I were a snake when you hear.' With this warning, Sybylla confesses to her rich and handsome suitor that she is given to writing stories and bound, therefore, on a brilliant career. In this ironically titled and exuberant novel by Miles Franklin, originally published in 1901, Sybylla tells the story of growing up passionate and rebellious in rural New South Wales, where the most that girls could hope for was to marry or to teach. Sybylla will do neither, but that doesn't stop her from falling in love, and it doesn't make the choices any easier.

Miles Franklin (1879-1954) was born Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin in 1879 on a grazing property near Tumut in NSW. She spent the early part of her life at Brindabella, the family home station in the Monaro region of NSW. After the publication of My Brilliant Career in 1901, Franklin trained as a nurse and worked as a housemaid in both Sydney and Melbourne. She also wrote as a freelance journalist for the Daily Telegraph and The Sydney Morning Herald. Miles Franklin moved to the USA in 1906 where she worked for the National Women's Trade Union league, left for England in 1915 and between 1917 and 1918 worked as a nurse in Ostrovo during the Serbian campaigns. She returned to Sydney in 1932 where she remained until her death at the age of 75.