Miles Franklin (My Brilliant Career)

An Australian author — and the 1979 film adaptation of her work — capture Kim and Amy’s fancy this week on the show. Published in 1901 and written when author Miles Franklin was only eighteen years old, My Brilliant Career became an instant classic of Australian literature and still delights readers with its feisty heroine, Sybylla Melvin, and its realistic depiction of Australian life and lingo at the turn of the 20th century. In our discussion of the novel and its film adaptation (starring Judy Davis and Sam Neill) we’ll explain why Franklin’s fear of being a literary one-hit-wonder proved unfounded, and why her name today graces one of Australia’s top annual literary prizes.

Mentioned in this episode:

Miles Franklin

My Brilliant Career film

My Brilliant Career novel

Judy Davis

Sam Neill

Director Gillain Armstrong

Oscar and Lucinda

Charlotte Grey

Blackwood’s publishing house

Anne of Green Gables

The Thorn Birds

Brent of Bin Bin

Up the Country by Brent of Bin Bin

Lost Ladies of Lit Episode No. 128 on Margaret Oliphant

Henry Lawson

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

Transcript

AMY HELMES: Dear sirs, herewith a yarn which I have written entitled My Brilliant Career. I would take it very kindly if you would read it and state whether or not it is fit for publication. Nothing has been attempted, maybe a few pictures of Australian life with a little of that mythical commodity, love, thrown in for the benefit of young readers. (Always keeping in mind, should there be readers of any age). There will be no mistakes in geography, scenery, or climate, as I write from fact, not fancy. The heroine who tells the story is a study from life and illustrates the misery of being born out of one's sphere. Awaiting reply, faithfully yours, S. M. S. Miles Franklin. 

So, listeners, that's a letter written in 1894 by a budding young Australian writer. (If you couldn't tell by my incredible accent) 18 years old at the time and writing to the Australian publisher Angus and Robertson. 

KIM ASKEW: The letter's signature may initially conjure up the image of a man, but that's intentional, because like many famous women authors of her day, Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin thought she'd have a better shot at getting published that way. 

AMY: Alas, the publishers immediately rejected her manuscript. (Womp, womp.) But, they would later readily admit that it was, quote, “a serious mistake.”

KIM: Big mistake. Huge.

AMY: Yes, thank you, Julia Roberts. The book, My Brilliant Career, was eventually published in 1901 by the Edinburgh publisher Blackwoods. The novel earned Franklin instant fame and became a beloved 

classic of Australian literature. 

KIM: It was adapted into a beautiful film in 1979, starring Judy Davis and Sam Neill. Welcome back, everyone, to another episode of Lost Ladies of Lit. We're your hosts, Kim Askew and Amy Helmes. And Amy, I can't wait to talk more about the book, the film, and the woman behind the work.

AMY: Me too, this is going to be fun. So let's raid the stacks (and the film archives) and get started!

[intro music plays]

AMY: Before we dive into today's episode, Kim, we first have a fan of the show to thank for this. A while ago, a participant in our Lost Ladies of Lit Facebook Forum, Susan Dillon, mentioned that she loved the movie My Brilliant Career. I had never heard of it, let alone watched it. So months later I decided to queue it up on Netflix, and I think within maybe 10 minutes of the opening credits, I was frantically texting you, saying, "Oh my god, Kim, you have to watch this!"

KIM: Yeah, I can't believe I had never watched it before. I don't know how I, and we, let this one slip past our radar, but I'm glad it's fixed now.

AMY: I know, at least we've finally come to it. I had also texted my friend, Ruth, who is from Australia, and I said, "I just discovered Miles Franklin!" And she replied, "Congratulations, I'm so happy for you!" So it's one of those, um, “if you know, you know,” sort of things, I guess. This film, though, it's gorgeous. It feels a bit Merchant/Ivory, I would say, maybe because it's kind of from the same era of filmmaking. But it has the flair of the Australian bush, for sure. And it was directed by Gillian Armstrong, who also directed the Winona Ryder version of Little Women that came out in the mid-Nineties. She also directed films like Charlotte Grey and Oscar and Lucinda. Kim, do you want to first set up what the story is about? 

KIM: Yeah, sure. So, it tells the story of Sybylla Melvin. She's a real spitfire of a girl, and the character's played by Judy Davis. And it's set in this fictional locale called Possum Gully. She leads a grimy and toilsome existence on her family's dairy farm, and though she's dreaming of this bigger life, she's basically just another extra mouth to feed on the farm. So she eventually gets shipped off to live with her grandmother and single aunt on their ranch in Caddagat. (And that's not a bad thing — the grandmother's actually relatively wealthy, unlike Sybylla's immediate family.) And the hope there is that this wild child, Sybylla, can be tamed into a proper young lady. Naturally, Sybylla is considered something of a novelty when she arrives at Caddagat, and she attracts the attention of many men who are delighted by her precociousness. This includes an eligible bachelor named Harry Beecham. He's played by Sam Neill. Their relationship wavers between flirtatious and contentious (as the best ones do, right?) throughout the course of this film.

AMY: So yeah, let's start with Judy Davis, who is great casting. I mean, the hair ought to be its own complete character.

KIM: Helena Bottom Carter meshed with Anne of Green 

Gables, right? There's a little Anne of Green Gables about her where she speaks her mind and she has crazy hair and freckles.

AMY: Crazy hair, crazy freckles. She's got that kind of big giant Gibson girl hair, but it's all like falling out. It really showcases the wildness of her personality. 

KIM: Yes. And she has these high aspirations, but she comes from, you know, not the background that she aspires to be in, basically.

AMY: She's rough around the edges. And so when she gets to Caddagat, which is grandma's ranch, there is the obligatory makeover scene right off the bat. She laments the fact that she's so ugly, you know, she's like pitying herself. Like, “I'm just an ugly girl!” And Aunt Helen is like, “Not on my watch, girl!”

KIM: Love it!

AMY: And then they cue the makeover scene, and then suddenly she's a little more polished and put together for the rest of the film. Which gets us to Sam Neill, who is Harry Beachum. TIE ME KANGAROO DOWN, SPORT!!!!

KIM: Oh my god. Oh my god. 

AMY: Who knew he was so hot?

KIM: He's so cute. You know what? This reminds me of a bit… you might disagree, but I'm feeling like Richard Chamberlain and The Thorn Birds where you go back and you look at and you're like, “Oh, wow, that's why our moms loved him.” Yeah. 

AMY: He's attractive! Young Sam Neill reminds me a little bit of Matthew Goode, that British actor. Like, and was..

KIM: He's so cute!

AMY: He’s so cute! I only knew him older from Jurassic Park when he's like, running away from dinosaurs, but oh my god, I'm so sorry for not realizing how incredibly gorgeous you once were! Now let me worship at your feet and hope that Sybylla can snag you. Okay, so, before they meet up in the movie, Sybylla has no intentions of getting married, and she tells her grandmother about this, which does not make the grandmother too happy. She instead decides that she is going to have a career. So here's a bit from the movie: 

[plays clip]

All right, so she's eating an apple there casually while she's having this conversation with her grandmother. 

KIM: Apple….!

AMY: Yeah, the apple which, came from the apple orchard, which 

is where she will soon meet Harry Beecham. Hot Sam Neill. 

KIM: Ooh, I feel like maybe we did not talk about apples 

as symbolism, and the tree, and the Garden of Eden, and Eve. 

AMY: Look at you, English major! 

KIM: I’m like, connecting it. Oh, I know. Seriously. That's the whole thing. Because, talk about the meet-cute

AMY: Okay. Yeah, it's an adorable way that they meet in the film and actually a little bit racy, I think, because, um, her knickers wind up showing or her bloomers wind up showing a little bit when she climbs down out of the tree! He stumbles upon her picking apples, and it's a case of mistaken identity. Here's another clip. 

[plays clip]

Okay. So she storms off through the meadow after that. I'm going to put my foot in your face. 

KIM: Oh my gosh. It also takes me again back to Anne of Green Gables and Gilbert when they first meet. Didn't he like, pull her pigtails or hit her over the head with a slate or something? It's that same idea. 

AMY: Yeah, exactly. People like to have that little set up and then, of course, Harry Beecham comes for a fancy dinner that night and…

KIM: …and it's like,”Uh-oh!”

AMY: He is like, “Oh shit,” you know, and she plays with him over dinner, 

make him feel stupid. 

KIM: Yeah, and she's not like the other ladies. 

AMY: Yeah, she's like trying to be more of a sophisticate, but you just 

can't take the girl off the dairy farm, right? There's another fancy dinner scene, and I love the line in the movie. She's sitting with all these adults, and somebody across the table says, “Oh, Furlong's just bought himself 

a fine young bull.” And Sybylla answers, “Oh, that will make some of the cows happy.” Completely inappropriate. And all the other adults at the table are just like, “Oh, my God, this girl!”

KIM: Yeah.

AMY: But she doesn't care!

KIM: They also do love that she speaks her mind, too, at the same

time. 

AMY: She's a breath of fresh air, for sure.

KIM: She's a breath of fresh air, yeah. Oh my gosh, speaking of…we were talking about sexual tension, the pillow fight scene!

AMY: The pillow fight! Oh my gosh. It starts off in the house, they run through the fields chasing each other with pillows…

KIM: And you're like, “How is this gonna end?”

AMY: I know! Well, it ends with them both lying in the grass,

completely panting, out of breath, staring at each other. All that was missing was the cigarette, basically.

KIM: Totally. Totally. Yep. 

AMY: So then we have a dorky character, a jackaroo named Frank Hawdon. He thinks, presumptuously, that he's going to be the one who marries Sybylla, because he's such a catch. 

KIM: A la Mr. Collins. 

AMY: A la Mr. Collins, a la Cecil, from A Room with a View. He's 

dorky, but she shows him who's boss on a number of occasions. And at one point, she pushes him into a sheep corral rather than accept his attentions. And here is a clip of her grandmother admonishing her:

[plays clip]

Grandma's not happy! But actually, we like the grandma, right?

KIM: We like the grandmother. Yeah, she wants the best for Sybylla. They just have different ideas of what that means. 

AMY: Yeah. You know, she's not nice to Frank Hawdon, but she's really not nice to Harry Beecham either, to be fair. 

KIM: She isn't.

AMY: He proposes to her in a scene that's not unlike Pride and Prejudice Mr. Darcy's original proposal to Elizabeth, where it's like, “Dude, you're gonna have to do better than that.” And in this case, Sybylla literally smacks Harry across the face with a stock whip. Feisty!

KIM: I like it. 

AMY: And I have that clip as well. Let me play it. 

[plays clip]

I love that he's like “bloody woman!!” But she's not having it. And I should also mention that Miles Franklin, the author of this tale, she really liked whips. She was happy that a whip was included in the original cover art of My Brilliant Career. And she owned a couple of whips that she would walk around with. So…

KIM: Ooh, why don't you have a seat on the couch? Let's talk about that. Yeah.

AMY: Some pillow fights, some S&M…

KIM: Yeah. But on the bright side, Harry's relationship with Sybylla, it does deepen following this proposal that goes sour, but then he actually loses his family fortune. And of course, our heroine doesn't give a crap about his money, but she does ask him for time. She strikes a deal with him where he'll give her two years before they wed. She wants to find herself. But in the interim, She has to go and be a governess for a brood of rowdy children living in some backwater locale. As the viewer, you're just wondering how she will make her way back from this pit of despair, basically, to a life she truly wants. So Amy, I know you ended up reading the novel after watching the movie. Are there differences from the movie?

AMY: I would say the novel is just so much richer. I mean, if you think Sybylla has big personality in the movie, just wait till you read the book. You get a sense of how absolutely funny she really is. The things she says, the larger-than-life personality. I think the film can only give a small taste of her sassy ways, in that sense. She's really slangy in the book. You know, filthy mouth. She's kind of “Eliza Doolittle meets Anne Shirley with a 

little bit of dirty Helen Cromwell thrown in for good measure,” if you

remember that episode, because her mouth is like a sewer. And I listened to the book actually, which was great because the narrator had an Australian accent. So, um, 

KIM: I love that. I want to listen to it.

AMY: Yeah, I think it's great to listen to just because hearing all the place names said in the Australian accent and the, you know, “dingoes and wallabies and snakes and drovers and duffers and jackaroos.” And then there's, um, every place name is, um, It's like Binbin and Bruggabong and Caddagat, you know? You just feel really transported there. I would recommend to someone who's completely unfamiliar with this title, watching the film first, because you will so fall in love with the film, and then go read the book. Because my one thing that I think the film does better, (and maybe I'm still hung up on hot Sam Neill) but Harry Beecham in the book is not quite as much of a catch to me as Sam Neill is. He's got much more of a temper and is much more kind of taciturn and surly in the book, which in some ways is good because Sybylla needs a guy that can match her feistiness, right? But at some points in the book, you're like, Girl, this guy's, you know, from our modern sensibilities, you're like, “I 

don't like the way he's treating you.”

KIM: Yeah. Plus you've got Sam Neill in the flesh…

AMY: Yeah. He's just so hot. I don't even think he's meant to be attractive in the book necessarily, the way she describes him. I mean, that's all in keeping with the plot of the book. But, um, it's a very feminist text. There's so much throughout the book where she's talking about the status of women. Also, class distinctions, which is going to come into play a little bit more in Miles Franklin's life. I can totally understand this book's appeal to Australian readers. It really is showing their world, the beauty of the land, what their people are like. And you can see how Australians would have gone absolutely nuts for it when it was published. And they did. Miles Franklin was sort of an instant celebrity. She got tons of fan mail and lots of it was from young Australian girls who felt like they could really identify with Sybylla and her hopes and dreams.

KIM: So let's back up a second, though. As we said earlier, the book is based off Miles Franklin's own experiences. And she wrote it when she was 18, but the book at first was rejected. Um, so how did it come to be published by Blackwoods of all places? (Listeners, you may remember that Blackwoods published people like the Bronte sisters, George Elliott, and that one of our previous “lost ladies,” Margaret Oliphant, actually worked for Blackwoods.) How did they come across this Australian novel?

AMY: They're like hit-makers, right? So, I mean, an incredible coup for her. Um, so after she had gotten the rejection from that Australian publisher that I mentioned at the top of the show, she did a bit of revising on the manuscript and she got some helpful feedback from her former tutors and teachers. And she decided to send it to a well known Australian writer named Henry Lawson. He liked it a lot and he said, “Hey, I'm about to go to England. My agent's there. Do you want me to take the manuscript along and see if he can shop it around?” And of course she said yes. So he gave it to his agent in England who also happened to have Joseph Conrad, H. G. Wells, and Henry James for clients. And that agent loved it and persuaded Blackwoods to accept the manuscript. 

KIM: So we said earlier she didn't want people to know it was written by a woman, but it sounds like people found out pretty quickly.

AMY: Yeah, because in that Blackwoods edition, they featured an introduction written by Henry Lawson, that Australian writer. And he lets the cat out of the bag in the introduction and says it's written by a young lady. Miles Franklin would go on to write under a different pseudonym later, which is an interesting story. And we're going to get to that in a second. But yeah, from this point on in her career, she continued to go by Miles Franklin. And Miles was actually, A nod to her great great grandfather, Edward Miles, who came to Australia from England as a convict. So, 

she's hitting all the Australia buttons here that we want.

KIM: Totally. Totally. And then, so the book had a lot of immediate fans. The Glasgow Herald wrote of it, “the girl writes as the author of Jane Eyre wrote, out of heart, with a hatred of shams.” There was a Sydney newspaper, The Bulletin, that called it “a book full of sunlight” and also “the very first Australian novel to be published.” And other outlets criticized the book though, citing the heroine as unpleasant and questioning whether it was right that she depicted her own parents in such a negative light.

AMY: Right, so, in the book, I think even more so than in the film, the parents don't come across super great. The dad seems like more of a loser that can't support his family, has drinking problems, things like that. The mom is cold and, um, you know, exhausted by her family. But I think she does that on purpose to contrast Sybylla's own ambitions to kind of rise above what her mother's life was. So I think that's done on purpose. So there were locals and, you know, relatives and neighbors that knew her and knew the family that thought she had gone too far in the depiction of people she actually knew. Her uncle was especially angry and said that the book was all malicious lies. But those people that were closest to her that were depicted in the book, so her parents, her siblings, her grandmother, they all found the novel very amusing and they were pleased with it. Miles really did stress after the book came out that it was fiction. It was not the story of her life, per se. It was inspired by her own life, but she was making stuff up.

KIM: Right. It wasn't a memoir. But there were some similarities though, right?

AMY: Oh, for sure. I mean, many facets of Sybylla's life in the book line up with Miles's own life, including, you know, her family did have financial troubles. The dad went bankrupt. She did go stay with her grandmother, um, for stretches at a time, and she did later become a governess for a spell, although I don't think it was quite as, um… 

KIM: “Cold Comfort Farm…?”

AMY: Yeah, I don't think it was quite as cold as Cold Comfort Farm. 

That section of the film and book also reminds me of Jane Eyre when she goes off away from Rochester in the second half of the book and you're sort of just waiting for her to get through that section so that she can get back. 

KIM: Important though, was there a real Harry Beecham? I want to know.

AMY: Ah, yes, right. That's the big question. Apparently she had lots of suitors. You’ve got to remember that men outnumbered women in the Australian bush around this time — by a lot. Any woman was a hot commodity. Guys were falling over themselves around Miles. And she sounds like she was a total flirt. Not surprising, right. when you're reading the book and watching the film, you get that sense from Sybylla. She likes to play with boys. Um, she had several proposals in her lifetime. Maybe Harry Beecham is kind of a composite of a few different gents in her life.

KIM: Right. 

AMY: In real life though, Miles Franklin didn't get married. She makes a 

different choice with her life. 

KIM: Yeah, and we know from the book and the film that Sybylla Melvin is always glancing toward the proverbial horizons. She's not cut out for spending the rest of her life in Caddagat or Possum Gully, for that matter.

AMY: That's right. And Miles Franklin feels that same yearning. So after the success of My Brilliant Career, she decides it's time to move on, to make a real career out of writing, get out of the bush. Her destination is America. She has big plans to move to New York City, but somehow, en route, she lands in Chicago instead, that's where she settles, and that's also where 

reality sets in for her a little bit. 

KIM: Okay, so tell us more. What happened?

AMY: Okay, so she had this big, easy, kind of success with the first novel, right? In Chicago, she's doing a lot more writing and she thinks it's going to be just as easy to get the next titles banged out and they're going to sell just as well, but her writing is not necessarily landing anywhere. She's finding it difficult to get published the second time around. She gets lots of rejections. The few novels she does get published, they have tepid sales. She, of course, is never giving up, but she's got to make a living. So she ends up getting involved with work in a women's labor union movement. Fighting for change, all that kind of stuff. By the end of her stay in America, she advances to become the national secretary of this cause. And after that, she moves to London and she becomes a secretary to a housing reform organization. And then when World War I strikes. She goes to Macedonia and works as a hospital orderly. And I'm kind of rushing through all this because as fascinating as all this may be, I just want to be back in the Australian Outback. I don't want labor unions. I want jackaroos. I want wallabies. I want “Waltzing Matilda,” you know? I'm missing Sybylla Melvin and her world. And therein lies the problem for Miles Franklin. No one seems willing to let her break out as a writer from this mold that she created with My Brilliant Career. 

KIM: Right. I mean, it's basically the curse of the successful debut novel. And it's funny, because I said Cold Comfort Farm before, but that's what happened to Stella Gibbons, too. She ended up being super annoyed that people only associated her with that particular book. So same thing happened. 

AMY: People still thought of her as that young girl, you know, who wrote My Brilliant Career. And she's in her late 20s now, and she's just not getting the chance to prove she can do anything else. So let's jump back to Australia, which is where Miles finally returns permanently after 18 years living in the U. S. That whole scope that I just glossed over because it bored me (it's not boring at all — she actually did a lot of interesting things) but we want to get back to Australia. She is back with her parents. She kind of hates it at first. It feels very provincial to her after living in Chicago and London. She writes at one point, “Cannot live long in this awful atmosphere. Awful old people killing me by inches.” Which just made me laugh. Think about moving back in with your parents or whatever.

KIM: Oh, yeah. 

AMY: You're just like, “Oh, what am I doing back here?” And maybe she also feels a little bit like she's like, a bit of a letdown. Like she had this brilliant debut novel, but now she's back and she doesn't have major literary success anymore. But she feels determined. She really wants to bust free from the chains of My Brilliant Career. And she's going to do that with the help of an imaginary friend. And this is where her career takes off again.]

KIM: Oh my gosh, what happens? What happens to her?

AMY: Yeah. So right around this time, she's finishing up another book called Up the Country about the Australian Outback. So that's good. She's back in the Australian realm, right? (Some of the stuff she had been writing before was set in America or England or whatever.) So she wants to get this thing published. She approaches Blackwoods again, but this time she pretends to be a man called William Blake, who is writing under the pseudonym Brent of Bin Bin. So she just makes up a new personality for Blackwoods. It's not Miles Franklin at all. Yeah. And it works. Blacksmiths is like, “Oh, here's this new guy. And we like this manuscript.

Let's do it.” The book is published. It becomes an enormous success. He, uh, he, she would, um, you know, continue to write a critically acclaimed series of books under this name, Brent of Bin Bin. And, you know, the books sell relatively well. She's not making a fortune off of it, but it's definitely, the reviews are great, people like these books, and everyone is left wondering, who is Brent of Bin Bin? They know it's a pseudonym, but who is the real writer? And theories abound. Some people start to put clues together. And are wondering if maybe it could be Miles, but she is vigilant about not being outed. She personally handles all the correspondence with the publisher, but she pretends to be another woman who's kind of the go between. It's all confusing, and maybe I don't have that all completely straight, but I mean, imagine her trying to keep it all completely straight. Pretending to be Blake, who goes by another name when he writes, um, yeah, 

KIM: This is fascinating. And it's also reminding me… shades of Elena Ferrante, right?

AMY: Yeah.

KIM: And then the validation Miles Franklin must have felt. She's realizing, “Oh, I can write another book. I'm not a one-hit-wonder. I mean…

AMY: Yeah.

KIM: That must have been a good feeling, even though it's not under her name.

AMY: Yeah. But just knowing she still has the magic. And personally, it would have killed me to watch Brent of Bin Bin have success and have to keep quiet about it. I think if it was me, I would have come forward and been like, “Yeah, that's me!” Um, but in Miles's case, the truth never came out until after her death. She wanted it that way. (Though most people, by the time she died, it was kind of common knowledge. Like, yeah, we're all thinking it really was Miles Franklin.) But this stint as Brent of Bin Bin was a confidence-booster, because once she started having success there with these, Up the Country books, she realizes like, I'm going to start writing again under my own name, and I think I can do this, and so she released a title called Bring the Monkey, which is a sort of novel inspired by the pet monkey of a friend she knew in London. That one sold poorly, but the reviewers were complimentary. She goes on to write, um, a couple of sequels to My Brilliant Career. One of the titles is called My Career Goes Bung, which follows [Kim laughing] I know, which follows Sybylla in the literary world in Sydney. She's probably conveying like, “Here's what really happened to me. I was a one-hit-wonder for a while and I'm struggling now as a writer” is the sense that I get that Sybylla is also having in the book. Um, she wrote a memoir about her childhood called My Childhood at Brindabella. So that would be the story of her life before My Brilliant Career starts. Um, then she's got another book that's really worth checking out called All That Swagger. And it is an epic that follows a pioneering family across four generations. And this book won a literary award called the Prior Prize, which she was elated about. I mean, such validation for her. And here's the funny part: One of the judges for that prize noted “only an Australian could have written it, and there had been nothing written like it except the Brent of Bin Bin novels.” So, I mean, how crazy? She's like, you people are so stupid. Both of those are me! Um, anyway, that book, All That Swagger, actually became her most successful novel. And she began to be recognized as a really important Australian literary figure now. So, yay for Miles Franklin! She's got her mojo back!

KIM: I know, and this is so weird — I had mentioned The Thorn Birds earlier and now, that book that you're describing actually being about the generations of an Australian pioneer family, that has me thinking of the The Thorn Birds again. I wonder if it's anything like that.

AMY: I know I haven't read it, but I'm interested. It's apparently really long as epic novels are, but, um, maybe worth checking out. And also, Kim, we need another Thorn Birds watch party. I don't think we've watched it 

for like 15 years or something like that. So It's time. It's time. Um, we always get a good kick outta that one. But back to Miles Franklin, she died in 1954 at the age of 74. Her ashes were scattered within sight of the original homestead where she was born. And she decided to bequeath her estate to a literary prize endowment that would help Australian writers going forward. So it's called the Miles Franklin award and it's actually Australia's highest literary prize. It's basically Australia's version of the Booker prize, I guess. Um, it's an annual prize that is given to a book about Australian life in any of its phases. So really trying to honor and, you know, celebrate books about Australia. There's also a Stella Prize in Australia that's named after her, real first name, and that's for Australian women writers.

KIM: That's so cool that she did that, um, the, uh, literary prize. So she remains a beloved literary figure to Australians and the 1979 film obviously renewed interest in her work.

AMY: Today you can find a lot of her books available very cheaply, like 99 cents or so, on Kindle. So go check her out. There's no reason not to. I also want to give a shout out to the author Jill Rowe, whose book, Miles Franklin, A Short Biography, proved quite helpful in our putting together this episode for today. And Kim, I will see us out here by reading the last few paragraphs of My Brilliant Career because it's really a poignant passage and it's kind of an homage to Australians. I think it's really beautiful. So I'm going to do that. And I'm going to omit my Australian accent because I think once was enough. Um, and playing in the background, you are going to hear lovely music by Schumann, which is part of the soundtrack to the My Brilliant Career film that I think really makes the film. I love the music in it. So here's how she ends the book. There's a few paragraphs where she says how proud she is of all Australian men and then all Australian women.

And she says, “I love you. I love you” to them. And then she writes: 

The great sun is sinking in the west, grinning and winking knowingly as he goes, upon the starving stock and drought-smitten wastes of land. Nearer he draws to the gum-tree scrubby horizon, turns the clouds to orange, scarlet, silver flame, gold! Down, down he goes. The gorgeous, garish splendour of sunset pageantry flames out; the long shadows eagerly cover all; the kookaburras laugh their merry mocking good-night; the clouds fade to turquoise, green, and grey; the stars peep shyly out; the soft call of the mopoke arises in the gullies! With much love and good wishes to all--Good night! Good-bye!

AMEN

Our theme song was written and performed by Jenny Malone and our logo is designed by Harriet Grant.

Lost Ladies of Lit is produced by AMY Helms and Kim Askew.