MY CAREER GOES BUNG

Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin, known as Miles Franklin (14 October 1879 – 19 September 1954) was an Australian writer and feminist who is best known for her novel My Brilliant Career, published in 1901. While she wrote throughout her life, her other major literary success, All That Swagger, was not published until 1936.

She was committed to the development of a uniquely Australian form of literature, and she actively pursued this goal by supporting writers, literary journals, and writers' organizations. She has had a long-lasting impact on Australian literary life through her endowment of a major literary award known as the Miles Franklin Award.

Her best known novel, My Brilliant Career, tells the story of an irrepressible teenage feminist growing to womanhood in rural New South Wales. This heroine, Sybylla Melvyn, is one of the most endearing characters in Australian literature and obviously has much in common with Franklin herself, who wrote the novel while she was still a teenager. It was published in 1901 with the support of Australian writer, Henry Lawson. After its publication, Franklin tried a career in nursing, and then as a housemaid in Sydney and Melbourne. Whilst doing this she contributed pieces to The Daily Telegraph and The Sydney Morning Herald under the pseudonyms "An Old Bachelor" and "Vernacular." During this period she wrote MY CAREER GOES BUNG in which Sybylla encounters the Sydney literary set. The book proved too hot to publish and did not become available to the public until 1946.

*******************************
"Come now, what's this fellow to be like?"

"At least he would not be afraid of freedom and the light of
understanding for women as well as men. His mind would not prescribe
asinine limitations for women as part of God's will. He would not take
rabies at the idea of a world where there would be no hungry children, no
unprovided old age, and he would be ashamed to have harlots at street
corners awaiting his patronage and then come to clean girls and blither
about LOVE."

Miles repeatedly expressed strong views about the need for equality between men and women, and her scorn for religion. She was one of the early feminists, even though she grew up in isolation in a farming community without much formal education.