My Brilliant Career

Miles Franklin

May 2014 · Google Play Public Domain · AI-narrated by Charlotte (from Google)

About this audiobook

My Brilliant Career is a classic Australian work published in 1901 by Stella Miles Franklin, with an introduction by Henry Lawson. A thinly-veiled autobiographical novel, it paints a vivid and sometimes grim picture of rural Australian life in the late 19th Century.

Sybylla Melvyn is the daughter of a man who falls into grinding poverty through inadvised speculation before becoming a hopeless drunk unable to make a living from a small dairy farm. Sybylla longs for the intellectual things in life such as books and music. She wants to become a writer and rebels against the constraints of her life. For a short period she is allowed to stay with her better-off relatives, and there she attracts the attentions of a handsome and rich neighbour, Harold Beecham. The course of true love, however, does not run smoothly for this very independent young woman.

The author, like many other women writers of the time, adopted a version of her name which suggested that she was male in order to get published. Today, the Miles Franklin Award is Australia’s premier literary award, with a companion award, the Stella, open only to women authors.

My Brilliant Career was made into a well-regarded movie in 1979. Directed by Gillian Armstrong, it features Judy Davis as Sybylla and Sam Neil as Harry Beecham.

This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

Ratings and reviews

Love this book. It shows exactly how grown we have advanced from the unjustified racial society that our past has endured. Though I am glad 2 have the opportunity to read this novel written by a strong , talented writer who stood her ground and got her story published 4 the world 2 enjoy and get 2 see the way our lives differ from today's world. Her determination inspired me in so many ways.

I don't know if I'm doing this right again but could somebody please help me you help me thank you I paid $200 but it took $700 from my account I just need somebody to help me to figure out what in the world is going on it blinks out it goes high then it goes low goes low I just want to listen to the stories I enjoy them

I love this book. this book helps me keep up the good work every day and year.

About the author

Miles Franklin was born and reared on farms in remote parts of New South Wales. These early experiences of a family struggling against an inhospitable land served as the basis for her first and best-known novel, My Brilliant Career (1901). The story of Sybylla Melvyn and her fantastic adventures in colonial Australia was made into a successful film, which brought about a revival of interest in Franklin and her long-forgotten novel; the interest, however, has been directed more toward her feminism than her literary work. Immediately after My Brilliant Career, Franklin wrote My Career Goes Bung (1946), which follows Sybylla's experiences as a successful author. Both of these novels foretell Franklin's lifelong revolt against the roles open to women. Through her literary and feminist contacts after the success of My Brilliant Career, Franklin found work as a freelance writer in Sydney before going to the United States in 1905, where she remained for nine years. In Chicago, she engaged in social work and suffragist activity for the National Women's Trade Union League. In 1927, she returned permanently to Australia, where she continued to write. Under the pseudonym "Brent of Bin Bin," she published six novels depicting Australian bush life, but they were never particularly successful. It has been pointed out that by the 1930s Australian fiction was changing, taking up new topics and moving away from realistic accounts of colonial life. Franklin's tireless promotion of Australian writing through her criticism and active involvement in literary circles, along with her feminist activities, make her an important figure in Australian literature, even though much of her work is of more historical significance than literary. Following her death in 1954, the Miles Franklin Award for Fiction was instituted to be given to a novelist whose work authentically represents Australian life.