My Brilliant Career & My Career Goes Bung

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Two novels in one volume by Australian novelist Miles Franklin. Titles are 'My Brilliant Career', first published 1901 and its sequel, 'My Career Goes Bung', first published 1946. His edition includes introduction by Elizabeth Webby, endnotes, information about the author, extracts from her correspondence, details of the Miles Franklin Award and the 'My Brilliant Career' movie, and suggestions for further reading. Author's other titles include 'Laughter, Not For a Cage' and 'Childhood at Brindabella'.

'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 riotous first novel by Miles Franklin, originally published in 1901, Sybylla tells the story of growing up passionate and rebellious in rural NSW, 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.

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. Miles Franklin travelled to America, where she worked for the Women's Trade Union League, and later during WWI to London and Salonika, where she did war work. 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.