Novelist, born in Talbingo, New South Wales, SE Australia. A freelance writer in Sydney and Melbourne, she emigrated in 1906 to the USA, and remained abroad, living in England and America, until 1933. Her best-known novel, My Brilliant Career (1901, filmed 1979), was described as the very first Australian novel on account of its original and distinctive Australian character. Its sequel, My Career Goes Bung, written soon afterwards, was not published until 1946. Other novels include Some Everyday Folk - and Dawn (1909), Bring the Monkey (1933), and All That Swagger (1936). The annual Miles Franklin Awards are now among Australia's most prestigious literary prizes.
Miles Franklin (born "Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin", October 14, 1879, died September 19, 1954) was an Australian writer.
Franklin is best known for My Brilliant Career, 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. After its publication in 1901, Franklin tried a career in nursing, and then as a housemaid in Sydney and Melbourne.
In 1906, Franklin moved to the USA and undertook secretarial work for Alice Henry, another Australian, at the National Women's Trade Union league in Chicago, and co-edited the league's magazine, Life and Labor. (This book contains an interesting expansion of the concept of mateship, with two Australian adventuresses and a Hindu man forming a common front against Scotland Yard and the toffs.) Franklin resettled back in Australia in 1932. Although most of these were published under the pseudonym "Brent of Bin Bin," her masterpiece All That Swagger (1936)--a family chronicle novel packed with memorable characters--was published under her own name.
Miles Franklin died in 1954. In her will she bequeathed her estate to establish an annual literary award known as The Miles Franklin Award.
A revival of interest in Franklin occurred in the wake of the celebrated Australian New Wave film "My Brilliant Career" (1979). Significant readership for Franklin's other novels unfortunately remains restricted to Australia.
She also had a school named after her, Miles Franklin Primary School, which is in Evatt in the ACT.
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