Stella Miles Franklin: A Biography

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Stella Miles Franklin was born in the Australian bush and, at the age of twenty-one, became an international publishing sensation with My Brilliant Career. The book struck a chord with women and girls all over the country, and more than a century later is still regarded as an Australian classic. Miles' early success gave her entree to literary and socialist circles in Sydney and Melbourne. But by 1906 she had decided to make the bold move to travel overseas, and went to work for the women's labour movement in Chicago. In 1915 she relocated to London and quickly found herself travelling to the Balkans to help nurse wounded Allied soldiers. Returning to London she worked for various feminist and progressive causes, all the while continuing to write. A prolific author of plays as well as novels and archetypal bush stories, she often submitted work under pseudonyms which she guarded fiercely all her life. In the 1930s she returned to Australia and determined to take up the cause of Australian writers. Novelist, journalist, nationalist, feminist and larrikin - Miles Franklin's was a life of enormous range. And her endowment of the Miles Franklin literary award not only surprised all who knew her, but founded an Australian literary institution which remains our most prestigious literary award.

Author Bio

Jill Roe, AO (1940-2017), was Professor Emerita in the Department of Modern History at Macquarie University, Sydney. She wrote numerous papers on Miles Franklin's life and work. Her edited selection of Miles Franklin's letters, My Congenials, appeared in 1993, and A Gregarious Culture: Topical Writings of Miles Franklin (with Margaret Bettison) in 2001.