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Miles Franklin

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Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin (14 October 1879Template:Spaced ndash19 September 1954),<ref name="ADB">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> known as Miles Franklin, was an Australian writer and feminist who is best known for her novel My Brilliant Career, published by Blackwoods of Edinburgh 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' organisations. She has had a long-lasting impact on Australian literary life through her endowment of a major annual prize for literature about "Australian Life in any of its phases",<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> the Miles Franklin Award. Her impact was further recognised in 2013 with the creation of the Stella Prize, awarded annually for the best work of literature by an Australian woman.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Life and careerEdit

File:SLNSW 822152 No 39 Suzannah F amp John Franklin parents of Stella Miles Franklin.jpg
Franklin's parents Suzannah and John Franklin

Franklin was born at Talbingo, New South Wales, and grew up in the Brindabella Valley on a property called Brindabella Station.<ref name="ADB" /> She was the eldest child of Australian-born parents, John Maurice Franklin and Susannah Margaret Eleanor Franklin, née Lampe,<ref>State Library of New South Wales</ref> who was the great-granddaughter of Edward Miles (or Moyle) who had arrived with the First Fleet in the Scarborough with a seven-year sentence for theft.<ref name="ADB" /> Her family was a member of the squattocracy. She was educated at home until 1889 when she attended Thornford Public.<ref name="ADB" /> During this period she was encouraged in her writing by her teacher, Mary Gillespie (1856–1938) and Tom Hebblewhite (1857–1923) editor of the local Goulburn newspaper.<ref name="Miles Franklin a brilliant career">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}Template:Cbignore</ref>

File:Miles Franklin, 1901 (31523140262).jpg
Franklin in 1901

Her best known novel, My Brilliant Career, tells the story of an irrepressible teenage girl, Sybylla Melvyn, growing to womanhood in rural New South Wales.<ref>Template:Cite encyclopedia</ref> It was published in 1901 with the support of Australian writer, Henry Lawson.<ref name = "Roe">Roe (1981)</ref> After its publication, Franklin tried a career in nursing, and then as a housemaid in Sydney and Melbourne. While 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, but it was not released to the public until 1946.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> An overtly anti-war play, The Dead Must Not Return, was not published or performed but received a public reading in September 2009.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

In the United States and EnglandEdit

File:SLNSW 822094 21 Miles Franklin.jpg
Undated photo

In 1906, Franklin moved to the US 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.<ref name="ADB" /> Her years in the US are reflected in On Dearborn Street (not published until 1981), a love story that uses American slang in a manner not dissimilar to the early work of Dashiell Hammett. Also while in America she wrote Some Everyday Folk and Dawn (1909), the story of a small-town Australian family, which uses purple prose for deliberate comic effect. She suffered regular bouts of ill health and entered a sanatorium for a period in 1912<ref name="Miles Franklin a brilliant career"/> In 1915, she travelled to England and worked as a cook and earned some money from journalism.<ref name="Miles Franklin a brilliant career"/> In March 1917 Franklin volunteered for war work in the Ostrovo Unit of the Scottish Women's Hospitals during the Serbian campaigns of 1917–18. She served as a cook and later matron's orderly in a 200-bed tent hospital attached to the Serbian army near Lake Ostrovo in Macedonian Greece from July 1917 to February 1918.<ref name="Miles Franklin a brilliant career"/>

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Was made staff cook against my will. ... Then Miss Brown made a row with everyone & insisted on being head. I just let 'em muddle along and take no notice as I've had a year's training in London of English ways. Will think my own thoughts and write a book if the plot comes into my head.{{#if:Miles Franklin (personal diary), describing her wartime service<ref name="transcript">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

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From 1919 to 1926 Franklin worked as Secretary with the National Housing and Town Planning Association in London. She organised a women's international housing convention in 1924.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}Template:Cbignore</ref> Her life in England in the 1920s gave rise to Bring the Monkey (1933), a satire on the English country house mystery novel. The book reveals Franklin's views on nationality and class.<ref name=":0" /> The book was a literary and commercial failure.

Return to AustraliaEdit

Franklin resettled in Australia in 1932 after the death of her father in 1931. During that decade she wrote several historical novels of the Australian bush, most of which were published under the pseudonym "Brent of Bin Bin". New South Wales State Librarian, Dagmar Schmidmaier, said "Miles increasingly feared that nothing she wrote matched the success of My Brilliant Career and resorted to writing under different names, including the pseudonym Brent of Bin Bin, to protect herself from poor reviews."<ref>Miles Franklin: Her Brilliant Yet Troubled Life Revealed</ref> However, All That Swagger was published under her own name in 1936, winning the S. H. Prior Memorial Prize. Franklin also won the S. H. Prior Memorial Prize in 1939 together with Kate Baker for their collaborative work 'Who Was Joseph Furphy?'.

Throughout her life, Franklin actively supported Australian literature. She joined the Fellowship of Australian Writers in 1933 and the Sydney PEN Club in 1935. She encouraged young writers such as Jean Devanny, Sumner Locke Elliott and Ric Throssell and she supported the new literary journals, Meanjin and Southerly.<ref name = "Roe"/> Miles entertained literary figures at her home in Carlton, NSW. An autograph book known as Miles Franklin's Waratah Book held by the State Library of NSW was used for autographs and inscriptions. Guests were encouraged to drink tea from the Waratah Cup<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and to write in the Waratah Book.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

File:Miles Franklin's waratah cup and saucer 1904 a834001.jpg
Miles Franklin's waratah cup and saucer 1904. This cup is part of the collection of the State Library of NSW

In 1937, Franklin declined appointment as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire having taken offence to the appointment of compatriot poet Mary Gilmore to the higher honour of Dame Commander within the same order.<ref name = "Roe2004">Roe (2004)</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

In this period of her life Franklin was a constant attendee and speaker at various cultural and literary events. Her message was centred on free speech and the championing of Australian literature.<ref name=":1" /> Franklin was not a member of any political party, although her diaries reveal an interest in socialism and ASIO did have a file on Franklin during the Cold War. Franklin's literary friend P.R. ('Inky') Stephenson launched the pro-isolationist, anti-war Australia First Movement in late 1941, to which Franklin was vehemently opposed, as evidenced by her diary entries and correspondence at the time - "Reds or pinks or 'rightists' all showed their ignorance" she wrote after attending a AFM meeting, and of Stephenson "I could not have anything to do with his politics".<ref name=":1">Template:Cite book</ref> Franklin was staunchly anti-war and, traumatized by her WWI experiences, very much feared a war on Australian soil at this time.

While Miles Franklin had many suitors, she never married. She died on 19 September 1954, aged 74 and her ashes were scattered in Jounama Creek, Talbingo close to where she was born.<ref name="Miles Franklin a brilliant career"/>

CollaborationsEdit

Miles Franklin engaged in a number of literary collaborations throughout her life. In addition to co-editing the journal Life and Labor with Alice Henry in the US, she also wrote Pioneers on Parade in collaboration with Dymphna Cusack<ref>Spender (1988) p.219</ref> and a biography of Joseph Furphy (1944) "in painful collaboration with Kate Baker".<ref name = "Roe"/> Previously, in 1939, she and Baker had won the Prior Memorial prize for an essay on Furphy.<ref name = "Roe"/>

Dever writes that the letters between Dymphna Cusack and Miles Franklin that are published in Yarn Spinners<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> "provide a see-sawing commentary on the delicate art of literary collaboration".<ref>Dever (2001?)</ref>

LegacyEdit

File:The white feather.jpg
Sketch of Franklin by Geraldine Rede

In her will she made a bequest for her estate to establish an annual literary award known as The Miles Franklin Award. The first winner was Patrick White with Voss in 1957.

The Canberra suburb of Franklin and the nearby primary school Miles Franklin Primary School are named in her honour.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The school holds an annual writing competition in her memory.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Additionally the Franklin Public School in Tumut, NSW is also named in her honour.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

During her lifetime Miles Franklin donated several items to the Mitchell Library. Manuscript material was presented over the period 1937–1942. The various drafts of "Pioneers on Parade" were presented in 1940. She bequeathed her printed book collection, correspondence and notes as well as the poems of Mary Fullerton.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> 47 of Miles Franklin's diaries are in the State Library of New South Wales, including one copy discovered in 2018.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite journal</ref>

A revival of interest in Franklin occurred in the wake of the Australian New Wave film My Brilliant Career (1979), which won several international awards.

In 2014, Google Doodle celebrated her 135th birthday.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In her 2022 novel, Salonika Burning, The Australian writer Gail Jones fictionalises Miles Franklin (as 'Stella'), and her experiences in Macedonia, as a central character, along with British painters Grace Pailthorpe and Stanley Spencer, and Australian adventurer Olive King.

AwardsEdit

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Selected worksEdit

NovelsEdit

Under the pseudonym of "Brent of Bin Bin"Edit

Non-fictionEdit

  • Joseph Furphy: The Legend of a Man and His Book (1944)
  • Laughter, Not for a Cage (1956)
  • Childhood at Brindabella (1963)

ReferencesEdit

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BibliographyEdit

Further readingEdit

  • Barnard, Marjorie (1967) Miles Franklin: The Story of a Famous Australian
  • Brunton, Paul (ed) (2004) The diaries of Miles Franklin, Allen and Unwin
  • Coleman, Verna (1981) "Her Unknown (Brilliant) Career: Miles Franklin in America" Angus and Robertson
  • Martin, Sylvia (2001) Passionate Friends: Mary Fullerton, Mabel Singleton, Miles Franklin, Only Women Press
  • North, Marilla (ed) (2001) Yarn Spinners: A Story in Letters – Dymphna Cusack, Florence James, Miles Franklin, University of Queensland Press
  • Roe, Jill (ed) (1993) Congenials: Miles Franklin and Friends in Letters, Vol. 1 & 2, Angus and Robertson

Archives AtEdit

  • Miles Franklin - Papers, 1841-1954, bequeathed 1954, State Library of New South Wales, MLMSS 364

External linksEdit

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