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My Brilliant Career

By Miles Franklin
Series: Penguin Clothbound Classics
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Brief Description
The beloved Australian classic, published in a stunning Penguin Clothbound Classics edition for the first time. My Brilliant Career, Miles Franklin's debut novel, follows the vivacious and rebellious sixteen-year-old Sybylla Melvyn—closely modelled on Franklin herself—as she fights to break free of restrictive bush life. Growing up... Read More
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The beloved Australian classic, published in a stunning Penguin Clothbound Classics edition for the first time.

My Brilliant Career, Miles Franklin's debut novel, follows the vivacious and rebellious sixteen-year-old Sybylla Melvyn—closely modelled on Franklin herself—as she fights to break free of restrictive bush life. Growing up on her parents' outback farm, Sybylla is desperate to read, write, sing, and achieve great things. Yet, her aspirations for a 'brilliant career' are persistently thwarted, first by the arduous demands of rural family life, and later by the shackles of a proposed conventional marriage to the wealthy Harold Beecham. With only her brilliant, conflicted mind to guide her, Sybylla is forced to define a life on her own terms.

My Brilliant Career is acclaimed for capturing the spirit of Australia at the turn of the twentieth century. The struggles of its fiery, precocious protagonist shine a light on the emergent women's rights and suffrage movement during this period, and memorably evoke the intensity of youth.

Series: Penguin Clothbound Classics

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780241699584

Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd

Format: Hardback

Date Published: 30 January 2025

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Penguin Classics

Audience: General / adult, Tertiary education, Professional and scholarly

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 23.0mm

Width: 136.0mm

Height: 205.0mm

Weight: 385g

Pages: 272

Collections

Best Sellers at Book Hero Classic Fiction Classic General Fiction Education & Reference Fiction General Fiction In Stock Books In-Stock Fiction Books Literary Fiction Miles Franklin Mother's Day Fiction Mother's Day Gifts New Release Fiction Penguin Books Penguin Classics Series: Penguin Clothbound Classics

About the Author

Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin (1879-1954) was born in Old Talbingo, Australia. Despite a difficult and isolated childhood - she grew up in the impoverished bush regions of New South Wales, with limited education - she completed her first book at the age of just nineteen. The ironically titled My Brilliant Career (1901) was published under a male pseudonym, to immediate success and acclaim. Its story of an impassioned, ambitious heroine frustrated by rural bush life resonated with young Australian women and established Franklin as a bold new feminist voice in literature. Following the publication of her debut novel, Franklin moved to Sydney, then on to America and Britain. She wrote and published a total of nineteen books across her lifetime, as well as working as an editor and women's advocate in organisations such as the National Women's Trade Union League. Her endowment of a major literary award - the Miles Franklin Award - has consolidated her legacy in Australian literary life.

Also by Miles Franklin

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  • My Brilliant Career
    "This is not a romance - I have too often faced the music of life to the tune of hardship to waste time in snivelling and gushing over fancies and dreams; neither is it a novel, but simply a yarn - a real yarn. Oh!" Written with all the high spirits of youth, My Brilliant Career is the unforgettable tale...
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  • My Brilliant Career
    The fierce, irreverent novel of aspiration and rebellion that is both a cornerstone of Australian literature and a feminist classic. Miles Franklin began the candid, passionate, and contrary My Brilliant Career when she was only sixteen, intending it to be the Australian answer to Jane Eyre. But the book she produced—a thinly veiled autobiographical novel about a young girl hungering...
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  • My Brilliant Career TV Tie In: the beloved Australian classic, now a major Netflix series
    My Brilliant Career
    The much-loved Australian literary classic, now a major Netflix series starring Philippa Northeast from Territory and Slow Horses' Christopher Chung. '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...
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