Miles Franklin (My Brilliant Career)

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An Australian author — and the 1979 film adaptation of her work — capture Kim and Amy’s fancy this week on the show. Published in 1901 and written when author Miles Franklin was only eighteen years old, My Brilliant Career became an instant classic of Australian literature and still delights readers with its feisty heroine, Sybylla Melvin, and its realistic depiction of Australian life and lingo at the turn of the 20th century. In our discussion of the novel and its film adaptation (starring Judy Davis and Sam Neill) we’ll explain why Franklin’s fear of being a literary one-hit-wonder proved unfounded, and why her name today graces one of Australia’s top annual literary prizes.

Mentioned in this episode:

Miles Franklin

My Brilliant Career film

My Brilliant Career novel

Judy Davis

Sam Neill

Director Gillain Armstrong

Oscar and Lucinda

Charlotte Grey

Blackwood’s publishing house

Anne of Green Gables

The Thorn Birds

Brent of Bin Bin

Up the Country by Brent of Bin Bin

Lost Ladies of Lit Episode No. 128 on Margaret Oliphant

Henry Lawson

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

Bring the Monkey by Miles Franklin

My Career Goes Bung by Miles Franklin

All That Swagger by Miles Franklin

S.H. Prior Memorial Prize

The Miles Franklin Award

The Stella Prize

Miles Franklin: A Short Biography by Jill Roe

Of Foreign Lands and Peoples

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