My Brilliant Career
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2019
Language: eng
Subjects: Autobiographical fiction; Australia -- Fiction; Young women -- Fiction; Bildungsromans
Description: <p><i>My Brilliant Career</i> is a classic Australian work published in 1901 by <a href="https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/miles-franklin">Stella Miles Franklin</a>, with an introduction by <a href="https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/henry-lawson">Henry Lawson</a>. A thinly-veiled autobiographical novel, it paints a vivid and sometimes grim picture of rural Australian life in the late 19th Century.</p>
			<p>Sybylla Melvyn is the daughter of a man who falls into grinding poverty through inadvised speculation before becoming a hopeless drunk unable to make a living from a small dairy farm. Sybylla longs for the intellectual things in life such as books and music. She wants to become a writer and rebels against the constraints of her life. For a short period she is allowed to stay with her better-off relatives, and there she attracts the attentions of a handsome and rich neighbour, Harold Beecham. The course of true love, however, does not run smoothly for this very independent young woman.</p>
			<p>The author, like many other women writers of the time, adopted a version of her name which suggested that she was male in order to get published. Today, the Miles Franklin Award is Australia’s premier literary award, with a companion award, the Stella, open only to women authors.</p>
			<p><i>My Brilliant Career</i> was made into a well-regarded movie in 1979. Directed by Gillian Armstrong, it features Judy Davis as Sybylla and Sam Neil as Harry Beecham.</p>