Dimensions
198 x 129 x 52mm
The first of these letters was written at Brindabella in 1887, ten years before Miles Franklin started her wonderfully rebellious novel MY BRILLIANT CAREER that propelled her out of the bush and on to Sydney and the world.
These letters follow her career to Chicago, where she worked for the Women's Trade Union League, to the Balkans, where she was an orderly during the First World War, to London where she resumed her writing, and her return home in the 1930s.
After nearly thirty years away, Miles Franklin's letters became, more than ever, a sustaining factor in her life. Living alone after her mother's death in 1938, she shared with 'her congenials' -- friends in England, Europe, the USA and Australia -- experiences, memories and, above all, her commitment to Australian literature. The last letter in this collection was written only sixteen days before her death.
As well as Miles Franklin's own correspondence -- witty, acerbic, provocative -- the selection includes letters from her life-long friends, such as Alice Henry and Vida Goldstein, Katharine Susannah Pritchard, Dymphna Cusack and Beatrice Davis.
Selected and edited by Jill Roe, the letters crackle with surprises of a life richly lived, and read with the pleasure and intensity of biography.
Originally published in two volumes, this new edition includes a fresh introduction and extensive revisions to notes and biographical data.