My Brilliant Career

My Brilliant Career
Author(s)	Miles Franklin
Country	Australia
Language	English
Genre(s)	Novel
Publisher	William Blackwood & Sons
Publication date	1901
Media type	Print (Hardback)
Pages	319 pp
ISBN	NA
Followed by	My Career Goes Bung

My Brilliant Career is a 1901 novel written by Miles Franklin. It is the first of many novels by Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin (1879–1954), one of the major Australian writers of her time. It was written while she was still a teenager, as a romance to amuse her friends. Franklin submitted the manuscript to Henry Lawson who contributed a preface and took it to his own publishers in Edinburgh. The popularity of the novel in Australia and the perceived closeness of many of the characters to her own family and circumstances as small farmers in New South Wales near Goulburn caused Franklin a great deal of distress and led her to withdrawing the novel from publication until after her death.

Shortly after the publication of My Brilliant Career, Franklin wrote a sequel, My Career Goes Bung, which would not be published until 1946.

Plot summary

The heroine, Sybylla Melvyn, is an imaginative, headstrong girl growing up in rural Australia in the 1890s. Drought and a series of poor business decisions reduce her family to subsistence level, her father begins to drink excessively, and Sybylla struggles to deal with the monotony of her life. To her relief, she is sent to live on her grandmother's property, where life is more comfortable. There she meets wealthy young Harry Beecham, who loves her and proposes marriage; convinced of her ugliness and aware of her tomboyish ways, Sybylla is unable to believe that he could really love her. By this time, her father's drinking has got the family into debt, and she is sent to work as governess/housekeeper for the family of an almost illiterate neighbour to whom her father owes money. She finds life there unbearable and eventually suffers a physical breakdown which leads to her return to the family home. When Harry Beecham returns to ask Sybylla to marry him, she concludes that she would only make him unhappy and sends him away, determined never to marry. The novel ends with no suggestion that she will ever have the "brilliant career" as a writer that she desires.

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

A 1979 film version, produced by Margaret Fink, directed by Gillian Armstrong and starring Judy Davis and Sam Neill as Sybylla and Harry. Sybylla is a young woman with big dreams of becoming a well-known writer. She lives in the outback of Australia with her family struggling with the drought and monetary problems. Her journey to finding her self and making the hardest choices of her life begins when her mother says she can’t afford to keep her and sends Sybylla to her rich grandmother's house where she learns to love. But instead of pursuing love and becoming a rich housewife as expected, Sybylla does not wish to give up her big dreams of becoming a distinguished writer. She chooses a 'brilliant' career over love and getting married, getting a book published in 1901.

Allusions/references from other works

Western Australian band The Panics released a song of the same name on their debut EP in 2002, which is presumably named after the book.

Melbourne band TISM feature a spoken word diatribe titled "My Brilliant Huntington's Chorea" on the bonus disc from their 1999 album www.tism.wanker.com.

In the film, Tomorrow, When the War Began (2010) Corrie reads the book and states that it is "better than the film."

Release details

• 1901, Australia, William Blackwood & Sons (ISBN NA), Pub date ? ? 1901, hardback (First edition)
• 1980, UK, Virago Press (ISBN 0-86068-193-9), Pub date 14 July 1980, paperback
• 1980, UK, St Martins Press (ISBN 0-312-55599-7), Pub date ? October 1980, hardback
• 1987, UK, G K Hall & Co (ISBN 0-8161-4158-4), Pub date ? February 1987, hardback
• 2006, USA, Filiquarian Publishing (ISBN 1-59986-972-1), Pub date 16 May 2006, paperback

External links

• My Brilliant Career at Project Gutenberg