Guide to the Papers of Miles Franklin

Biographical / Historical

Miles Franklin, the eldest child of John Franklin of Brindabella station and his wife Margaret, was born at Talbingo, New South Wales, in 1879, and given the name Stella Maria Sarah Miles. The family moved to Stillwater near Goulburn in 1879 and after several more farming enterprises near Penrith and Chesterfield they gave up the land and moved to the Sydney suburb of Carlton, where Stella Franklin became the writer Miles Franklin with the publication of My Brilliant Career in 1901. In 1906 Miles Franklin embarked for San Francisco , arriving in a city destroyed by the recent earthquake, and by the end of 1906 she had crossed the United States and reached Chicago where she stayed until 1915, working during this time as a secretary to the president of the National Women's Trade Union League of America, Margaret Dreier Robins, and as a co-editor and briefly, editor, on the League's monthly journal, Life and Labor.

With the declaration of war in Europe Franklin took leave from the League and sailed for England in October, 1915. She resigned from the League and worked in various jobs in London. In June 1917 she undertook volunteer work with the 'American' Unit of the Scottish Women's Hospital for Foreign Service stationed at Ostrova, Macedonia, where she remained until February 1918, when she returned, in poor health, to London. She remained in London for another eight years, visiting Ireland in 1919 and 1926, and Australia, via America, in 1923-24. During this time Franklin worked as a secretary, while continuing to write. She completed Prelude to waking in December 1925. Theis was published in 1950, but was the first work written under her new pseudonym, 'Brent of Bin Bin'.

Miles Franklin returned to Australia in 1927, and between 1928 and 1931, three of a projected nine volume pastoral saga by 'Brent of Bin Bin' were published by Blackwoods. By late 1930 Franklin was dissatisfied with home and Australian literary life and left for London via America in pursuit of publishers, returning late 1932. Her father had died in 1931 and her finances dipped alarmingly. Old Blastus of Bandicoot (London 1931) appeared under her own name, and in 1933 she published Bring the monkey and completed the six 'Brent' novels. All that swagger was published by the Bulletin and won the S.H. Prior Memorial Prize in 1936.

Franklin joined the Fellowship of Australian Writers in 1933 and the Sydney P.E.N. Club in 1935, and supported young writers as Jean Devanny (q.v.), Sumner Locke Elliot, Ian Mudie, and Ric Throssell. She supported new literary journals such as Meanjin and Southerly, and fellowship schemes to nurture Australian writers. Her contributions to Australian literary life culminated in lectures at the University of Western Australian in 1950; these were published posthumously as Laughter not for a cage.

Miles Franklin died on the 19th September 1954 in hospital in Drummoyne. Her vision survives in the annual Miles Franklin award, her published work, the international success of My Brilliant Career, and in her voluminous papers, willed to the Mitchell Library, Sydney.