My Brilliant Career / My Career Goes Bung [Paperback]

Miles Franklin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2000

Miles Franklin's classic of 1901 follows the unconventional life and struggles of one of Australia's most memorable female characters. Sybylla's passion and rebellion bring her no end of trouble, in life and in love. Included in this edition is the sequel, My Career Goes Bung.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Strong-headed, competent Sybylla has lived her sixteen years in and out of poverty in the Australian outback. She happily remembers her early years, including her mother's concern that she is too much of a tomboy and her father's response that "the curse of her sex will bother her soon enough." When she is ten, Sybylla's life changes drastically as her family moves, her father's businesses fail, and years of drought blight their land: "We felt the full force of the heavy hand of poverty...the wounded pride and humiliation which attacked us." At fifteen, with no visions of escape from her difficult life, Sybylla is invited to her grandmother's estate and there tastes some of the pleasures she longs for - music, books, art. She also falls in love and feels the joy and sorrow love can bring. Sybylla provides a vivid recollection of youth as she fights the conventions of her time and pays a high price to be true to her heart. Under the pen name Miles Franklin, Stella Marie Sarah Miles Franklin wrote My Brilliant Career at age sixteen. Many readers saw the novel as purely autobiographical, and the negative reaction to her portrayal of people in the outback made her stop further publication of the book. She continued to write throughout her life, but My Brilliant Career, an exploration and celebration of life and its choice, was not reprinted until 1966, twelve years after her death. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. -- From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Holly Smith

From the Publisher

For the first time ever, My Brilliant Career is published with its sequel. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers PTY (July 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0207186952
• ISBN-13: 978-0207186950
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #892,590 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This Brilliant Book, December 8, 2001

By 

Rivkah Maccaby "Rivkah Maccaby" (Bloomington, IN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Brilliant Career / My Career Goes Bung (Paperback)

These books are not really meant to go together. When she was sixteen years old, Miles Franklin wrote My Brilliant Career, A NOVEL, but was plagued for years by people who believed that this book was an autobiography. Some people continued to insist it was, or even misrepresent it as such even after being personally informed by Miles Franklin that the book was a novel. Finally, Miles Franklin withdrew My Brilliant Career from publication, and in the fifties, wrote My Career Goes Bung as a response to those who continued to believe that My Brilliant Career was an autobiography. My Career Goes Bung is a parody of the literary world, not a sequel to My Brilliant Career, and frankly, if you read it immediately after, it will probably spoil the magic of My Brilliant Career for you.

That said, here is my review of My Brilliant Career:

The is a beautiful and startling book. Written by Miles Franklin in 1901, when she was just sixteen, it is the story of a young girl, Sybylla Melvyn, trying to live her own life in Possum Gully, Australia. She doesn't want to marry, and repeat her mother's life. She'd like to travel, but she has no money. She's bright, but her prospects for college are non-existent. More than anything, she would like to be an artist, but not because she has a passion for any particular artistic expression; she just likes her imagined idea of an artist's lifestyle.

She has a brief respite when she goes to live with her grandmother, and meets Harold Beecham, who becomes her best friend. She also gets to know her Aunt Helen, "neither maid, nor widow, nor wife," who cautions her of the dangers of marrying for love. Sybylla wonders why she should marry at all. If she had a fortune, she declares, she would give it gladly to someone she loved, but "the word wife finished [her] up."

Life has tougher things in store for Sybylla, but she is a survivor, and she begins to write. She masters metaphor: "If the souls of our lives were voiced in music, there are some that none but a great organ could express, others the clash of a full orchestra, a few...the...exquisite sadness of a violin..., and mine could be told with a couple of nails in a rusty tin pot."

Maybe she writes because of what she knows, or maybe she has insight because she writes, but Sybylla, from Possum Gully, to genteel Caddagat and Five-Bob Downs, to the muddy M'Swat farm, and back to Possum Gully, knows classism, demagoguery, democracy, socialism, feminism, and cynicism.

Sybylla is a joy to know. I can't recommend this book more.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deserving of wider popularity, December 6, 2000

By 

Edward Aycock (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Brilliant Career / My Career Goes Bung (Paperback)

It's hard to believe that this novel was written by a young woman in her teens. it's even harder to believe that it was written in the late nineteenth century. So much for Victorian attitudes... Sybylla rages against her parents, shuns marriage in favor of a career, sees classism and injustice as it truly is, and at one point questions the exuistence of God. The result is an entertaining story. Sybylla is a worthy literary sister to Anne of Green Gables, or the March sisters. The story has a little less of the innocence to it, but all of the charm. The description of 1890's Australia are vivid, as are all the people Sybylla meets (and those great Australian geographic names.)

Try and find a copy of this book... and then demand it go back into print! You won't regret reading this, and you'll enjoy it wholeheartedly. (Beware, My career Goes Bung is not a "true" sequel, and can easily be skipped without missing anything.)

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No review - just a reason for buying the book., May 31, 2009

By 

Janette Howard - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Brilliant Career / My Career Goes Bung (Paperback)

I already know these stories (which I want to re-read and possibly re-re-read)because I'm a Miles Franklin fan. I think Miles and what she has to say are historically important. I've never owned this book but thanks to your huge inventory and reasonable prices, I'm delighted to now be an owner. It's much appreciated.. JH.